When you’re looking to enhance the moisture in your healthy hair regimen, your greatest source of moisture will always come from your moisturizing shampoo and deep conditioner. While water based moisturizers will offer you some much needed daily moisture, nothing can beat your moisturizing shampoo and deep conditioner for hydrating the hair. If your moisturizing shampoo and deep conditioner aren’t up to snuff, then you will find that you are fighting a losing battle as far as maintaining a proper moisture balance is concerned. This article will give you tips for selecting an effective moisturizing shampoo.
When looking for good moisturizing shampoo products, here are some general things to consider:
When a label says that a shampoo is a “moisturizing shampoo” or that the product “infuses the hair with moisture,” this may not always be the case. Always check product claims against the ingredients. The ingredients will help you determine whether the shampoo formula you are dealing with is a moisturizing shampoo formula or not. You want a moisturizing shampoo that balances its cleansing ability with its ability to soften and moisturize the hair.
1.) Are there harsh sulfates in your moisturizing shampoo? The main thing you want to look for in your moisturizing shampoo is the presence of sulfates. Sulfates are surfactants or detergents that are used in shampoos to help clean the hair. Examples of sulfates include: ammonium lauryl sulfate, ammonium laureth sulfate, sodium lauryl sulfate, and sodium laureth sulfate. The more sulfates a moisturizing shampoo contains, the more dirt and buildup it is able to remove from your hair. However, multiple sulfates in a moisturizing shampoo formula usually reduces its ability to effectively moisturize the hair. Here are some general rules of thumb for moisturizing shampoos:
If your moisturizing shampoo contains MULTIPLE sulfates-RUN! A shampoo like this is not intended to actually moisturize the hair. It is ONLY formulated to remove stubborn deposits and buildup from the hair. A shampoo with multiple sulfates will be better at clarifying your hair than moisturizing it. In a standard shampoo formula there’s about 45-75% water, and 30-40% surfactant (detergent). These percentages do no leave much room for conditioning agents if you’ve got multiple surfactants packed in the formula. Multiple sulfates generally mean that you aren’t looking at a moisturizing shampoo formula at all.
A great percentage of shampoos with Ammonium lauryl or Ammonium laureth sulfate, in particular, are not moisturizing shampoos. These detergents are very drying and stripping; they will NOT assist with maintaining your moisture balance at all. These sulfates are the harshest cleansers of them all, so a “moisturizing shampoo formula” that contains either of these detergents should be avoided.
2.) Is the sulfate in your moisturizing shampoo the Laureth or Lauryl version ? If you must use a sulfate based moisturizing shampoo, remember that the “laureth” version of the sulfate detergent is always easier on the hair than “lauryl” version. If you are choosing between a moisturizing shampoo with sodium laureth sulfate and a moisturizing shampoo with sodium lauryl sulfate, go with the sodium LAURETH sulfate moisturizing shampoo. This one will be more moisturizing. Sodium myreth and tricedeth sulfates are some of the gentler sulfate derivatives, so a moisturizing shampoo with these in the formula will be fairly moisturizing depending on the rest of the ingredients in the formula.
3.) Does your moisturizing shampoo contain gentle surfactants?
Even though you are avoiding stripping sulfate cleansers in your moisturizing shampoo, a shampoo is useless if cannot clean and lift buildup at all. Healthy surfactants you want to look for in a moisturizing shampoo are: Cocamidopropyl Betaine, Lauryl Polyglucose, Sulfosuccinate, Isethionate, Hydroxysultaine. These are called secondary surfactants, so they are much easier on the hair. Primary surfactants are the harsher sulfates listed in the previous paragraphs.
4.) Salon vs. Drugstore Moisturizing Shampoos?
When deciding between a sulfate-based salon moisturizing shampoo and a sulfate-base drugstore moisturizing shampoo variety, go with the salon moisturizing shampoo. The salon version will more than likely contain a mightier dose of emollients to counter the sulfate detergents in the formula. Many drugstore shampoos contain large amounts of water and cleansers, but they often skimp on emollients, fatty acids, and conditioning oils.
One last note about moisturizing shampoos I’ve noticed that many shampoo makers have become creative with their shampoo ingredient lists to attract and fool customers. Be careful about the way you read these product labels ladies!
These ingredient lists say exactly the same thing. They know that consumers often associate the top of the list with the most important or plentiful ingredients in the bottle, but what they’ve really done if you look closely is just list all of the herbs first and write that they’ve simply floated them in water. (Hence the term, “in purified water.”) If listed traditionally in Product A, these herbs would have been listed last in the ingredient list because there is definitely not more “willow leaf” and “cherry blossom” than water!
Great Examples of moisturizing shampoos on the market:
Neutragena Triple Moisture Cream Lather shampoo, Creme of Nature green and red label shampoos, Kenra Moisturizing Shampoo, Elucence Moisture Benefits Shampoo, and KeraCare Moisturizing Shampoo. See my hair regimen builder article for more help with building your moisture regimen.
Reference
Halal, John (2002). Hair Structure and Chemistry Simplified. DelMar Publishers.
