50. How Toxic is Your Hair Dye and What Non Toxic Hair Dye Options Actually Work?
Jan 09, 2024Season 1Episode 50
Wendy Kathryn
I've been dying my hair for years and I know i'm not alone in that. My own transformation from a bright blonde devotee to a cautious consumer was a long time coming. For years, I've generally known that hair dye wasn't great for me. But getting specific with the research has finally motivated me to throw in the towel.
In this episode, we'll talk about common ingredients in permanent hair dyes that could be compromising not just the luster of your locks, but your health as well.
From brittle strands to alarming cancer studies to safer ways to get the color you want and the knowledge to choose wisely... this episode is about informed consent when it comes to your health.
If you're not ready to give up hair dye, no one is judging you.
Learn what the most common causes of hair thinning and loss are, what ingredients in your haircare routine aren't doing you any favors, cleaner haircare options and natural ways to grow your hair out.
I've been dying my hair for years and I know i'm not alone in that. My own transformation from a bright blonde devotee to a cautious consumer was a long time coming. For years, I've generally known that hair dye wasn't great for me. But getting specific with the research has finally motivated me to throw in the towel.
In this episode, we'll talk about common ingredients in permanent hair dyes that could be compromising not just the luster of your locks, but your health as well.
From brittle strands to alarming cancer studies to safer ways to get the color you want and the knowledge to choose wisely... this episode is about informed consent when it comes to your health.
If you're not ready to give up hair dye, no one is judging you.
Learn what the most common causes of hair thinning and loss are, what ingredients in your haircare routine aren't doing you any favors, cleaner haircare options and natural ways to grow your hair out.
Post a screenshot and what you loved and and tag me on instagram @wendy_toxinfreeish
Want to ask me a question to get answered on the podcast? Leave me a voice message here.
Speaker 1:
Are you like millions of other women out there who dye their hair? Maybe you're covering up your grays or adding in some highlights, lowlights, or maybe you're a root to tip kind of gal covering all over. But let me ask you something have you ever wondered what the ingredients are and what they could be doing to your health? I have been dyeing my hair for 25 years and I love having bright blonde hair. But after really digging into the ingredients and what the medical research says about what it's doing to my health and I'm not going to lie the main part of me what I now know these ingredients are doing to my hair I am officially ditching the dyes in 2024. If you've ever considered going back to your natural color embracing your grays, or maybe you just want safer, cleaner options for coloring your hair, this episode is for you. I'm going to share with you what is actually in the hair dye you are using, what it's doing to your hair and your health, and if you're somebody who just isn't ready to make the no highlight leap, I'm also going to share with you some ways you can reduce that risk and some safer hair dye brands out there that can still give you that salon quality look, but just a little less toxic.
Speaker 1:
You're listening to the Detox Salima podcast, where clean living meets real life. I'm here to help you toss the toxins out of your life and embrace real, lasting health. My name is Wendy and I'm an environmental toxins attorney turned clean living coach, and since 2015, I've helped over 700 families clean up the toxins in their home, and my mission is simple to show you how to create a toxin free ish home that you actually love and also fits into your real crazy life. If you're ready to shake up your hair dye situation in 2024, then stick around, let's dive in. Okay, so here's the thing. I want to preface this entire episode by saying I love being a blonde.
Speaker 1:
I have naturally dirty and I don't know who, like who came up with the name dirty blonde. It's just super not nice. Or dishwasher blonde, equally not nice. I was a toe had blonde when I was a little girl growing up, and then it slowly started to become more dirty blonde, dishwasher blonde, and I just found it really dull and boring and I hated it. And so, at around 18, I started dyeing my hair regularly and I never stopped. I would dye it all over, from root to tip, and then I kind of got into the highlight era and then by a lodge was cool, and more recently, over the last few years, I've just been doing by a lodge, but only like twice a year. So I have let my roots grow out a good amount, but I'm still dyeing my hair pretty often and I truly never had any intentions of giving it up.
Speaker 1:
In fact, if you've been following me, I'm all about toxin free ish and embracing your ish, and hair dye was my ish. I was like you know what? I'm clean everywhere else. I'm not giving up my hair dye. I knew it was bad for me, like I knew, but I didn't know. And there's a difference between thinking in theoretical yes, I know some things quote unquote bad for me. It's a whole other thing to look at the data and the ingredients and the research and to truly understand what it's doing. So, while I fully get the ish and I am not about being perfect if you listen to the end of this episode and you're like you know what, I'm still going to keep dyeing my hair. That's awesome, good for you. I'm going to give you some safer options if you want them or not. Take it or leave it.
