Choosing the right shampoo can be a daunting task, especially when dealing with tangled hair. Mielle's Detangling Shampoo aims to solve this problem, but what exactly is in it? This article provides a comprehensive review of the ingredients, shedding light on their functions and potential benefits.
The most abundant ingredient in most cosmetic products, including Mielle's Detangling Shampoo, is water, listed as Aqua/Water/Eau. This isn't just any water; it's purified and deionized (meaning that almost all of the mineral ions inside it is removed) to ensure its purity and compatibility with other ingredients. Water acts as a solvent, dissolving and carrying other ingredients throughout the formula.
Several cleansing agents, also known as surfactants, are responsible for removing dirt and oil from the hair. These ingredients create lather and help to lift impurities, but their properties can vary significantly.
A versatile and biodegradable cleansing agent with high cleaning power and strong foaming properties. Unfortunately, these two properties for a surfactant usually mean that it is harsh on the skin, which is the case here as well. Super common ingredient in all kinds of cleansing products: face and body washes, shampoos and foam baths.
Cocamidopropyl Betaine is great at stabilizing bubbles. The other reason is that it’s mild and works very well combined with other cleansing agents and surfactants. A mild cleansing agent with amphoteric structure meaning that its head contains both a positively and a negatively charged part (surfactants are most commonly anionic meaning their head has a negative charge).
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A cleansing agent that's popular in "syndet bars" (soapless soaps) for its good foaming properties.
Fragrance is a common ingredient in cosmetic products, added to provide a pleasant scent. If you are someone who likes to know what you put on your face then fragrance is not your best friend - there's no way to know what’s really in it. Also, if your skin is sensitive, fragrance is again not your best friend. It’s the number one cause of contact allergy to cosmetics. It’s definitely a smart thing to avoid with sensitive skin (and fragrance of any type - natural is just as allergic as synthetic, if not worse!).
Honey is just as lovely on the skin as it is in the tea. The great review article about honey in the Journal of Cosmetic Dermatology writes that it is arguably the oldest skincare ingredient and evidence from around 4500 BC mentions honey in some eye cream recipes. Chemically speaking, it is a bee-derived, supersaturated sugar solution. About 95% of honey dry weight is sugar and the other 5% consists of a great number of other minor components including proteins, amino acids, vitamins, enzymes, and minerals. This unique and complex chemical composition gives honey a bunch of nice skin care properties: it is very moisturizing, has soothing and antioxidant abilities as well as significant antibacterial and antifungal magic powers. There is also a lot of empirical evidence with emerging scientific backup that honey dressing promotes the healing of wounds and burns. One tricky thing about honey though, is that it can have lots of different floral sources and different types of honey have a somewhat different composition and thus somewhat different properties. For example, the darker the honey the richer it is in antioxidant phenolic compounds. Two special types of honey are acacia and manuka. The former is unique and popular because of its higher than usual fructose content that makes it more water-soluble and easier to stabilize in cosmetic formulas.
An easy-to-formulate, commonly used, nice to have ingredient that’s also called pro-vitamin B5. Its main job in skincare products is to moisturise the skin. It’s a humectant meaning that it can help the skin to attract water and then hold onto it. Another great thing about panthenol is that it has anti-inflammatory and skin protecting abilities. A study shows that it can reduce the irritation caused by less-nice other ingredients (e.g. If that wasn’t enough panthenol is also useful in nail and hair care products. As for the hair the hydration effect is also true there.
A chemically chopped up version of wheat protein that consists mainly of amino acids (the building blocks), peptides (a couple of amino acids together), and proteins (lots of amino acids together). It has moisturizing and film-forming properties and might be able to counteract the irritating effects of cleansing agents in cleansers and shampoos. It can also condition and repair damaged hair leaving it soft, silky and smooth.
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The emollient plant oil coming from the seeds of Pomegranate. The red fruit has lots of seeds (100-200 per fruit), but 7 kg of them are needed for 1 kg of oil. Among the many similar plant oils, Pomegranate oil is a really unique one, as its main fatty acid (60%) is a rare one called punic acid, a so-called conjugated fatty acid with three double bonds. It also contains the common linoleic (2-10%) and oleic acids (3-12%), but only in small amounts. Punic acid is thought to be a biologically active compound, a powerful anti-inflammatory, and antioxidant agent. The oil itself is also claimed to have strong antioxidant properties as well as having excellent nourishing and moisturizing abilities.
Sodium chloride is the fancy name of salt. If (similar to us) you are in the weird habit of reading the label on your shower gel while taking a shower, you might have noticed that sodium chloride is almost always on the ingredient list. The reason for this is that salt acts as a fantastic thickener in cleansing formulas created with ionic cleansing agents (aka surfactants) such as Sodium Laureth Sulfate. A couple of percents (typically 1-3%) turns a runny surfactant solution into a nice gel texture. If you are into chemistry (if not, we understand, just skip this paragraph), the reason is that electrolytes (you know, the Na+ and Cl- ions) screen the electrostatic repulsion between the head groups of ionic surfactants and thus support the formation of long shaped micelles (instead of spherical ones) that entangle like spaghetti, and viola, a gel is formed. Other than that, salt also works as an emulsion stabilizer in water-in-oil emulsions, that is when water droplets are dispersed in the outer oil (or silicone) phase.
Citric acid comes from citrus fruits and is an AHA. But according to a comparative study done in 1995, citric acid has less skin improving magic properties than glycolic or lactic acid.
It’s pretty much the current IT-preservative. It’s safe and gentle, but even more importantly, it’s not a feared-by-everyone-mostly-without-scientific-reason paraben. It’s not something new: it was introduced around 1950 and today it can be used up to 1% worldwide. It can be found in nature - in green tea - but the version used in cosmetics is synthetic. Other than having a good safety profile and being quite gentle to the skin it has some other advantages too.
An Ecocert-approved, natural preservative that counts as gentle and non-irritating to the skin. Usually, it comes to the formula as part of a preservative blend as it's not enough on its own.If you have spotted ethylhexylglycerin on the ingredient list, most probably you will see there also the current IT-preservative, phenoxyethanol.
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