I was surfing the web a few weeks back and thought I would buy Dr. Bonners Castile Shampoo Yum!  I just love Castile Soaps and I saw so many places that said it was good on hair as well as on the body being the “all naturalista” that I am.  So I brought the product home and it was wonderful on my body.

I mixed the Castile Shampoo in another conditioner that I purchased.  What I noticed when I finished my wash is that my hair seemed to have more frizz, looked somewhat dull, and had much less clumping of curls than I normally have.  I could not understand why!! I tried a number of things. First I thought it was my butter or my hair oils but could not quite find the culprit.  Soon I was surfing the web again (as I always do lol) and ran upon this pH thing.

I did not know much about pH except for that commercial for Secret underarm deodorant. I’m sure you remember “Strong enough for a man but made for a woman”.  Well, I started reading more because I found that pH was related to hair.  Hmmmm…. interesting… so as I continued to read I found that African American hair needs different levels of pH than does our Caucasian family.

This is related to another article I found that states that our hair at higher pH levels begins to coil more tightly because the high pH causes the cuticle of our hair to open and release needed moisture.  Why does it do this? To get moisture.. go figure.  So it opens up to get moisture and all of the moisture spills out into the air… so you end up with dry lifeless hair. I read that our hair needs a pH of 4.5 – 5 with water being at pH of 7 (so just rinsing your hair may also bring about some moisture and oil losses).

I bought a pH tester thingy and measured the pH of the Dr. Bonners and it showed to be a whopping 8.9!!!  So, needless to say, leave that stuff alone!  I think I’m going to do another post where I just go through all of our favorite products and put my handy dandy electronic pH meter to the test to see what the pH of many of the products we use in our hair are.  Maybe that’s why it seems the products we have don’t seem to work. Could something so simple be the cause of all of our ailments?

What do you think?  Do you have products that you would like to see me test the pH on for my next post.. maybe you are having the same problem.