Who has not seen those ads for shampoos that present us with a hair wrapped in foam? It is a curious image … and useless, because the foam does not clean . Manufacturers include it because very few would buy a shampoo that didn’t. That’s why they all include foam enhancers that perfectly do their job of fooling us.
Nor do we think that cleaning is the responsibility of the rest of the compounds. From the long list of strange names that we discovered on the label, we find some such as glycol distearate, whose mission is to give that iridescent tone to the shampoo, or the inevitable perfume, or the no less important thickeners, which give it that texture that everyone ‘ we know ‘what the shampoo should have and they prevent it from slipping out of our hands. One of them is common salt. Manufacturers also add antioxidants, antimicrobials and protectants so that the shampoo is not degraded or colonized by the bacteria around us.
Water and detergent
So who cleans the hair? As in all cleaning products, a detergent. If we look closely at the composition of any shampoo, the first two ingredients are water and some kind of detergent . Now, since the ingredients appear in order of concentration, this means that the shampoo that we buy in our store is, essentially, water and detergent; in general, the amount of the latter is around 15%. From here we can find many additives that are usually there for marketing reasons.
So, one might think that a little soap and water is enough to wash your hair. Error. The soap is usually alkaline, which causes the cells of the cuticle to swell and acquire a rough appearance giving the hair a dull tone. To avoid this, ancient beauty books recommended rinsing your hair with vinegar or lemon juice, which makes it look shiny and smooth . For this reason we find some acid in shampoos, usually sodium citrate, a salt of citric acid. Now, the situation is complicated because the shampoo causes the hair to lose its electrical balance. The electrified hair tends to repel each other and they start to dance the twist, becoming tangled. If we brush our hair on top just after drying it, we aggravate the problem: thus we electrify it even more.
The only solution to avoid this mess is to stick your head in a bowl of butter. Fresh pork fat – or duck, if we are more chic – is a good choice. As this is not very pleasant, there is no choice but to use a conditioner, which provides a protective wax layer that improves the feel, appearance and reduces friction between the strands of hair, allowing easier styling. But beware! Let’s not use the conditioner too much because then we will add layer upon layer of that greasy wax on the cuticle. But all is not lost: the same people who sell us the conditioner provide us with shampoos that clean “over-conditioned” hair.
However, if you are one of those who call yourself a handyman and you want nothing more than to have clean hair, you can make yourself a homemade shampoo: you just need to add a little surfactant (the active ingredient in detergents) to a good amount of water and a little conditioner to temper the unpleasant aspects of the detergent. Of course, do not ask for a fresh and pleasant smell, or a smooth and soft hair, or a shiny hair free of static electricity.
And if you want to give it that fashionable natural touch, squeeze a kiwi …
