Your Shampoo Might Be Giving You Split Ends

My hair obsessed housemate got me into healthy shampoo. That actually may have been the beginning of my interest in safe personal care products. Which I'm glad I remembered, because now I have a scapegoat for this obsession of mine. She became devoted to products that wouldn't damage her locks because she wanted to grow her hair long like Rapunzel. From her, I found out that the cleansers in our shampoos are actually so harsh that they strip our hair and damage it. The ingredient that she wanted to stay away from was sodium lauryl sulfate (SLS). SLS is a detergent, a very harsh detergent. It is so harsh that by cleaning your hair, it is damaging the follicle and giving you split ends.

After damaging your hair follicle beyond repair, companies use conditioners to hide the unhealthy strands. Conditioners are made up of waxes, silicones and oils that are designed to coat the hair shaft and hide the damage done by harsh detergents in shampoos. Wouldn't it make a lot more sense to gently cleanse your hair, leave the follicle unharmed, and not put any fake, heavy coatings on top? You would think so, but hair care companies know that two products make more money than one.

SLS is cheap, and effective. It will absolutely eliminate the oils in your hair. However, it has been linked to skin irritation and ulcers. And it strips your hair follicle, weakening the hair so that it's more prone to developing split ends in the near future.

You can eliminate SLS, and the negative health effects associated with it, fairly easily from your hair care routine. And you can be kinder to your strands by using more gentle detergents. Below, I've compiled a long (and yet somehow incomplete) list of detergents and ranked them on their safety and harshness. Check your shampoo and see how your cleanser ranks.

DETERGENT	SAFETY	EFFECT ON HAIR
Sodium lauryl sulfate	Irritant	Harsh
Ammonium lauryl sulfate	Irritant	Harsh
Sodium laureth sulfate	Irritant/carcinogen	Harsh
Sodium myreth sulfate	Irritant/carcinogen	Harsh
Sodium lauroyl sarcosinate	Irritant	Harsh
Cocamidopropyl hydroxysultaine	Irritant	Harsh
Cocamidopropyl betaine	Irritant	Harsh
Decyl glucoside	Safe	Not harsh
Coco glucoside	Safe	Not harsh
Lauryl glucoside	Safe	Not harsh

Detergent Based Shampoos

Detergents are the cleansing agent you will find in most shampoos. However, from this list you can see that it's actually more difficult than you would think to avoid SLS, its relatives, and other unsafe detergents. The few on this list that are not classified as harsh, a skin irritant, or carcinogenic are in the glucoside family: decyl glucoside, coco glucoside and lauryl glucoside. Choosing a shampoo with these cleansers will help the health and shine of your hair, as well as protect your eyes, brain, heart and liver from chemical penetration.


To help narrow your search for the right shampoo, I'll share some shampoos I've found with these detergents. The first shampoo is Peter Rabbit's.

Peter Rabbit's shampoo (yes, it is made by the Beatrix Potter company, and yes, it is a baby shampoo) has amazing ingredients. It is one of the few detergent based shampoos that I have found with no other questionable ingredients. It has not, however, made it's way to my testing bay, so I can't report on its effectiveness just yet.

Aubrey Organics shampoo includes coco glucoside as the cleansing agent.

However, most of the Aubrey Organics shampoos also contain grapefruit seed extract. This ingredient has been shown to be contaminated with benzalkonium chloride, parabens, and triclosan. While it is often misunderstood as a safe preservative, this is not the case. Aside from grapefruit seed extract, several of Aubrey Organics shampoos have good ingredients.

Soap Based Shampoo

If you want the ultimate in gentle cleansers, the best choice is a soap. Soap is not detergent. Soaps are less harsh cleansing agents (even kinder than the gentlest detergent). You will find them listed on ingredient labels as saponofied oils (for example: saponofied coconut oil and saponofied jojoba oil). However, these kinds of shampoos are not typically available on your supermarkets shelves. This is because this kind of shampoo doesn't have a conditioner to go with it. Let me explain.

Your hair naturally has an acidic pH, around 5.

 

When your hair is at its happy pH, the keratin scales that make up your hair lay flat, making the strands of your hair smooth and manageable, like in the image below.

 

However, when your hair is exposed to an alkaline solution, these keratin layers rise up, making your hair harder to brush, and more easily tangled. Detergent shampoos are typically acidic in pH. However, soaps are alkaline. As a result, when using a soap shampoo an acidic rinse is necessary afterward to return the hair to its natural pH.This means replacing your conditioner with a lemon juice or vinegar rinse. Sounds like a mini science experiment in your shower, right? All you need is a paper-mâché volcano to pour that vinegar into.

If it sounds a little too much like your 5th grade science fair project, you can always stick with a detergent based shampoo with a healthy, gentler detergent. Your choices, however, seem very limited. In the meantime, I will be trying the soap shampoo escapade and report back.

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Ingredients in Peter Rabbit's Shampoo:
Aloe barbadenis leaf juice, coco glucoside, decyl glucoside, xanthan gum, ethylhexylglycerin, pumpkin seed oil*, carrot root extract*, sage extract*, basil leaf extract*, basalm peru oil*, elettaria cardamomum seed oil*,pelargoinum graveolens flower oil*, ginger root oil*, lemon oil*, lime oil*, orange peel oil*, thyme oil*, cananga odorata flower oil*, citric acid, potassium sorbate. *Certified organic ingredients

Ingredients in Aubrey Organics Rose Mosqueta Shampoo:
Water, coconut oil, coco glucoside, hydrolyzed soy protein, corn syrup*, carrageenan, aloe vera leaf juice*, shea butter*, rosa moschata*, rose hip seed oil*, st. john's wort oil , horsetail extract, coltsfoot extract, aminobenzoic acid, lavender oil, bergamot oil, ylang ylang oil, grapefruit seed extract. *Certified organic ingredients

Image courtesy of:
1. Getty Images
2. Peter Rabbit Organics
3. Aubrey Organics
4. Hair Cosmetology
5. Bubble and Bee's Stephanie Greenwood