How to combat thinning hair
It was during a conversation with Gail Federici that we got on to the topic of hair thinning. If you don’t know who Federici is, you’ll certainly know the products she has helped develop over her 30-year career: John Frieda’s bestselling Frizz Ease, and the game-changing Root Touch Up by Color Wow (a brand she founded), a waterproof powder for covering grey roots. All the products she develops are results-driven, which got us on to the subject of hair thinning in women — experienced by 40 to 50 per cent of women according to research.
“When I was creating our range of shampoos for Color Wow, I couldn’t understand why the hair always looked so dull after the first day of washing,” says Federici. “When we looked at the ingredients list, it was very standard — there were some conditioning agents, pearlizing agents, waxes and polymers — all very normal for shampoos. But when we looked closer at the scalp, the silicones and polymers had left a deposit that were blocking the follicles.”
The silicones and polymers caused the hair to look dull because it created a film around the hair shaft. But as she and a research team at the University of Miami discovered, they were also blocking new hair from growing. This would lead to the hair thinning over time.
“To prove our theory that shampoos were depositing waxes and polymers on the scalp, we conducted a study,” says Joe Cincotta, a cosmetic chemist who works with Federici. “Working with a group of women, we washed half of their head with a shampoo that was just designed to clean. Nothing else. On the other side, they used a conditioning shampoo. The study took microscopic pictures of the scalp where the hair emerged from the scalp, and it showed buildup and a physical block around the follicle.”
Antonella Tosti, professor of clinical dermatology at the University of Miami who oversaw the study, noticed that hair washed with shampoo containing silicone and conditioning and pearlizing agents left “whitish deposits encircling the shaft and on the scalp at the hair emergence. Deposits were still present even after washing three days later, and even more so six days later.”
The research found that any shampoo that claimed to perform an action other than just to simply clean (say, to create more volume), was likely to have other ingredients that would deposit product on the scalp during the cleansing process, and therefore have a damaging effect.
“If you look at the hair growth cycle, the growing stage can be three to seven years, depending on your genetics,” says Cincotta. “The hair that is growing has already emerged from the scalp. It could take a few years until that hair falls out and leaves an opening, so this is the point that hair thinning occurs; the new, soft hair can’t push through the buildup on the scalp. This damage is sometimes irreversible.”
Federici advises using a gentle cleansing shampoo designed to remove salt, sebum and dirt. But, as she stresses, this isn’t an attack on silicones and conditioning agents. “These are fine ingredients to use,” she says, “as long as they are just used in conditioners and styling products. Not in shampoos that will sit on the scalp.”
Other brands are also moving toward proper cleansing of the scalp. Redken’s Clean Maniac Micellar Shampoo is silicone and sulphate free, leaving the scalp free of sebum and product buildup. In January, Aveda will launch an advanced version of its award-winning Invati range, their solution to thinning hair.