A Natural You: Cleansing Your Hair vs Using Shampoo

What's the difference between cleaning your hair with shampoo and cleaning it with a cleanser? The difference is shampoos dry your hair out. Shampoos are made with surfactants, that surrounds the oils in your hair and allows it to be rinsed away. Thus, causing your hair to become dry and brittle. Cleansing Conditioners are products that cleans your hair without stripping away the natural oils needed to keep your hair strong and healthy. Cleansers essentially conditions your hair will cleaning it.

We all grew up thinking shampoos should smell good, feel thick and make lots of bubbles. In order for this to happen, a few key ingredients has to be added. To clean the hair/scalp most shampoos contains an alkly benzene sulfate, tetrasodium EDTA is added to bind with the calcium and magnesium. This will rinse out of your hair without making scum, cocamide (PEG-5, DEA, MEA or TEA) to give the shampoo thickness and make the bubbles. And preservatives and fragrances are added as well. Each shampoo product may have their own variation of these ingredients or other elements maybe added. The result in the end is usually the same, hair that is stiff, fragile and may even have breakage. For those of you who have dry hair, using shampoo products is only making it worse. Dry hair will break easily, resulting in hair loss, split ends and of course it will damage your hair.

Natural Cleansing Conditioners cleans and conditions your hair without the use of surfactants, detergents, or chemicals. They may contain ingredients such as amino acids to increase moisture levels, phytantroil for preventing split ends and reduce the damage cause by daily combing or heat, Vitamin C to help protect the hair against UV rays, and panthenol to help protect the hair from becoming frail or weak. Most natural cleansers contains essential oils and/or natural preservatives so the cleanser can smell good. Using cleansing conditioners will nourish your hair while cleaning without drying it out.