Welcome!

I thought it might be fun to start up a blog as a dumping ground for all the curiosity I have about hair care, hair science, allergies, recipes for hair care products and skin and such. I'm a scientist, although not in the cosmetics field, similar concepts do apply!

Fire away if you have any questions you want answered and I'll do my best to answer them and refer you to a good source if I can.

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UV Protectant Hair Ingredients and Products

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UV protectants are ideal for active people, for going to the beach where sand and water amplify UV radiation, and especially helpful for gray hair which tends to discolor (usually turning yellowish) in sunlight. Any hair benefits from UV protection because direct sunlight increases hair's porosity. Sunlight tends to make your hair's cuticles shrink and fuse together - like "shrinky dinks" or similar to what happens to hard plastic placed in a hot oven. That means tiny pores are opened up where the cuticle used to cover the hair. This takes only 200 hours in the sun - half an hour a day for just over a year. Brown to black hair tends to fade both lighter and reddish in the sun and blonde hair and red hair lose color. Highlighted hair tends to become "brassy" and gray/white hair can turn yellowish as well. One may not blog about summer and sunshine without invoking a beach scene. Here you go. The Ingredients: These are all UV light absorbers - the word "p...
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Mysteries of Hydrolyzed Proteins

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Updated: October 2017 I have been researching various proteins used in hair products. Claims that this or that protein are high or low molecular weight and therefore good for this or that fell short of an adequate explanation. And some people can use one type of protein, but not another. Some proteins are lauded as being good for certain hair concerns. Okay, why? The weight of the protein does play a role, and it makes sense if you compare proteins. I converted all weights to the unit “Daltons.” Smaller numbers are easier to deal with, reducing them to Kilodaltons gave some numbers which seemed a bit misleading. Hydrolyzed Protein Source Weight in Daltons   ©Science-y Hair Blog 2017 Amino Acids Less than 200 (usually) Human hair keratin 400 Silk 300-1000 Avocado 300-1200 Keratin 300-3000 Hazelnut 500-1000 Wheat (low molecular weight) 1000-1500 Collagen 1000-10,000 (depends ...
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Humidity-Resistant Hair Styling Products

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Updated: May 2018. It's the unofficial start of summer this weekend in the Northern Hemisphere. For a lot of us, that means humid weather and frizzy hair - whether the dewpoint is high (above 50°F/10°C) or it's foggy, dewy or rainy. Raindrops on a Monarda leaf. In the last decade or so, the creative folks who make cosmetics ingredients have developed ingredients that withstand high humidity better than some of the older ingredients for providing "hold." They are slowly working their way into products in a variety of brands. These ingredients are polymers - film-forming, even hold-providing. The performance of the product as a whole is the sum of its parts - so you do want to look for these ingredients if you really need to keep your hair together in high humidity - but keep in mind that just because they're in a product doesn't mean the product will suit your hair or your hairstyle. What is humidity-resistance?  It means a product is less likely to lose it...
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