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 Dr. Lee is the founder and owner of Regrowth LLC, a company based in Los Angeles and dedicated to the treatment of hair loss. He has been developing innovative products and treating hair loss sufferers for the past 16 years. Dr. Lee is the creator of the Xandrox line of hair loss treatments.
Important Note: Due a busy schedule, Dr. Lee cannot answer any new questions at this time; however, he will be providing high quality answers to questions he receives from his own practice exclusively to Morphollica.com regularly
anonymous
2005-12-03
pH balanced shampoo
What is meant by a ‘pH balanced shampoo’?
pH is the chemical designation for the amount of hydrogen ions present in a substance and the degree of concentration of the hydrogen ions determines how acidic or how alkaline the substance is. pH levels are expressed in a logarithmic scale, ranging from 0 to 14. Pure water is neutral and has a pH of 7. Acidic substances have pH values lower than 7 and alkaline substances have pH values greater than 7. The pH value of the hair and skin in the human adult ranges from 4.6 to 6 and becomes more neutral as we age. Acidic solutions will harden and contract the hair, whereas alkaline solutions will soften and expand the hair shaft. For example, distilled water, which has a pH of 7 and is therefore at least 100 times more alkaline than hair, can make the hair shaft swell by as much as 20%. The outermost layer of the hair shaft is the cuticle, which consists of translucent cells overlapping like shingles on a roof. Ideally, a shampoo should keep the cuticles smooth, which it can achieve by buffering the solution, with agents such as citric acid, to control the acidity of the shampoo. So, essentially, all commercial shampoos are ‘pH balanced’.
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