Speaker 1:
So why this topic and why now I have a toxin free shopping guide which, again, if you've been listening to me for any length of time, you know that if you're new around here, I have a toxin free shopping guide where I have it organized by category and it's all the cleanest brands in all the categories skincare, hair care, home fragrance, perfume, babies, toothpaste. It's all organized by category and I update those categories every year, and so in January I'm updating my hair care guide and I update it because one new brands come out all the time and two companies change their ingredients all the time, so I'm always updating it. And in the process of researching shampoo, conditioner, hair dye, hair oil, all of those things, I got really interested because, as I'm getting older, my hair is really dry and brittle and it's also starting to thin, and so I got really interested in what can I do to grow my hair and get thicker, fuller hair, and so part of my hair care review included, like hair growth, types of shampoos and conditioners and serums and all of that, and what I found was this not only is the hair dye that I've been using not good for my health and we'll talk about that In a second it was actually destroying my hair and can lead to hair thinning, hair loss, brittle hair, all the things. So I'm not doing my hair any favors by continuing to dye it the way that I've been doing it. And one last thing before I dive in into this data, I have a free ebook that I named A Happy New Hair and it compiles all the things I'm gonna talk about today. There's tons of great information how I'm choosing to regrow my hair, take care of my hair, the products that I love, the brands that are clean, but I also dig into and give links to these studies in this research. So you can go to the links in the show notes and you can download the Happy New Hair ebook.
Speaker 1:
Okay, let's dig in. I'm gonna touch on the main ingredients in permanent hair dye. Now. I'm not talking about semi-permanent or demi-permanent, which is something that they call it Now, where the coloring goes on top of encodes your hair. I'm talking about a permanent hair dye and they all work the same way. They have a developer which removes your existing hair color and then they use an alkaline agent to open your hair shaft. It literally like rips your hair shaft open. Then they have colorants that penetrate into your hair shaft and then they adhere to your hair. Now there's a lot of other ingredients, but I'm just gonna focus on those main ingredients for right now.
Speaker 1:
I think ammonia is the most popular thing out there. I think a lot of people still think if you're buying ammonia free dye, you're buying something that's better for you, that's better for your hair. Ammonia was one of the main ingredients that were used for a long, long long time in hair care, and it still is. There's still a lot of hair care out there using ammonia, but again, brands are like hey, come buy us, we're ammonia free, we're more natural, and you're gonna learn in a second why. That's kind of a bunch of bullshit.
Speaker 1:
So ammonia the problem with ammonia is it actually damages your cuticle. It takes moisture. It completely gets rid of moisture. It causes frizzy, dry, brittle hair. It also destroys an amino acid called tyrosine in your hair, and tyrosine regulates the production of your hair pigment, and so that your hair pigment is what holds on to whether your new color, your old color, your natural color, and so when tyrosine is destroyed, your hair's ability to hold any color is compromised eventually, and so dye won't work over time.
Speaker 1:
You keep using this ammonia in your hair over and over. You're basically just stripping your hair completely of all moisture and you're destroying it. So they have to make up for it. They have to put other things in their products to coat your hair silicones, things that cover the hair shaft, that make it feel and look smooth so they can hide the fact that they just destroyed your strands. But that will fade over time and you'll start to see, in between your dyes, your hair starting to look less and less shiny. It's starting to look dull and brittle, and that's because of the ammonia.
Speaker 1:
People also really don't like the smell when you're getting your hair done and you're using an ammonia-based dye. People hate the way that it smells. So if there's not ammonia, what are other brands that are claiming to be ammonia-free using instead? They're using ethanolamine, mea for short, and with very, very few exceptions, which I will share those exceptions because those are some of the really good, cleaner options for permanent hair dye out there. Companies are using this instead of ammonia. So if it says ammonia-free, there's like a 95% chance this is what they're using instead. So I'm just gonna call it MEA for short. But MEA is extremely corrosive to your hair and in some cases. According to studies, it can be up to 85% more damaging than ammonia and can cause hair loss.
