sulfates - Mane Street Hair & Color Studio

Let’s Lather….

We all know the reason we wash our hair in the first place is because it’s dirty – but how does it get dirty? There are several ways: your scalp secretes oils that make your hair feel dirty, perspiration which deposits salts, and other hormonal possibilities. On top of that – smoke, pollution, and dust that your hair picks up from the environment also get deposited into your hair. And let’s not forget the residue from styling products such as hairspray, gel, mousse or other products you might use.

For the most part, all this residue on your hair is not very water soluble – meaning just rinsing with water alone won’t make it go away. Enter SHAMPOO with its surfactant molecules. These molecules are designed to remove water insoluble contaminants by working as tiny chemical bridges by linking oil and water together. (Great science fair project! – negative and positive charges – I won’t bore you with it all here but it’s cool!) When shampoo is applied to dirty hair, these tiny chemical cleansers spring into action and “seek out” the drops of oil, dirt, and yesterday’s hairspray and keeps it all suspended in the rinse water so it goes down the drain, not back into your hair.

How often should you wash your hair?

Under normal conditions you should wash your hair once a day. While the new fad is to go as long as humanly possible between washing because “your color will last longer”, “your hair won’t dry out”, or any other reason they’re trying to sell you, the reality is, if you’re using a properly pH balanced shampoo (4.5-5.5. See our blog on ‘Why pH matters’), your shampoo has no salt, and low or no sulfates, daily washing is best. Our scalps get a build up of dirt, oils, and products that block the hair follicles and could clog them and result in hair loss/thinning. Also, the amount of lather DOES NOT affect a shampoo’s ability to clean hair. Foam boosters are added by the manufacturers to improve lather. Any benefits shampoo claims to have beyond cleaning your hair have NO basis in fact! So shampoo with “mangoberry extract for added shine” – NOPE! Marketing and advertising have a powerful impact on the way we think, buy and use products. Don’t fall for their BS!

How to properly wash your hair…

Shampoo using a pH balanced product. DO NOT pile hair and scrub! Scrub the scalp and work shampoo down the hair shaft. Let sit 1-2 minutes. (Wash your face)

Apply Conditioner. Normal/Oily hair – avoid scalp. Dry hair/Scalp, apply from roots to ends. Let sit for 2-5 minutes. (Wash your body and/or shave) Rinse leaving a slight film (it should feel like you could rinse for another couple seconds).

Lower that temperature! Water that is too hot will make your color fade and dry your hair out no matter how good your products are!

What to look for when buying a shampoo

pH. Are you sick of us saying that word yet? A good bottle of shampoo will tell you the pH level ON THE BOTTLE. If it doesn’t say “pH 4.5-5.5” it doesn’t have to be balanced and probably isn’t… that includes ALL professional products. (see our blog on Why pH matters for more in depth facts).

Sulfate free, SALT free. While it is very difficult to find products that have none of these items – there are some that exist (we carry them!). All of those ingredients will fade your color. Salt is used as a thickening agent in shampoo and will abrade the hair cuticle and fade color faster than you can say sodium chloride!

Know your hair type. Curly, straight, colored, damaged…. shampoos have different types of moisturizers in them to give the most benefits to your hair type. Example: wheat proteins are great for straight hair but curly hair needs essential fatty acids in the form of oils. Color treated hair needs moisture in both proteins and EFA’s.

When in doubt, come talk to us, we’ll make sure we get the right product on your head!

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?