Lately, there is much more talk about compounds of hair cosmetics, which we usually tended to not notice. We analyse, what ingredients are in, e.g. shampoos or conditioners. However, sometimes composition doesn’t tell us much and about some of ingredients we hear conflicting opinions. Such ingredients are silicones. Are silicones really harmful to the hair? Should we avoid products with silicones?
Colourless and fragrance-free silicones are very often in composition of popular cosmetics for hair care, like shampoos, conditioners and stylisation products. They are made out of quartz and silicon and there main job is to smoother hair. Shrouded with bad notoriety silicones have equally pros and cons. It is worth to know a little bit more about them.
How does silicones work? All substances of this type in cosmetics create on hair protective layer, which causes cuticles to seal, so it smoothers hair and give them softness. Hair washed with e.g. shampoo with silicon makes brushing easier, makes hair more resilient to mechanical damages or those caused by stylisation with hot air. Silicon also protects against harmful influence of UV radiation.
So why are silicones consider to be dangerous to hair? As long as preparation with silicon makes hair look much healthier and they appear to be more beautiful insofar silicones work only superficially and don’t influence hair condition in any way. That is why you shouldn’t overuse silicones, because brief effect of silky smooth hair isn’t worth weighting them down. You should also remember that protective silicon film has also its flaws – it doesn’t allow for nourishing ingredients to absorb in hair structure.
Major flaw of silicones is fact that most of them don’t resolve in water, so it is hard to remove them of hair. You need to remember, that when you use cosmetics with silicones then from time to time you have to make cleansing treatment with e.g. strongly cleansing shampoo and scalp scrub. This way we will avoid lingering silicon and weighting down hair. Silicones aren’t recommended for fine, weak and fragile hair.
