16 Shampoo Facts (Incl. Why There's Silicone In Your Shampoo!) - mental_floss - List Show (302)

Hi, I'm Craig. Shampoo has come a long way since 1882. Back then, one of the leading shampoos, Slideall Soap, billed itself as the soap for all uses

And boy, did it stretch that claim. Not only was it marketed as a cleaner for hair and body, but the ads also suggested using it to clean your toilet, laundry, kitchen counters, babies, dogs, harnesses, carriages, and both natural and artificial teeth

And that's just the first of many flaky facts the scientists at Head & Shoulders are helping us clear up. I hope I don't moose this up

This is going to be bun. I mean fun. Because your hair's in a bun. You know what I'm talking about

Shampoos have become way gentler since the 1800s, and the formulas have gotten smarter

in the 125 years since then, but why do people even shampoo in the first place

One of the reasons we need the lathery goop is that human scalps are basically waterproof

Glands underneath our skin manufacture sebum, an oily substance that coats hair follicles

In the process, sebum makes hair clump together and appear greasy. But because sebum is so good at waterproofing the hair shafts, a phrase I never thought

I'd say, a mere shower or bath won't do much in the way of actually cleansing the scalp

To get past those waterproofed hair shafts, shampoos contain two-faced chemical compounds

called surfactants. Half of each surfactant wants to dissolve in water, and the other half wants nothing

to do with H2O. When hair meets water that is interacted with surfactants it creates a party where everyone invited including sebum dirt grime Gary from down the hall That what the lather is there for Not only does it make your head feel like a root beer float it washes away clean taking all the gunk and previously non matter with it

In 1908, New York's biggest papers started publishing columns on how to shampoo the hair

That's because most people in the world didn't know how to shampoo their hair. So that was good of them, giving the people what they need

That's what the media always does. Always. The piece suggested washing your hair once every two weeks instead of the more common

practice of once every six weeks. Of course, bathing itself wasn't that popular in history, partially because everyone wanted

to act royal, and kings and queens hated taking baths. Louis XIII liked to brag, I take after my father, I smell of armpits

Henry VIII could literally be smelled from three rooms away, and Queen Elizabeth I proudly

declared that she took a bath once a month, whether she needed to or not

We're guessing she needed to. How many times a week should you be shampooing? According to experts, two or three times a week is a good rule of thumb

You should also clean your thumb, according to me. Of course, certain conditions demand more or less shampoo

If you've got Malasasiac lobosa up there, the scalp fungus that causes dandruff, you

might need to scale it up to keep them flakes under control. Ever wonder why there's silicone in your dandruff shampoo

Polymers like silicone are added to all sorts of shampoos to safely recoat the hair cuticles after they've been cleaned

The coating smooths them down and adds a lubricating and protective sheath to keep your hair feeling healthy

Shampoos also get fancy with their polymers. Some add volume or weight or increase the shine and feel, while others protect from things

like UV rays. But in essence they all work like waterproofing sealant on a deck But don host barbecues on your hair Ok yowza Ever wonder how astronauts wash their hair in space NASA gives them a rinseless shampoo that you simply apply and towel dry But the no fuss shampoo wasn created in a NASA lab

It was originally developed for hospital patients who couldn't take showers. That's not the only shampoo technology invented for the sick. To reduce the burden on nurses

and care workers, Japanese scientists developed a shampoo robot in 2011. The gadget scans

the scalp, determines how best to apply pressure to your head, and then works the suds through

with its eight magical fingers. That's awesome. It's easy to overlook how much testing goes into many shampoos

According to one scientist, the tools in her lab include a controlled humidity room to

yze whether a new formula will make her hair frizz up, a fragrance center to experiment

with how scents are released with water, a special comb that measures the force it takes

to detangle freshly shampooed wet locks, a friction apparatus that simulates what people

feel when they play with the tips of their hair, and a lathering center to determine just how many suds your perfectly calibrated shampoo should have

The shampoo you get in the US is probably a little different from the same stuff you get in other countries. Shampoo makers adjust their formulas because water quality fluctuates

depending on where you live. Hard water, for example, has higher mineral and deposit content

that can overwhelm a surfactant. So other chemicals have to be added to the shampoo to counteract

the ions that make the surfactants ineffective. Since the 1960s, scientists have been fascinated

with shampoo's fluid dynamics. It was those crazy freewheeling fluid dynamics 60s. Like

Like many fluids shampoo coils up as you pour it onto the surface and the liquid slowly moves downward But then every once in a while the shampoo stream will bounce up like a rubber ball Boing That uncanny behavior is called the Kay effect and it took scientists about 40 years to explain

the mechanism. You want another strange and wonderful thing about shampoos? Because shampoos

are good at breaking down body oils, putting a dab on the inside of your shirt collar can

help clear away your greasy collar stains. Recently American scientists discovered that

by using a tweaked shampoo recipe on old wooly mammoth hair, they could remove the extraneous

bacteria from the strands and get clean DNA samples. The discovery has helped them to declare a new species of woolly mammoth and they're

eager to try the shampoo on other museum animals. I mean, I've been doing that for years, but I got kicked out

I discovered some stuff. I'm not going to tell you about it though. Finally I return to the salon to tell you that baby shampoos are just shampoos that

use milder surfactants and don't have special polymers or moisturizing agents as a matter

of surfact. Baby glands create sebum at a much lower pace than adults so their hair is less oily and greasy

widdle babies who have no say in what their parents put in their hair. So the joke's on them

Ha! You got no options, kid