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It's important to understand that shampoo and conditioner have nearly opposite roles in maintaining healthy looking hair. Shampoo is primarily designed to remove dirt, excess oil, and sweat from the hair, while conditioner is for adding oil and protein to the hair that is lost during shampooing.

A healthy scalp produces oils that prevent hair from becoming brittle and dry, while sweat glands help keep the scalp cool and moist. However, the oils quickly build up, and at the same time they almost act like magnets for dust, skin flakes, and dirt. Good shampoos will remove the excess oils along with the other particles that are in the hair. Care must be taken however, because if the soaps in the shampoo are too harsh, they can dry out the hair and cause hair damage.

Commercially, many additives are put in shampoo that are largely unnecessary and actually cut the effectiveness of the product. A consumer can understand this by reading what is printed on the bottles. If the bottle says that it is for dry hair, it means that the shampoo is designed to either be extremely mild, or that it contains oils. If it is too mild, it won't adequately clean unless you want to shampoo a few times a day. It is also senseless to add oils, as it would be similar to pouring cooking oil in fresh sudsy dishwater prior to washing the dishes, so that the dishes can shine and feel soft. Most people wouldn't consider doing this, and yet they will do the same when they use shampoos for dry hair that contain oils, or worse still, shampoos that contains conditioners.

Likewise, shampoo for oily hair usually means that the shampoo is harsher. Yet this isn't necessary. Shampooing once with harsh detergents is no more effective in cleaning oily hair that shampooing two or three times with a regular shampoo and rinsing well between the shampoos.

The good news is that this means that when homemade shampoo is made, we don't need to worry about adding something extra based on the type of hair we have. Better still, the soap is easy to obtain. Recipes for regular or even lye soap will work fine, and there are several good soap recipes on Helium. An even simpler yet milder soap is good dish soap. (Note: dish soap, not dish detergent. Dish detergent is much more harsh.) Examples are Dawn and Joy. For the more environmentally conscious, it might be noted that these soaps are even used for treating birds and animals after oil spills.

This is all well and good, but won't this dry out the hair? The answer is

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