Speaker 1:
It is also a risk factor for birth defects. In a study that was published way back in 2005, so it's not like this is new information they found that people who used hair dye with this ingredient in it the month before pregnancy or during pregnancy that that was associated with an almost 60% increase in neuroblastoma in the newborns that they gave birth to, and neuroblastoma is a cancer that starts in the nerve cells. There was another study that showed a three-fold increase in the risk of neuroblastoma among children and of mothers who use hair dye during pregnancy. There are other studies animal studies that show increased risk of birth defects from hair dye, from this ingredient. And listen, I'm not going to have any more kids. I have my two kids. I'm happy. Our family is complete, but if something can cause neuroblastoma in children while we're pregnant, like what else is it doing to my body? When I read these studies, I thought I just have no business using this crap anymore.
Speaker 1:
Another really common ingredient in hair dye is called a resorcinol. It's widely used in hair dye and it can cause problems in high amounts, so any kind of ingestion, which nobody's eating hair dye. So let's have a little bit of reality around this data. But the use of this ingredient has been shown to cause disruptions in the central nervous system and in thyroid function. Again, this is high doses, repeated exposures, some of these studies it was an ingestion thing and so, while there are some really bad health implications for this, I think that the fact that it's going on your hair and not in your skin it's going to be less. But again it has been shown to cause issues with your nervous system and thyroid function. So if you're somebody who already has a thyroid issue, maybe you're going to want to really avoid this ingredient. That's bad.
Speaker 1:
But let's talk about your hair and what it does to your hair. So it's what we call an acute irritant and skin sensitizer. Acute irritants and skin sensitizers mean that the more that you are exposed to this chemical and it sensitizes your skin, the more likely you become that, as you use it more and more you will have an allergic reaction to it. You could be using this ingredient and dyeing your hair for many years and then all of a sudden, out of nowhere, boom, your body's like nope, it has an allergic reaction to it because you've been sensitized all of that time and some of the common reactions that people have to this ingredient are hair loss I mean literally hair loss, like your hair just falls out, hives, contact dermatitis, so like really bad scalp eczema and even respiratory distress. It's a huge issue and I think that what was so important for me about reading this information and this data is that I think when you dye your hair a lot like me over the years you're like I'm fine, I know nothing's ever going to happen and I've never had a reaction. I've never lost any hair, but it happens all the time, and so every time you dye your hair, you're risking that it's going to be the time that your body is going to kind of rebel and have this reaction.
Speaker 1:
Now, this isn't the only sensitizer found in hair dye PPD, pdt, npppd again, these are all in the free ebook so you can see what their actual chemical names are listed out. These are used to bind the color to the hair permanently and there's a lot of people that believe this is carcinogenic, although there's some conflicting information out there but they are extreme skin sensitizers. So, again, you have multiple ingredients in your hair dye that can eventually lead to this reaction. And just a side note, if you were somebody who gets henna tattoos, there are henna formulations that have this PPD skin sensitizer in them. So if you've gotten these henna tattoos in the past that have this PPD in it and you continue to dye your hair, you're more likely to have that skin sensitizing allergic reaction because your body recognizes that chemical from when you had the tattoo. But here's really what clunged it for me.
Speaker 1:
Scientists at the National Institute of Health found that women who use permanent hair dye and chemical straighteners have a higher risk of developing breast cancer than women who don't use the products, and that risk increases with more frequent use. In another study looking at over 46,000 women, women who regularly used permanent hair dye in the year prior to enrolling in the study were nine times more likely than women who didn't dye their hair to develop breast cancer. And while that's not an old you know, 9% like that is still an increased risk. But here's the scary thing Among African-American women, using permanent hair dyes every eight weeks or more was associated with a 60% risk of breast cancer, as compared with the nine that they found in Caucasian women. But that research found no increase in breast cancer for semi-permanent or temporary hair dyes. There's also a link to hair straightening products, which I think has been in the news a lot. So I think there's a lot more education and information around that. But especially women of color Overall women have about a 1.6% chance of developing uterine cancer in their life, but frequent users of hair straighteners that risk goes up threefold.
Speaker 1:
So for me, after seeing that, I really did some soul searching and I was like you know what? I think I'm done. I think I'm done with the hair dye. I don't think I need it. I think it's time to embrace my natural hair, grow it out. I'm going to spend the next year really focused on quality hair care. I am using rosemary, cedar wood and lavender essential oils and a water spray. I'm spraying my hair with it. I'm doing all the things for hair growth. I've got my collagen and my MSM and I'll talk about that in a future episode as far as hair growth strategies. But I'm just done and so I'm going to let it go and I'm going to embrace the all natural.
