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When you have natural hair, reading product labels should be a top priority. Curly hair has requirements, and our scalp’s sebum has a difficult time traveling down the length of the strand because of the tiny coils. As a result, natural hair quickly becomes drier, more brittle, and susceptible to breakage.

As you probably know, most hair products on the market are geared toward straight-haired people, and their goal is to cleanse the hair by stripping away oil and dirt. While these types of products are fine for straight hair, they’re damaging to curls.

You can find less harmful products for your kinks, but it takes skill and determination to plow through product labels and choose the right cleansers and moisturizers.

In this post, we’ll discuss a few problems with current product labeling, and offer solutions for buying better products for your natural hair.

Beware of Clever Marketing

Words like natural and organic often mean nothing when it comes to buying beauty products. Having a drop of a natural or organic ingredient is all that’s required. But what about the other ingredients?

For instance, placing several drops of tea tree oil in a bottle means manufacturers can technically call it “Tea Tree Shampoo”, or write “infused with natural tea tree” on the label, but it doesn’t mean the rest of the ingredients are good for your hair.

And this is where the confusion happens. It’s very easy to believe what you see on the front label without ever turning the product around to study the ingredients.

Reading through the list is crucial to maintaining healthier natural hair. Below, you’ll find details on specific ingredients to avoid.

Check the Ingredients Order on Product Labels

The one rule that manufacturers must follow is to order the ingredients by weight on the label. Looking at the ingredients order on the list can help you determine how much harm or good a product might do.

Use caution if you find something harmful in the first five components on the list. It could mean a higher concentration of toxic chemicals which can ultimately hurt your natural curls and scalp.

Likewise, a beneficial ingredient placed too far down the list may not have the fantastic results you’d hoped for.  Many manufacturers put just a tiny drop of the ingredient so they proudly boast about on the front or in ads. This is called making “Label Claim” formulas.

What Ingredients Should You Avoid with Natural Hair?

Certain ingredients are known to cause dryness to natural hair. Most of these ingredients are not incredibly toxic to the human body, but they don’t belong on natural hair. Here is a list of a few of the worst offenders:

• Conventional products use harsh lathering agents to cleanse the hair because they’re cheap and they solve the main concern of eliminating oil and dirt. However, products containing sulfates hurt natural hair by stripping away natural oils that were meant to guard the shaft from damage.

The two most widely-used sulfates are sodium lauryl sulfate and sodium laureth sulfate. Steer clear of these when you purchase your hair care products.

• Manufacturers and consumers alike have a long tradition of using petroleum in the hair. Known formerly as simply “grease”, petroleum helped millions of people to add shine to their tresses. Hair even looks lustrous and healthy when you first apply it.

The problem is, the substance is difficult to remove from the hair strand. The same coating that offered luster and protection is now hurting the strands because water can no longer enter the cuticles to hydrate the shaft. The effect of petrolatum can be seen weeks later as the hair shaft goes without hydration.

Petrolatum is also known as petroleum and mineral oil. Be sure to avoid products with petrolatum if you’re concerned about keeping your hair soft and hydrated.

• Understanding alcohols can be tricky. Some are good for hair, some are neutral, and others cause dryness to the hair and the scalp. Bad alcohols are typically short-chained and drying, while good alcohols are usually fatty and long-chained.

The good ones help to gloss the strand, add slip, and smooth down cuticles. Neutral alcohols do not affect the texture or appearance of hair. Here is a breakdown of bad, good, and neutral alcohols:

Bad Alcohols for Hair:

SD Alcohol 40

Denatured Alcohol

Ethanol

Isopropyl Alcohol

Neutral Alcohols for Hair:

Benzyl Alcohol

Propylene Glycol

Good Alcohols for Hair:

Lauryl Alcohol

Cetyl Alcohol

Myristyl Alcohol

Stearyl Alcohol

Cetearyl Alcohol

Behenyl Alcohol

Formaldehyde. Oddly enough, it’s common to use formaldehyde in beauty products to slow bacteria growth. It is a highly toxic ingredient known to cause joint pain, headaches, chest pain, heart palpitations, and uterine fibroids. The ingredient is mostly found in straightening products, including chemical relaxers and keratin treatments.

Formaldehyde also goes under the guise of methylene glycol and methylene oxide.

An easy way to steer clear of harmful ingredients in your products is by using the Environmental Working Group’s (EWG) Skin Deep Database. They’ve rated thousands of products from 1 to 10 on a scale of least and most hazardous ingredients.

Steering clear of damaging ingredients in natural hair care products can be very challenging at first, but it gets easier as you become more familiar with what to look for.

At Nutress Hair, we believe in giving you the best quality ingredients at a fraction of the cost of other natural hair care products. Try the Hair Transitioning Kit to test the products on your curls.

It’s important to experiment and see what works for your hair. Maybe you find that an ingredient that your favorite YouTuber adores is no good for your tresses. Everyone is different, so do your hair a big favor by trying different things and choosing something that works well for your mane.

What about you? Which ingredients do you love or hate for your natural hair?