by Nicole Harmon of HairLiberty.org

Shampooing is an essential part of a healthy hair regimen. It can either set the stage for moisturized, detangled hair, or lead to breakage and tangling. Check out Nicole’s 6 do’s and dont’s and her recommended shampoos.

1. Do start by rinsing your hair with warm water for about 3 minutes. The extra rinsing time will loosen up product residue so you can use less shampoo.

2. Don’t comb your hair while you shampoo. Stretching and pulling creates unnecessary stress on your strands. Save detangling for when the conditioner is in.

3. Do choose a shampoo that contains gentle ingredients if you prefer to wash your hair multiple times per week due to frequent exercise or an oily scalp.

4. Don’t pile hair on top of your head. Apply the shampoo by smoothing it in a downward motion.

5. Don’t underestimate the power of a high-quality shampoo; it can make all the difference.

6. Do shampoo your hair at least once a week. The health of your scalp determines how fast your hair grows. A healthy scalp is clean, flake-free and not itchy.

Recommended Shampoos

All of the shampoos recommended below are sulfate-free and safe for color-treated hair.

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via The Beauty Brains

Reylena asks…Talking with my hairdresser she suggested that I use Oribe products which they sold at the salon. I told her that I was very well pleased switching off between my Aveeno and Garnier products, and asked her what was so special about this Oribe line of hair care that justified the price outside of smell and a pretty bottle. To this she told me that Oribe products are made with premuim grades of basic ingredients such as sulfates and silicone. And that the cones in drugstore products where made with cheaper, inferior, weaker silicone and sulfates. While I understand that their are different types of cones, and i’m sure that they all work a little different. However always I thought that good old Dimethicone would be the same bought in bulk by any company, for any product. Or are there truly different grades of quality?

The Right Brain responds:

This question comes from a discussion in our Forum where Reylena commented that her stylist “looked like I punched her in the face when I told her I use drug store brands.” Thanks for making me smile, Rey.

Higher cost does not mean higher quality…
As you suspected, your stylist is a bit misinformed. As we’ve explained before, stylists are often at the mercy of whatever they’re told by the salon companies which is often inaccurate, to say the least. In this particular case, it is NOT true that salon products buy higher quality grades of cosmetic ingredients than companies that make retail products.  Having spent over 40 years in the beautyindustry, we’ve worked with all the major suppliers of cosmetic raw materials and we can assure you that there is not a two-tiered pricing structure for retail and salon.

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By Fran of HeyFranHey.com

Price – 8.5 oz for $22

Retail Locations – ULTA, Sephora, Amazon.com

Ingredients – Water, Tocopheryl Acetate, Retinyl Palmitate, Panthenol (Provitamin B5), Chamomilla Recutita (Matricaria) Extract, Actinidia Chinensis (Kiwi) Fruit Extract, Lawsonia Inermis (Henna) Leaf Extract, Wheat Amino Acids, Hydrolyzed Wheat Protein/PVP Crosspolymer, Propylene Glycol, PEG-60 Almond Glycerides, PEG-12 Dimethicone, Dimethicone, Polyquaternium-28, Glycerin, PPG-26-Buteth-25, PEG-40 Hydrogenated Castor Oil, PVP/DMAPA Acrylates Copolymer, Hydroxyethylcellulose, Methylparaben, Propylparaben, DMDM Hydantoin, Fragrance.

Claims – “Controls frizz in all climates”

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By Jc of The Natural Haven Bloom
I recently discussed the key role of SLS. It can clean oil off hair by causing the oil to dissolve in water. This oil film on hair is the main source of dirt. The oil film that surrounds the hair allows dust, fluff, lint, smoke particles, dead cells etc to stay attached to hair. Getting rid of this oil film is the principle function of SLS.

The next question is does SLS break hair?
Breaking hair is not quite the right term. When hair is washed even with plain water, some protein will be found in the water. This may in part come from breakage but it may also result from normal wear of hair (i.e part of the cuticle is already weak and then falls off).

How do we know that protein comes off when hair is washed?
The simplest test is to place some hair in a container of water and shake it around. After a few hours, the hair is removed and the water is tested to see how much protein came off the hair.

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By Toni Parker of Cush Cosmetics

While perusing  YouTube, I recently discovered many videos featuring women using miconazole nitrate, to grow their hair.  Miconazole nitrate is the active ingredient in the Monistat family of products that are used to treat vaginal yeast infections.

My first thought was hmmm…this must be a joke. However, as I continued to explore Youtube, there were a great number of women, both black and white, making the claim that miconazole nitrate really did grow their hair.  But the most intriguing aspect of the videos was the fact that all of them kept a straight face-smiling only when they referred to their miracle cream as “coochie or cooty cream.”  Yep! They knew it was for that area and they still wanted to put it on their scalp, which really got my attention.

So, in keeping with my curious nature, I decided to ask the chemist (my husband Joe) to write an article explaining how miconazole nitrate can make the hair on your head grow. Unfortunately, he decided to become the consummate gentleman, and blushingly declined the offer. He reasoned that he was not a medical doctor and preferred to let those trained in that area of medicine address that delicate topic.

So I reasoned that since I was a Certified Holistic Health Coach, it was well within my expertise to dig a little deeper on this subject, and here is what I found.

All About Miconazole Nitrate

Miconazole Nitrate is an antifungal agent that is used to treat yeast infections, oral thrush in babies, athlete’s foot, ringworms, jock itch, and angular chelitis-basically it is used topically and orally on any moist area where fungus or yeast tends to grow.  OK, so I get that it treats fungus that grows in moist areas, but how on earth does that transfer over to increased hair growth on your scalp?

The Science of Why it Works

Well, I wasn’t the only one curious about the science behind how an anti-fungal agent could actually make your hair grow.  The idea of using monistat products for hair growth was so popular that it also peaked the interest of Myfox Houston, a local news station for Houston, Texas. In January of this year, they released their own news clip video to explore the topic.

Myfox Houston consulted Dr. Mohsin Mir, a medical dermatologist at Baylor College of Medicine, to weigh in on how miconazole nitrate actually increases hair growth.

Dr. Mir says that hormones in the hair follicles actually bond to receptors that cause hair loss in men and women.  He theorized that miconazole nitrate might actually reduce the number of those “hair loss” receptors, which would consequently, increase hair growth.

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