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I have been hearing a lot of this board that alcohol and silicones are two hair enemies.
Could someone explain exactly what is the problem with these, and any longterm problems they cause?
slacker
Alcohol dissolves oils, thus "drying" your hair making it brittle.
Silicones adhere to the surface of your hair, potentially glomming things up. If you use silicones, you should make sure to rinse thoroughly.
Neither alcohol nor silicones are necessarily harmful, if they are used properly and not to excess.
Not trying to be annoying here, what exactly does "glomming things up" mean? Also, what if you don't rinse thoroughly, and do use excessive silicones? what happens,longterm and short?
As for alcohol, every hair product I have has Cetyl alcohol, or Stearyl alcohol. I thought drying up some of the oil would be a GOOD thing. My hair looks overshiny and gross after awhile if i don't get rid of some of the oil.
Sorry. Maybe "glomming" is a family word. What I meant is that an accumulation may start to build up. The whole way in which silicones work is by binding to the hair in a way that oils cannot do. Silicones are otherwise very much like oils. They can vary in viscosity from very thin oils, to waxlike consistency.
If you use excessive silicones and do not rinse thoroughly, what happens is that the accumulations can build up. And with the accumulations comes an increase in tangling, sort of as if you had little bits of chewing gum in your hair. I am purposely exaggerating here to make a point.
In most cases, though, silicones are used specifically to make tangling less of a problem. By coating the hair shaft with a lubricant, tangles come out easier.
Another thing mentioned sometimes as a negative for silicones is that when they are present, oils cannot reach the hair shaft.
Regarding alcohol, yes, removing oils is one of the goals of a good shampooing. You just have to make sure you don't overdo it. Here is a rule of thumb to get the right amount:
* If you get a rich lather, you are using too much.
* If you don't get any lather at all, you are not using enough.
The above rule applies to shampoos with lathering agents. There are some without lathering agents, but they are not very popular, because they don't feel like they're very effective, even when they are.
But once you shampoo, you remove the buildup on your hair of added silicones from the products, and the hair goes back to its previous, before-the-silicones-were-added state and is neither helped nor harmed by the silicones that were on it, correct?
Ah, but that's just the thing about silicones. It's adhesive properties exceed detergent's cleaning properties. This is precisely why silicones are used in all-in-one shampoos. It takes many washings to rid the hair of silicones, once applied.
This is a very generic statement, that probably is not true of many silicones, but I don't know how to distinguish one from the other.
So do they harm the hair, help the hair, or neither, after completely washed away?
The real situation depends upon your hair. Silicones facilitate detangling in some hair, like my own. Whether or not damage results from the silicone, more damage would result without it because of efforts to detangle the hair.
For those hair types that don't gain a detangling benefit from silicones, the potential damage is probably best avoided.
The debate on whether silicones are good or bad has been active ever since they started being used in all-in-ones and conditioners. I've never seen a definitive answer one way or the other, so what you see here is my own take.
Sorry to jump in on the Guy's board, I usually lurk here because I am growing out a really short haircut and find it helpful to read about men growing out their short cuts. But the silicone discussion caught my eye. It seems to be very controversial in long-hair circles. Some types of hair find it damaging because they seal the hair and do not allow moisture to penetrate. Persoanlly, I like a little silicone in my leave-in conditioner to facilitate detangling on my coarse, wavy hair; otherwise, I'd always be breaking it off when I detangle. But I also make sure to use a clarifying shampoo or rinse my hair with vinegar every couple of weeks...this seems to help get rid of any buildup that shampoo alone doesn't remove. One more note, clarifying shampoo is usually a bit harsher than most, so I use a deep conditioner (without silicone) after using it.
And BTW, cetyl alcohol is not the drying kind, in fact it helps retain moisture, so it is a good ingredient. It would take a chemist (which I am not!) to explain all the differences in kinds of alcohols, but don't worry about cetyl, it's okay to use on hair and skin.