Is your shampoo making your hair thinner?
It was during a conversation with Gail Federici that we got onto the not-so-glamorous topic of hair thinning. If you don’t know who Federici is, you’ll certainly know the products she has helped to develop over the course of her 30 year career: John Frieda’s bestselling Frizz Ease, and the game-changing Root Touch Up by Color Wow (a brand she founded), a waterproof powder for covering up grey roots. All of the products she develops are results-driven, which got us onto the subject of hair thinning in women: it affects an estimated one in four of us in the UK.
"When I was creating our range of shampoos for Color Wow, I couldn’t understand why the hair always looked so dull after the first day of washing," says Federici. "When we looked at the ingredients list, it was very standard - there were some conditioning agents, pearlising agents, waxes and polymers - all very normal for shampoos. But when we looked closer at the scalp, the silicones and polymers had left a deposit that were blocking the follicles." The silicones and polymers had caused the hair to look dull because it created a film around the hair shaft. But as she - and a research team at the University of Miami - discovered, they were also blocking new hair from growing. This would lead to the hair slowly thinning over time.
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"To prove our theory that shampoos were depositing waxes and polymers on the scalp, we conducted a study," says Dr Joe Cincotta, a leading cosmetic chemist who works alongside Federici. "Working with a group of women, we washed half of their head with a shampoo that was just designed to clean. Nothing else. On the other side, they used a conditioning shampoo. The study took microscopic pictures of the scalp where the hair emerged from the scalp, and it showed build-up and a physical block around the follicle."
Dr Antonella Tosti, Professor of Clinical Dermatology at the University of Miami who oversaw the study, noticed that hair washed with shampoo containing silicone and conditioning and pearlising agents left ‘whitish deposits encircling the shaft and on the scalp at the hair emergency. Deposits were still present even after washing three days later, and even more so six days later’.
Put simply, this research found that any shampoo that claimed to perform an action other than just to simply clean (say, to create more volume, or de-frizz) was likely to have other ingredients in that would deposit product on the scalp during the cleansing process, and therefore have a cumulatively damaging effect on the health of the scalp.
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"If you look at the hair growth cycle, the growing stage can be three to seven years, depending on your genetics", says Dr Cincotta. "The hair that is growing has already emerged from the scalp. It could take a few years until that hair falls out and leaves an opening, so this is the point that hair thinning occurs - the new, soft hair can’t push through the build-up on the scalp. This damage is sometimes irreversible."
Federici advises using a gentle cleansing shampoo designed to remove salt, sebum and dirt (Color Wow’s Colour Security Shampoo is, as you’d expect, formulated without any ingredients that would cause damaging build-up). But, as she stresses, this isn’t an attack on silicones and conditioning agents. "These are fine ingredients to use," she says, "as long as they are just used in conditioners and styling products. Not in shampoos that will sit on the scalp."
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Other brands are also moving towards proper cleansing of the scalp. Redken's latest shampoo launch, Clean Maniac Micellar Shampoo, £14.50, is silicone and sulphate free, leaving the scalp free of sebum and product build-up. This week sees the launch of new haircare range, London Labs, whose tagline reads ‘Skincare for Hair’. Founded by Steven Schapera (who was behind the beauty brand Becca), it fills a gap in the market for ‘dermatologist-grade’ ingredients in hair care. In the range, launching at Liberty, you’ll find cleansing masks with ingredients like alpha hydroxy acids, which will help to exfoliate away dead skin cells for a clean and healthy scalp. And in January next year, Aveda will launch an advanced version of its award-winning Invati range, their solution to thinning hair. The shampoo in the range exfoliates the scalp with salicylic acid that removes the build-up that can clog pores. Now, hands up who wants to wash their hair?
