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With shelves and shelves of hair styling products within your reach every time you go to the store looking for a simple shampoo, as well as myriad Amazon products that make huge claims when it comes to hair care, it’s hard to tell which hair products are worth your time and investment and which are not. But there’s one type of product you should always keep far away from your hair — and it’s one that hair stylists agree can be so damaging that it can actually cause hair shedding. This is the popular hair styling product no one should be buying anymore because it can cause hair loss.
Silicone-Based Products
In order to protect your hair and prevent hair shedding and other damage caused by certain hair products, it’s important to read the ingredients labels on those products. And when you start paying more attention to all of the various ingredients in them, you might find one that’s a total red flag: silicone.
“I find that hair products with a silicone base, and heavy in PEGs clogs the hair pores which prevents oxygen from getting into the scalp,” says Hair Expert Holly Dear at House of Dear Hair Salon in Dallas. “Oxygen helps with blood circulation which keeps the hair growth patterns balanced. When hair growth patterns are off balance we will get into the shedding phase longer than the staying in or growing phases. A good baseline is to avoid products if the ingredient list has a PEG followed by a number.”
And when you are using spray hair products like hairspray, one mistake that stylists see people making is spraying the roots of the hair to create volume. “Never do that — the product can get inside the hair follicles and cause huge damage,” says Ghanima Abdullah, a cosmetologist and hair expert at TheRightHairstyles.com. “Holding the can too close is the second biggest mistake I’ve seen.”
If you really find yourself with no choice other than to use a silicone-based hairspray or other hair product, Dear recommends using these products on mineshaft to end and to stay away from applying them to your scalp. Swapping sprays for non-silicone mousse product that will give lift and volume is a gentler way of styling your hair, according to Abdullah.
At the end of the day, the most vital step to remember in your haircare routine is to thoroughly wash all product residue from your scalp. In fact one of the biggest mistakes Dear says she sees is clients completely ignoring their scalps. “Your scalp will tell you where imbalances come from and what causes them to be clogged,” Dear says. “Your scalp will either get too oily or dry and flaky. These types of products create the shedding when applied consistently over and over onto the scalp and smothering the pores.”
Using a clarifying shampoo once every few weeks is another great idea to help remove buildup and keep your scalp and pores healthy and clean.
