Why Not To Panic Over Sulfates

Sulfates are detergents. They are known to strip the skin and make both your skin and hair dry, and are even potentially damaging. Yet there is one little detail that most people forget when searching for hair care products and in being so "sulfate-free" esque.

There are sulfates in everything. Literally. Well, almost everything. Pretty much everything that cleans or gets something sudsy is guaranteed to have a sulfate in it, and is most likely to casually touch your skin, unless otherwise stated. That means your clothes detergent, your body wash, your face wash, dish washing liquid, toothpaste...they all have sulfates. That's right, you could be ingesting sulfates through your toothpaste. While it may be better to go sulfate free for your hair as absolutely needed for yourself, it is not mandatory. Commonly speaking, the body seems to have become well adapted to sulfates over time, so the horrifying results of using sulfate hair care products, is simply, barely existent.

I mean really now, would you have switched to sulfate-free shampoos if it wasn't hyped up by the media? Probably not.

There are some that need sulfate free products for allergy, and other health purposes. There are those with European-esque hair types that need to wash every day or every other day, and might actually benefit from switching to sulfate free products. However, I for one do not really notice much of a difference when using sulfate-free hair products as opposed to regular drugstore or ethnic sulfate-laden shampoos. For example, when I started my natural hair journey using Cantu Shea Butter Cleansing Cream Shampoo, I truly did not notice a difference in my hair care or wash day. It still provided me with ample suds, and cleansed my hair. It still stung if it got into my eyes (I mean even more so than regular shampoo I've tried), and it still got my hair clean. Same with Shea Moisture and Cream of Nature; it still stung if it got into my eyes, and still got my hair clean.

Maybe my hair is more resilient to the 'badness' of those pesky sulfates, but honestly, I've just been using sulfate-free products because they are "supposed" to be better for hair. Have you fallen into the same trap? I feel that it is still important and should be noted on the bottle whether or not a shampoo is sulfate-free for those who are trying to stray away from them due to allergies or such, however I feel like sulfates deserve more tolerance, especially if that is all you can turn to in a pinch.

I do want to experiment with both long term use of non-sulfate shampoos and sulfate-based shampoos, and see what the big deal or difference is. I ended up using a sulfate based shampoo for a couple of weeks (about 4) because I recently switched locations and ended up forgetting my shampoo at my other place, so I had to run out and get what I could because wash day was calling me haha. Right now I do want to keep my hair mainly on the sulfate-free track it was previously on, and see how it goes. But I do want to experiment down the line and see just how much my hair can really handle of these "sulfates" and whether or not I need to make it as big a deal as everyone else does. 😂

Remember, it's all your preference.

*Not sponsored by any of these brands. Thank You.*

~Be Blessed, Be Curly, Be Cherished.