Good hair day: wide range of innovative hair ingredients

Our hair says so much about us. Actors can completely transform themselves by simply putting on a wig. Run-aways will cut their hair and dye it in order to escape detection. Research shows that the fastest way to look younger and impress friends is to re-style your hair. Celebrities and politicians know the effects of changing their appearance. “If I want to knock a story off the front page, I just change my hairstyle.” said Hillary Rodham Clinton. “There’s a reason why forty, fifty, and sixty don’t look the way they used to, and it’s not because of feminism, or better living through exercise. It’s because of hair dye. In the 1950s only 7 per cent of American women dyed their hair; today there are parts of Manhattan and Los Angeles where there are no grey-haired women at all,” said Nora Ephron, (the American film director, producer, screenwriter, and novelist). In this article, I am going to discuss some of the latest materials available to formulators to make those ‘must have’ products that ensure people with ethnic to Asian hair have ‘good hair days’.

Asian hair to ethnic hair

Asian hair and ethnic hair represent the two extremes of the many different types of hair. Asian hair type is straight, black and very sleek, but obviously Asian people can have any of the other hair types. Ethnic hair is special. The natural texture of black African hair is mainly due to the unique shape of the hair strands and how sebum distributes itself along each hair strand. In general, natural black African hair appears matte and tends to be brittle. When looked at in detail, strands of black African hair are finer and in cross-section, they appear flatter than strands of Asian straight hair. Flatter strands naturally twist and the twists combine into ringlets with diameters of only a few millimetres. When taken together, the twisted hair strands form a denser looking head of hair, despite actually coming from fewer hair follicles. Close inspection shows some of the hair is in ‘torsion twists’, with the hair strands turning around and twisting back. Some Asian hair can also be thin and brittle while remaining straight. Thick Asian hair, which can be heavy and lank when long is perfect for short styles that stick out. The most popular hair products for ethnic hair help to detangle, cleanse, protect and strengthen. Ethnic hair benefits from deep conditioning and so it is not surprising to see that leave-on conditioners have become the corner stone of ethnic hair management. Many people strive to achieve straight, black and very sleek hair associated with Asian hair. This fashion has driven some of the more controversial products such as the Brazilian formaldehyde-based hair straightener, now banned in many countries.