Should we be taking notice of the amazing promises, the fancy titles and the colourful bottles? Well there’s one undeniable fact about shampoos that should be foremost in our decision making - they are all created to clean the hair - end of story. Shampoo is no more than a watered-down soap, which strips the oil that protects the hair because that oil (sebum) collects dirt and grease. Unfortunately, however, the vast majority of them strip more than just oil. More on that later.

But who cares! Hair is dead matter anyway. True. But just like the broken branch of a tree, it can be made to look a lot worse than it needs to. The good news is that the same broken branch can also look quite good if it is protected, managed and even spruced up with a bit of colour. Maybe Cleopatra had the key with what was likely a brew of oils, fragrances and vinegar? A brief look at shampoo history will soon reveal its evils, and hopefully the solution.

Until WWI, home-made soap was the preferred method of cleaning the hair. It was during the war that the Germans ran out of oil to make soap, so they developed synthetic detergents known as surfactants. The mother of them all, sulphate, was found to be incredibly effective as well as extremely cheap to produce. However, it wasn’t until WWII that these detergents started to be made into household products such as floor cleaners, dishwashing liquids, soaps and of course, shampoos.

The companies that created these must have thought they had struck gold. So cheap to make yet so effective - a licence to print money! Then suddenly, terms like “dermatitis”, “excessive dandruff”, “itchy scalp” started becoming part of the vernacular. Could baldness also be on the increase? I’ll leave that to the statisticians. Maybe foam, froth and bubble aren’t all they’re cracked up to be.

The truth is there is no such thing as a completely safe, natural or organic shampoo. Cleansing must produce some stripping which isn’t completely safe. Foaming and cleansing, such as what takes place when shampooing, does not occur naturally. And since it isn’t a natural phenomenon, then there is no way it can be organic.

The best we can hope for is “most safe, whilst still being effective”. Forget all the hoo-hah about shampoo for grey’s, blondes, dry, oily, pink, callithumpian etc. If you don’t believe me, check the ingredients on the back. You’ll find that most of them are exactly the same throughout - it’s just good old-fashioned marketing. And around 99% of them contain our old friend “sulphate”.

So how do you decide what is “most safe”? Well, since shampooing is about cleansing, which is not a perfectly safe act anyway, the key is working out what to avoid. The first no-no must be sulphate. Remember, it is only included because it foams up the best and is the cheapest - it makes a lot of companies a lot of money. You’ve probably noticed that most shampoos keep foaming even after it has well and truly done its cleaning job. We are led to believe that all this froth is working for us and that the shampoo must be working well. It is masked with synthetic conditioners which give you the illusion that your hair is soft and healthy. What is really happening is that it is continually stripping the hair, slowly dissolving it so that anyone with shoulder-length hair often has thin, split ends with much thicker roots. Meanwhile it is drying the scalp as well as damaging the skin. When was the last time you checked out your hairdresser’s hands? 

Shampoos should only froth until they have completed their cleansing, then turn into a milky water. For more information and a well balanced view regarding the dangers of sulphate, visit www.aubrey-organics.com/about/articles/shampoo.cfm. Other nasties such as parabens and propylene glycol should also be avoided.

This doesn’t leave many options as virtually everything in a salon or hairdressing supply store contains sulphates. What about the health stores? Nearly all of these products are free of sulphates and other nasties, but are generally quite weak and ineffective. They usually claim organic, which they cannot legally do, or they claim “organic ingredients”. All that is happening here is that they throw in a couple of organic extracts, usually less than 1%, that do nothing for the hair in order to be able to make the organic claim. Again - it’s all marketing. And if these products were effective enough, wouldn’t the salons be selling them?

This doesn’t leave many options, but there are a couple that have “crossed over” from health to salon grade. In Australia, I have only found 3 that satisfy the “safe yet effective” standard. Mastey Sulfate-Free Shampoo has been around for a while. It is American and generally retails around $17 for 225 ml. It is a little expensive and has the tendency to go gluggy after a while.

Karpati Sulphate-Free Shampoo is an Australian Made product that has now been around for over 12months. It has a nice fragrance and is effective as long you use a little more than you would a normal shampoo. One of the most exciting releases is the Karpati Natural Hair Care Sulphate-Free Shampoo which came on the market in September 2006.

Whether these would have met Cleopatra’s satisfaction, however, we will never know. What we do know is that there will be more shampoos and more choice as the years go on. I hope that this article has helped to cut through the marketing jungle and remind us of what it is we are really trying to achieve - a healthy, clean head of hair.