If they can make baby shampoo “tearless”, why not all shampoo? Is this just marketing or something different in the formula?
IIRC, no more tears doesn’t have lauryl sulfate, which is a common ingredient in most shampoos. I think it irritates eyes. I don’t have any proof of this at hand though.
Yes, they substitute another chemical compound for the sulfates. I don’t recall which, but I can find out if it’s important to you. But its not a sulfate.
The reason not all shampoos. IIRC, the no tears formula does not have the efficacy at removing all of the crap that people put in their hair, eg, hairspray, gel, et al. The second reason is that the normal manufacture of surfactants is via sulfation. In lay terms, you make the stuff that cleans by making sulfates. So it costs more to make the other stuff. One reason for this is that early into the process of making sulfates you can take the base product and then turn it into other products like dish soap or liquid laundry detergent. I don’t think that you can do this with the other base product. So you get economies of scale.
Ok, I screwed up my first answer. Since then I have been to the local Target store, and I was able to check ingredients. Both have sulfates. The difference is Ammonium sulfate is missing in the No Tears variety, it is replaced with Sodium sulfates.
The main reason for laurel sulphate, as I understand it, is that it foams, and people like that, because it looks like the soap is “working”. That’s why it appears in even “natural” toothpastes.
There are many things that clean besides soap.
Water of course does a good job alone on many kinds of soil.
Simple cooking oils remove many tough things, like paint, but then leave rings behind. Baking soda removes many things soap can’t, as does peroxide.
A friend who is a cosmetologist informs me that there is an additional ingredient in tearless shampoo that is nothing more than an anesthetic. In other words, the caustic chemicals are still in there, but you can’t feel them.
Baby products, in general, tend to be very mild and contain less detergent than grownup products. This could be another reason. This came from my doctor who told me to switch to baby wash when I broke out in a rash from laundry detergent.
Robin
The ingredients in shampoo are controlled by the FDA. Please ask your cometoligist friend which ingredients s/he believes to be an anesthetic. I don’t think this is the case. There tends to be a lot of pseudoscience and rumors involved in the cosmetological world, part of selling the really high priced hair care products.
Here are the listed ingredients in Johnson’s Baby Shampoo:
Robin, for clothes washing, most popular detergents are indeed synthetic detergents, which can affect people with sensitive skin. The laundry products for babies are normally more natural soaps, made in the manner in which all soaps were made before synthetic detergents came on the scene after WWII. They are essentially different products, not just milder versions of the same.
Note that if you have this problem you should probably also avoid bar soaps that are synthetic as well.
A couple of weeks ago, my sister told me that Shampoo X (which I think was Johnson’s Baby Shampoo) is no-tears because it uses mild cleansers, while other no-tears shampoos use anesthetics.
Of course, my response to her was that I will now make sure to always use other shampoos other than X, because I want my baby to have all the benefits of anesthetics and not risk irritating his eyes.
I didn’t really believe her story, but I’ve done a Google search and found nothing. Does anyone know whether this is true?
A couple of weeks ago, my sister told me that Shampoo X (which I think was Johnson’s Baby Shampoo) is no-tears because it uses mild cleansers, while other no-tears shampoos use anesthetics.
Of course, my response to her was that I will now make sure to always use other shampoos other than X, because I want my baby to have all the benefits of anesthetics and not risk irritating his eyes.
I didn’t really believe her story, but I’ve done a Google search and found nothing. Does anyone know whether this is true?
FWIW: I once had surgery on my scalp, and I was instructed to wash my scalp with anything except for “…baby shampoo and Prell ™…”
The anesthetic story sounds like B.S.
A compound that is able to numb babies eyeballs is not likely to be non-toxic enough to be safe in the hands of inexperienced shampooers. If such a compound were to exist it would probably be:
-Expensive to make
-Regulated as a drug by the FDA
-Abused by large numbers of people
-Well known to chemists,doctors etc.
There are many detergents available that do not make eyes water. There is no need anything with magical properties.
Is baby shampoo pH balanced? I was long under the impression that it’s actually alkaline because, while harder on then hair shaft, it was gentle on the eyes that way.
pH balanced shampoos actually sting the eyes, but clean the hair better.
I saw a TV show where they explained how soap & shampoo was made, worked, etc…
They said that regular shampoo has ingredient(s) in it to make it lather/foam up. This is because consumers like to see the product in action. If you have shampoo that doesn’t foam up at all, it does just as good a job but people don’t perceive that it does such a good job. They said that those no tears shampoos just leave out that ingredient(s) so therefore don’t foam up as much.
Has anyone else noticed that judging from a baby’s reaction, if you accidentally get it in their eyes the “No More Tears” stuff apparently still hurts like hell.
My son cries if he gets water in his eyes. Its just a less dramatic and sustained reaction. Babies cry as a response to anything they find unpleasant, it’s how they communicate. Try some baby shampoo, it still not a pleasant experience to get it in your eyes, its just not as bad as getting an eyeful of regular shampoo.
Maybe the anesthetic rumor is from the ingredient Cocamidopropyl Betaine. The “-caine” ending is used for anesthetics related to cocaine, such as novocaine. The “-aine” in Cocamidopropyl Betaine is close enough to “-caine” to confuse some people. It isn’t an anesthetic, of course. Its description is given as “Used in shampoos, bubble baths and liquid handsoaps. Provides good foaming and foam liquid stabilization with excellent wetting properties. Compatible with anionic, cationic, and nonionic surfactants.”
Yes, many baby shampoos are “pH balanced”. The labels seldom say what particular acid or base is used to do the balancing. The term “pH balanced” appeared back when many people where still washing their hair with bar-soap, or liquid soap, rather than “modern” detergents. The high pH of cheap soap could do horrible things to hair. Now that most people use synthetic detergents the whole “pH balanced” schtick makes less persuasive ad-copy than it once did. It’s probably not entirely irrelevant yet, but it’s getting there.