Tag: hair products

Why pH matters

Normal, healthy hair has a pH value of 4.5-5.5, which is acidic.

Hair that has a pH value above 7 is alkaline – porous and damaged.

When hair is healthy it will attract and hold hair color better and longer than hair that is damaged, which will repel color and fade quicker.

PROPER pH LEVELS IN YOUR PRODUCTS IS THE MOST IMPORTANT THING TO LOOK FOR TO ENSURE YOUR HAIR IS HAPPY AND HEALTHY!!

If your shampoos, conditioners, and styling products don’t have the pH written on the bottle – DOESN’T MATTER IF ITS “PROFFESSIONAL” OR DRUGSTORE BRAND – you are running the risk of not only pulling out your color, but causing unnecessary frizz or, on the other side of it, weighing your hair down. Why do most companies not put the pH on the bottles of product? Because it’s expensive to send little Jimmy up a ladder to check the pH of a giant vat of product and if its off the whole tank is useless. The manufacturers of these big companies DON’T CARE ABOUT YOU, YOUR STYLIST, OR YOUR HAIR! Their end game is $$$. The marketing on the front of those bottles: “Made with goji berries from the Appalachian mountains”, “infused with extract of chamomile”, etc… they are pandering to you! Those ingredients don’t matter if the pH is off!!! Your skin, hair, and nails all live within the pH levels of 4.5-5.5. If your products are higher than that you not only run the risk of ruining your hair, you are also washing off your skin’s acid mantle, causing dry and irritated skin and potentially allowing contaminants into your body. If it is NOT WRITTEN ON THE BOTTLE YOU ARE GUESSING!! Why would you spend lots of money for beautiful hair and then risk ruining it with a product that isn’t pH balanced???

What is your acid mantle?

The acid mantle is a very fine, slightly acidic film on the surface of human skin acting as a barrier to bacteria, viruses and other potential contaminants that might penetrate the skin. Sebum is secreted by the sebaceous gland and when mixed with sweat becomes the acid mantle.

So what do we recommend?

At Mane Street Hair & Color Studio, we only use and sell shampoos and conditioners that have the pH levels written on the bottles. We search high and low for companies that are smaller and care more about the ingredients than the packaging. (Fun fact: the two most expensive things in your products: the bottle itself and the fragrance – think about that the next time you grab a $$$ bottle of product – what are they really selling you?) And as a bonus, almost all of the products we carry are made in the U.S.A.! Can you find these products in other retail stores? Maybe but not likely. We stray from companies that divert, sell to big box companies, and don’t take pride in their product. If you do find them in other places (::cough, cough:: Amazon or Ulta), check with us first. We guarantee our prices are either cheaper or on par and if not, we will price match! Buy your products where you get your hair done, not where you buy your groceries!

FUN FACT!!!

Why does Johnson’s baby shampoo not hurt babies eyes?

While our outsides are a pH of somewhere between 4.5-5.5, our insides are a pH of 7 (neutral). Johnson’s Baby Don’t Cry Shampoo is also a pH of 7 and so is babies skin for the first few months of life because they lived in a pH of 7 for nine months and it takes about 6-12 months after birth for their acid mantle to develop so they need a higher pH for their skin and eyes. So if/when you start to notice your snuggle bunnies skin start to develop a rash or dry skin try switching to a pH balanced shampoo. Most likely the baby has produced it’s acid mantle so the baby shampoo, while it will still be gentle on their eyes, is severely drying out the skin. This shampoo is awful for anyone older than one year of age! (We’ll take that doctor’s co-pay, thank you!) 😉

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Product Knowledge

While we don’t bleed for any manufacturer, there are some companies that we currently support. We have sifted through all the manufacturer’s marketing schemes and found products that do their job with the proper ingredients and proper pH!

The following is a list features we look for when deciding what products we will suggest to our clients:

pH balanced to 4.5-5.5

If it doesn’t say the actual numbers on the bottle, the pH could be too high or too low, resulting in frizz, color fade, dryness, etc..) For more on why this is important see our “Why pH matters” page.

Moisture

Different hair types need different amounts and types of moisture. Straight hair needs proteins such as keratin, silk, soy, or wheat. Curly hair needs EFA’s (essential fatty acids), and chemically treated hair needs both proteins and EFA’s.

NO Salt

Sodium Chloride is used in shampoo as a thickening agent. It will strip your color and dry your hair out!

Salt shows up in even the most expensive product lines. Why? It’s a thickening agent and it’s cheap. It also dries out your hair and pulls the color out. If your shampoo has sodium chloride listed in the ingredients, none of the good ingredients even matter.

Sulfates and Parabens

Here’s where it gets tricky. Sulfates are NOT bad! Sulfates clean the hair, that’s literally their job. It’s a fancy name for “surface cleansers”. When sulfates are paired with a pH balanced shampoo, washing with a product that has sulfates is like using Tide; when you use a sulfate free shampoo that is also pH balanced it’s like washing with Woolite. Sulfates are magnetically charged, one end is attracted to dirt, oil, etc.., while the other end is attracted to water. This allows the shampoo to lift the stuff we don’t want in our hair off our hair and be washed away in the water. Sulfate free means those magnets are weaker. NOTE – if your shampoo IS NOT pH balanced then sulfates or not – doesn’t matter – your playing roulette with your hair.

Parabens are preservatives and they’re in everything! Preservatives are in your makeup, your food, etc… As far as cosmetics and hair products go, parabens can cause skin irritation in people that have sensitive, damaged, or broken skin, but according to the FDA “cosmetics must be safe for consumers when used according to directions on the label or in the customary way, and they must be properly labeled.…FDA scientists continue to review published studies on the safety of parabens. At this time, we do not have information showing that parabens as they are used in cosmetics have an effect on human health.” 

Marketing has done a real number on these ingredients. When combined with other poor ingredients or when used on the wrong types of hair, these ingredients can become bad for our hair. If the products we recommend have these things in them, we have determined that the rest of the ingredients either cancel these out or work in tandem to do their job properly. BE TAUGHT, NOT SOLD!

Product ingredients, NOT product lines, make good hair days!

How to read your ingredients

The higher up on the list, the more of that ingredient there is. So if keratin, silk, oils, etc… show up towards the bottom of the list there isn’t a whole lot of it in there. This doesn’t mean it’s bad, it just might not work for your hair type.

How to decide what products will work for you

When we suggest a product to you, it is like a doctor prescribing medications; they start you at a certain level and you go home and take the prescribed medication. After some time using it, you go back and talk to your doctor about how you feel with the new medication and they will either lower, maintain, or raise your dosage based on what you tell them. The same goes with hair. What works for Sally might be awful for Sue. It’s trial and error mixed with science. We are your hair doctors. We give you product suggestions based on what you tell us you like or don’t like about your hair. No one wants a product graveyard under their sinks…. please see our refund page for how to return product you truly don’t like.

WE ONLY GUARANTEE MY CHEMICAL SERVICES IF YOU ARE USING PRODUCTS WE HAVE RECOMMENDED!

You invest A LOT of money in your hair services.

WHY WOULD YOU BUY PRODUCTS WITH INGREDIENTS THAT WILL DAMAGE AND REVERSE ALL THE TIME AND MONEY YOU SPENT TO HAVE BEAUTIFUL HAIR?

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