HAIR CARE IN GENERAL. Review on Shades Skin and Hair Care - Jawahar Nagar - Jaipur

HAIR CARE

Our body has a crown on our head. This crown is not made of gold or silver but is provided by our beautiful hair, long or short, black, brown or blonde, thin or thick. This cover is treated and decorated the way we want. Hair has been taken care of and given different looks over the years, nay from time immemorial. These days there are advertisements of products which assure of complete hair care. GARNIER advertises Shampoo with oil for strong hair, L’oreal new product Dercos under Vichy range for combating hair fall, Kesh King, herbal shampoo with all herbal ingblackients to take complete care of your hair including hair fall and there are others which boast of curing dandruff. There are three aspects of hair care:(1) clean hair(2) healthy hair and(3) style of hair. Let us look at each one of these in some detail.

Clean Hair

Cleanliness of hair is the first requisite of hair care. Great importance is attached to the cleanliness of hair. It is easiest to clean with simple soap. In olden days besides soap there were some herbal treatments too. I remember, in days gone by the two most important agents for cleaning hair were “Reetha and Multani mitti or Gachi”. I do not know other names of reetha. It is a round light brown ball with a black kernel. The ball is made of crisp material which is soapy, when dissolved in water, and has a hard black kernel of smaller size which moves inside freely, children play with these balls. The crisp ball is easily broken and on boiling in water you get home made herbal shampoo. Reetha is almost unheard of now/gone now, but internet search did show that there are companies marketing reetha shampoo! Reetha is perhaps an indigenous herbal product. As mentioned above Reetha is soapy and by boiling it in water you get herbal shampoo. In modern times technology has given us a great variety of shampoos and other hair treatment recipes for keeping hair not only clean and fluffy, flowing, each one free from all the other companions. Shampoos are in almost universal use and are available in a great variety both indigenous and imported. Shampoos not only clean hair but make them strong, long and beautifully shining. I am in Bangaluru for some time and while in Bangalore saw advertisement of indigenous Aurvedic shampoos named “Kesh King and Trichup and Sesa”. These are advertised daily in newspapers claiming ‘these have everything one wants in her or his hair and that lacs of people have benefitted by using these concoctions and you should not be left out’. There are innumerable brands of shampoos made by foreign companies established in India or imported. Some names may be worth recalling: Neutrogena, L’oreal, Garnier, Head and Shoulders Kolestone(ketokonazole) and there are also indigenous “Shikakai”and many others. Products like Sunsilk, Vivel, clearup, Dove and many others manufactured by foreign companies in India. The list is by no means complete but only indicative. There are more than hundred and thirty varities of shampoos may be different only in name. It is very interesting to see shampoo advertisements on TV screen. Gorgeous Bollywood heroines and other models show their very heavy beautiful hair of different hues, pull them to show that they are very strong, long and beautiful and do not break easily. These are products advertised to make hair healthy, strong, long and beautiful. All advertisements of shampoo show clean very thick body of tresses flying all over in air. To demonstrate strong hair the lovely damsel show it by spreading and pulling a bunch, claiming strong hair! Each one of these gives us a number of products and many means of achieving these aims.

Many of the shampoos also contain conditioner. Conditioners are also available separately. Conditioner makes the hair really soft and strong. Thus clean hair is essentially the use of shampoo and conditioner. We now move to the common problems with hair and look at healthy hair.

Healthy Hair

Our head and hair make us suffer from some nagging problems. The most common and troublesome are dandruff, hair fall, and split hair. These are the maladies which have to be treated and overcome. There are a number of anti-dandruff cleansers: henna and neem treatments, aloe- vera and jajoba Oil, powder, and many others. Health of hair is very important for the hair to be manageable and look beautiful. Falling hair and dandruff are two worst scourges of hair which are difficult to overcome. Despite so many claimes for treating dandruff, nothing really gets rid of it. But using antidandruff shampoo every alternate day keeps it under control. Another thing which helps in keeping control is Homeopathic medicine. I have used this and found some relief while using. This also does not cure. Use of oil has reduced very much. hair the stickiness caused by oils must be the one most important reason for avoiding oils though the manufacturers claim no stickiness. Coconut oil was one favourite for a large majority of persons, particularly in southern parts of the country. The complaints of hair fall and dandruff seem to have reduced. Another problem faced by women is that of split hair which also is perhaps tackled to a great extent. Still many types of hair oils of great variety are available but their use is limited. A surprising product advertised by Garnier is Shampoo with oil for strong hair. The newspapers advertise a new Ayurvedic potion named Nuzen GOLD, herbal hair oil, which is advertised to take care of our 100% problems including hair fall. It lets your hair grow naturally from the roots and helps to generate new hair. There is very little oiliness in these oils. The latest I saw is from L’oreal.

L’oreal has a new product line under the brand name VICHY, which is a general cosmetic product and Dercos product line of Vichy is one of the most effective of the hair loss products available in the market. It contains active ingredients recognized in dermatology for stimulating and improving scalp activity, as per L’oreal ad. DERCOS AMINEXIL ENERGY Anti hair-loss action shown under dermatological supervision. From 3 weeks onwards hair is fortified. After 3 Weeks Of Use - Hair Loss Is Slowed Down. Hair Is Stronger, Silky to the Touch. Dercos product line of Vichy is separate for men and women and is claimed to be very effective in controlling hair loss it makes hair stronger and revitalises.

Hindustan Unilever’s Dove, Wipro’s Vivel and Godrej’s Nupur and many other shampoos particularly herbal ones are getting  prominence. To name a few herbal zysil, medical hebal green apple, soya protein, honey, hibiscus vitalis, kabari shampoo, etc. are in the market to keep hair not only clean and healthy but free flowing and strong. It is very interesting to see gorgeous damsels showing off their crown of hair as strong by pulling a bunch and caressing the freely flowing silky tresses. Having taken care of the health and appearance of hair we come to styling.

Styling

Styling of hair is now very interesting.

continued in comments.