Speaker 1:
Now, if you're not somebody who is quite there and maybe you've just heard everything I said and you're like yeah, whatever, I'm just not giving it up, okay. Well, there are some things you can do that can actually reduce your risk without giving it up completely. So the first thing you can do is switch to semi permanent hair color. Now, this can work best for people who are trying to cover up grays, but you want to stay your natural color. So you're looking for a semi permanent color that's very close to your natural color, but you're looking to cover grays and you have less than 50% of your hair that's covered in gray. This is also really good for people who are not that far off their natural hair color. So using semi permanent or using henna based dies, which is another clean option, is fantastic, but you're not going to be able to lighten your hair with it. So if I wanted to take my dishwasher blonde hair and then become a platinum blonde, these semi permanent henna based colors, they're not really going to work, because in order for that to work, you need a developer. You need something that's going to remove the color from your hair and adhere a new color. The way semi permanent colors work is it coats on top of your hair.
Speaker 1:
Now, if you're somebody who loves your natural color but you're just struggling with grays, I highly recommend the company HairPrint, not only for their semi permanent dies, which are very specific to people who have grays, that want to cover grays they have a fantastic product but they also have some of the cleanest hair care options out there so you can use their color, safe shampoos. They have hair growth serums. I love anything and everything HairPrint creates. If you're looking for a safe henna based product, I love Indus Valley. Indus Valley is a great brand and I will link all of these in the show notes. I also have an Amazon shop where I'm going to have these in there Super easy for you to find them Riddico I don't know if I'm spelling that, if I'm saying that right Radico, riddico. Either way, it's a henna based product that is super clean. They test for all kinds of contamination, and so those are two henna based products and companies that create semi permanent hair dies that are absolutely fantastic.
Speaker 1:
Now there is a hair dye company called Goldwell who makes what they call not a semi-permanent but a demi-permanent, and I've talked to some hairdressers and I've talked to some people who use this hair dye and they say it actually acts like it's so good. It acts more like a permanent hair dye and, again, you can't cover up more than like 50% gray. You can go slightly outside of your natural color, but it lasts way longer than most semi-permanent. So Goldwell, the line is called L-U-Men I will link that also. Salons carry it, so all you have to do is ask. So Goldwell, l-u-men, that is a really great option.
Speaker 1:
Now if you are like I want a permanent color, I want something that is permanent that I can do some major changes to. Maybe I can keep my highlights, whatever it is you want to do, there is a company now. So Daniel Field makes a line called Watercolor and they use sodium percarbonate instead of ammonia and there's no ethanol in mine. So, in my opinion, if I were trying to avoid the worst ingredients in a permanent hair dye, that is the hair dye that I would choose. It also has the least damaging hair ingredients out there because it doesn't have those two that are really, really bad for your hair. Now, it doesn't mean it's free of chemicals or free of toxins, it's just the safest out there that I have found.
Speaker 1:
There's another option you can choose an ammonia-based dye. All those studies on birth defects and the issues with ethanolamine. If you swap to an ammonia instead, then those health risks don't go with it. So Clarell, nice and Easy, still uses ammonia. Wallach, holston and Perfect Me those are three that are still using ammonia instead of ethanolamine and those would be, in my opinion, a better option for your health. Now, it still has the ammonia in it, so you're still going to destroy your hair. But if you are somebody who's like, yeah, whatever, I still want to highlight my hair, dye my hair, whatever, those would be better options.
Speaker 1:
There's also some things you can have your hairdresser do that will reduce your risk right, like taking these dyes off of your scalp, so doing off-the-scalp treatment. So Biolage would probably be the best one, because you're putting the dye on your hair towards the bottom so you're not getting it up on your roots. It's not getting in your skin. Foil highlights is another really good way to kind of have an off-the-scalp. The foil that they use keeps it from getting into your scalp. You're not going all the way up to your roots. Leaving some room at your roots so you're not getting dye on your actual scalp is a huge help.
Speaker 1:
The goal is to reduce your risk. There are toxins everywhere. Don't worry about the things that you can't control outside of your home, but you can control the things that are inside your home, and for me, hair dye is one of those things that I have choice and I have control over, and so do you, so you can make the decision to continue to dye your hair. You can pick a safer option, or you can pick some of those off-the-scalp treatments which may reduce your risk. Whatever it is you choose, my goal is always to make sure you're informed and you're making educated choices for yourself. You can find these safer, cleaner hair care options already over on my ToxinFreeShoppingGuide over at wwwtoxinfreeshoppingguidecom. I hope your life is getting just a little less toxic and I'll see you next week.