NEVER HAVE ANOTHER BAD HAIR DAY

A little quick education
So you will never have a bad hair day.

SHAMPOO’S

The characteristics of a good shampoo are fairly obvious. A shampoo should clean away the oil and dirt, rinses out easily, and leaves your hair shiny, manageable, and flexible. If you believe shampoo commercials, the right shampoo will also have good-looking strangers taking notice of your fabulous hair -- but let's not get carried away. Let's try for a goal that's more achievable -- clean, manageable hair.

First, the basics. To get oil out of your hair, you need to use soap or detergent. You know the old saying "oil and water don't mix." Oil and grease don't stick to water, which is why oil floats on water rather than mixing in. So washing your hair with water alone doesn't get out the oil and grease. Detergent and soap molecules have a dual nature: one end sticks to grease; the other end sticks to water.

When you wash your hair with detergent or soap, the grease sticks to the detergent or soap and washes away with the water.

Check out shampoo ingredients by looking at the labels. In most all of them you will find the first ingredient listed after water will be some kind of detergent. Since ingredients are listed in order of concentration, that means there is more detergent in shampoo than anything else except water.

You will find an exception with Caro. Caro uses a special cleaning agent as well as using a large concentration of Keratin Protein.

Read our Page Shampoo 101 for a further explanation.

Hair is made from keratin, a protein that is wound into a coil. The turns of the coil are held together by a type of chemical bond called a hydrogen bond. Hydrogen bonds break in the presence of water, allowing the coil to stretch and the hair to lengthen. The bonds re-form when the hair dries, which allows people to style their hair simply by wetting it, shaping it, then drying it. Or using a sculpting formula that causes the hair to expand.

Soap solutions are alkaline, which makes the cuticle cells swell up and get rougher. That leaves hair dull looking. In addition, soap may leave behind deposits of calcium and magnesium (known as soap scum), which will also make the hair dull.

Cleanse:

Is a clarifying shampoo (also known as an anti-residue shampoo) that has no conditioners at all. Such a shampoo cleans the hair and leaves nothing behind, stripping away any styling products that may have built up.

Bathe:

Is a specially formulated shampoo for use with chemical and color treated hair. This shampoo includes a special sunscreen to restrict fading along with other ingredients that reduce frizzing.

CONDITIONERS

How does conditioner -- whether it's in your shampoo or in a different bottle -- help you out? A conditioner leaves a smooth coating on the hair, strengthening the cuticle or forming a protective layer over the cortex where cuticule cells have broken away. Hair can tangle when the lifted edges of the cuticle layer on one hair get caught on the cuticle layer on another hair. By adding a coating that smoothes out these rough edges, conditioner helps keep your hair from tangling. This coating also helps reduce static electricity and seals moisture into your hair, keeping it from getting dry and brittle.

Should you use more conditioner on a Bad Hair day, assuming that it could only help? NO. It's possible to overdo a good thing. Hairdressers talk about "over-conditioning" your hair. That means you've used so much conditioner that the coated layers are weighing your hair down, making it limp and unmanageable.

What is hair anyway?

Each hair on your body grows from a hair follicle, a tiny, saclike hole in your skin. At the bottom of each follicle is a cluster of special cells that reproduce to make new hair cells. The new cells that are produced are added on at the root of the hair, causing the hair to grow longer.

A micrograph of a hair shaft (magnified 138 times). Note the layered cuticle on the shaft and the bulb at the bottom.

The living tissue that makes your hair grow is hidden inside the hair follicle. The shaft, the part of a hair that you see, is made of cells that aren't living anymore. That's important to know when you are messing with coloring or perming or straightening your hair. If you cut yourself, your skin can heal, since it's living tissue. If you damage your hair, it can't heal. You just have to do what little you can to repair the damage or cut the damaged hair off and wait for more hair to grow back.

Each hair shaft is made up of two or three layers: the cuticle, the cortex, and sometimes the medulla. The cuticle is the outermost layer. Made of flattened cells that overlap like the tiles on a terra-cotta roof, the cuticle protects the inside of the hair shaft from damage.

To feel the cuticle, just pinch a single long hair between your fingers starting up near the root. Pull the hair between your fingers and feel how slick and smooth it is. As you move from root to tip, you're running your fingers in the same direction as the cuticle layers. Now start at the tip of the hair. In this direction, the hair may feel rougher; it may squeak as it passes between your fingers. You're running your fingers against the grain, and you're bumping into the edges of all those flattened cuticle cells.

It's handy to know how different conditions affect this protective layer on the outside of each hair. Chemists talk about solutions that are acidic (like vinegar or lemon juice) and ones that are alkaline (like a mixture of water and baking soda). In an acid solution, the cuticle cells shrink and harden. In an alkaline solution, the cuticle cells swell up and soften.

You can check out the response of the cuticle to acidic and alkaline solutions. Try soaking one strand of hair in water and lemon juice and another in water and baking soda. Rinse both strands carefully. When they dry, the hair from the lemon juice bath will feel smoother and looked shinier. (Understanding the Science).

Underneath the cuticle is the cortex, which is made up of long proteins that twist like the curly cord on a telephone. Try stretching a hair and you'll find that it's elastic -- it stretches before it breaks. When you stretch a hair, you are straightening the coiled proteins in the cortex. When you release the hair, the proteins coil up again. The pigments that give your hair its natural color are tucked among these protein strands and protected from the elements by the translucent layer of cuticle cells.

When you get split ends, you're seeing the cortex at its worst. You've worn away the protective cuticle on the tips of your hairs with harsh treatment like hard brushing or too much sun and water. Without the cuticle, the fibers of the cortex fray like the strands of a rope. Since the cortex can't heal itself, the only way to get rid of split ends is to cut them off.

In the center of some hairs is the medulla, a soft, spongy mass of tissue. Coarse hair generally has this layer, while fine hair usually doesn't. The presence or absence of a medulla doesn't have much to do with how your hair behaves when you wash or color or curl it, however, so you don't have to worry about it.

Use a conditioner to fill the gaps between the protective cuticle cells and to keep your hair shiny and flexible, glands adjacent to the hair follicle produce a kind of natural hair conditioner called sebum. Unfortunately, that sebum, which is an oil, also makes dirt stick to your hair. When you shampoo your hair, you wash away this protective oil and the dirt that clings to it. This is where conditioners are used to re-moisturize and help mend the cuticle.

Our Replenish replaces fatty acids and proteins back in to the hair. We recommend using Replenish after every cleansing.

Caro conditioners do not contain wax fillers

Refer to Shampoo 101 to see our ingredients list.

The proper way to use a conditioner is quite important in hair management. After shampooing your hair towel dry your hair leaving it just a little moist. Apply conditioner, gently working through your hair to the ends for about 1 to 2 minutes. Rinse well with warm water and follow with cool water rinse.

For Perfect styling use our sculpting formula and to keep the frizzies away use our Smoothe & Shiny treatment, and your Italian friends will say your hair looks ("Caro").

How to Shampoo the Hair:

Wet the scalp and hair using warm or cool water (hot water can be drying to the hair and scalp). Apply a quarter sized amount of shampoo to palm and rub hands together to evenly distribute. Now apply shampoo to scalp by running the palms of the hands over your hair. Massage gently with your fingertips and then rinse thoroughly. It’s not necessary to repeat unless you have an oily scalp or have used some heavy duty hair pomade-like products.

After rinsing, apply some conditioner in one hand and rub palms together to evenly distribute. Apply conditioner from the middle of the hair shaft down to ends. Avoid the scalp unless scalp is dry. Comb conditioner through hair to distribute product evenly. Leave conditioner on hair for a few seconds to help smooth the cuticle. Rinse thoroughly. Some people believe a cold water rinse is best and will add shine to the hair.

Shampooing frequency for normal hair depends on whether hair is curly or straight. Straight hair should be washed every day for a sleek, radiant look. Curly hair, however, becomes too dry and fly away if it’s washed too often, so it is better to shampoo and condition every other day. At a minimum, hair should be washed twice a week.

Always leave your hair looking good by using Caro products. The Italians have been for years and now so can you.