First things first: I love my mom. She’s an incredibly sweet, caring woman and it is because of her nurturing I was able to develop an inquisitive, determined nature (as a kid, I was the human version of Curious George and no end of exasperation for my mother).

Like women all over the world, my mom checks with me in my role as the director of The Cosmetics Cop Team about some of her beauty concerns. Lately, it’s been about hair-care products. At age 63, like many women Mom is experiencing thinner, more fragile hair. Mom states that her hair is thinner, drier, and harder to manage than ever. She’s always on the lookout for new styling products, and often asks me about the Redken items her salon uses (I advise her to save her money and she typically doesn’t fall for the sales pitch).

Not too long ago, she became overly interested and excited about Kerastase, the ultra-expensive salon brand owned by L’Oreal. It didn’t help that her sister (who definitely has money to burn) raves about the products. My mom took her recommendations seriously because they have similar hair types. Eventually, she wrote to me asking for less expensive alternatives (I had a feeling the high cost of Kerastase would get to her). Her Kerastase phase seems to be over, and she’s been happy with some of the comparable products I recommended from another L’Oreal-owned company, Garnier Fructis.

Here’s where things went awry: Mom’s looking for a lightweight styling product to tame her hair and add shine but not weight. I recommended the Aveeno Nourish + Style Volumizing Foam. It’s a good, inexpensive liquid mousse that should work really well for her, as she heat-styles her hair. She thanked me and then proceeded to check out this product online. Several minutes later, another email from Mom landed in my Inbox:

“Honey, one person who reviewed this product said it left a residue. Now I’m not so sure about it.” I wrote back and asked why she zeroed in on the one negative comment (which we didn’t find to be true in our review for this product) and seemed to ignore the 20+ positive (I mean really positive) reviews also posted there. She didn’t have an answer but that one negative comment stood out like a sore thumb and her trepidation soared despite what I had told her. She was worried it would feel heavy on her hair, too.

I responded as follows: “Mom, I understand your concern, but you don’t know anything about that woman and why she wrote what she did. For example, what if this reviewer doesn’t wash her hair that often? What if she uses a hairspray that leaves a residue, or double processes her hair? What other products does she use? What is her definition of residue? What kind of hair does she have? Without more information there is no way to know why she liked or disliked a product.”

Of course, the sobering truth is Mom just didn’t believe me—at least not 100%. She’d rather believe an anonymous woman online than her own son, despite the fact I’ve been studying and writing about cosmetic products (including hair care) for over 10 years. I mentioned this exchange to Paula, and she could relate. She remarked that it was years before she could get her mother to stop shopping for skin care at Neiman Marcus in tandem with her friends who only wanted to believe expensive meant better (Paula’s mom didn’t break this habit until Paula created her own line PaulasChoice.com).

Sigh. It isn’t easy being a Cosmetic Cop. There are so many hurdles to overcome like obnoxious advertising and thousands of opinions from people without the research or expertise to evaluate or really understand what they are using. Personal experience means something, but given the wide, often fickle range of preferences and expectations, it’s not the most reliable way to assess a product’s value or efficacy.

But my own mother! That is just disheartening. I love you Mom (and, to be fair, I’m not the perfect son and, like everyone else, have my weaknesses) but sometimes I just want to pick up the phone after these email exchanges and yell saying, “Mom, just buy what I tell you, I am 1000% right. I have the science, research, and the largest comparison database of cosmetic products in the world I use to base my recommendations on!” Of course, if I did that she’d likely acquiesce and promise to listen better next time. But I know it’s only a matter of time before she sends me another question about a product a friend, co-worker, or her hairstylist mentions, and we’ll go around and around again.

My hairstylist and I got into a long discussion (okay, argument) again when I was in last week. It’s okay, I didn’t really want to read another fashion magazine and she is a wonderful, compassionate, sweet woman who likes challenging me. She earnestly wanted to let me know what she learned from the Kerastase training class she recently attended. I know I couldn’t convince her that most of what she learned was rubbish. As expected, she did what she always does when we have these discussions: smile at me with warmth and utter skepticism all at the same time while I explain what the Kerastase trainer said didn’t make sense because it was so far from the facts about hair physiology. Over the years, despite my showing her studies and research she still doesn’t want to believe me. Sigh. Although I didn’t get anywhere with my stylist, I’d like to go over the facts with you one more time just to get it off my chest:

Expensive absolutely doesn’t mean better in the world of hair care. There is no reason to ever spend more then $10 on a hair care product. (The only exception would be for an unusual special needs product like one for psoriasis or an exceptionally gentle formula that’s fragrance-free), If you do spend more than $10, I’m talking about only doing so for really huge containers.

Drugstore products are not watered down or used for cleaning floors. I’m so tired of this one! Salon products are not better formulated, they don’t use better grade of ingredients, or have fewer surfactants (cleansing agents) or wax-type ingredients than drugstore lines. Nothing could be further from the truth. In fact, just the opposite can be true. It takes only a quick review of the ingredient list to determine the truth about this one. Surfactants are uniform throughout the industry. The same is true for conditioning and thickening agents. In the long run, what a product contains depends on the individual product not the price. I have yet to find an ingredient manufacturer or cosmetic chemist to show me research or evidence proving otherwise. In the case of Kerastase, they’re owned by L’Oreal. L’Oreal offers some outstanding hair-care products at the drugstore, including many whose ingredient lists are nearly identical to those in the Kerastase line. Do you really think they’re using inferior, cheap ingredients in their namesake line and only saving the good stuff for their salon brands? And if that was the case, as a consumer, why would you respect them?

Other than formulations what hair care products have in common regardless of price is that the claims on the label are almost always utter nonsense. Don’t take them seriously.

You can’t repair hair. There are no hair-care products that can repair, fix, correct, restructure, reform, change, reconstruct, restore, rebuild, or alter damaged hair. Hair is dead (I will remind you of that fact frequently), so it cannot be repaired or permanently reverted back to normal in any way. You can no more mend a hair strand than you can regenerate a dead leaf, soften a rock, or repair a fallen tree.

(Try to) Stop damaging your hair! Repeated blow drying, brushing (especially wet hair, which is more easily damaged then dry hair), styling, chemical processing (okay that you don’t have to stop but reconsider radical hair color-change, I’ll talk more about that in a minute), and sun exposure degrades hair, and the damage cannot be mended or undone. High heat is particularly damaging, but it is also happens to be the best way to get unruly, frizzy, thick hair under control.

Unfortunately, there are no hair-care products that can truly protect hair from heat damage. Hairstyling tools can get as hot as 350 to 400 degrees Fahrenheit, transferring about 200 degrees Fahrenheit to the hair (the boiling point of water is 212 degrees Fahrenheit). You cannot prevent that kind of heat from causing some harm to hair. Could you imagine protecting skin from that kind of heat with a hair-care product? If you can’t do it for skin, you can’t do it for hair. Silicone in hair care products can help a little, but mostly they just make hair feel healthy and silky.

Speaking of silicone, it is not bad or dangerous for hair, quite the contrary, it’s brilliant for hair and different forms show up in over 80% of all hair care products in all price ranges!
I cannot tell you how many times I run into the silicones-are-evil claim from hair-care brands and when my team and I check the ingredient lists, sure enough, there’s one or more forma of silicone in the products. It’s a classic example of hair-care double talk and trying to sell products based on what they don’t contain even when they do, in fact, contain the very ingredients the company alleges are terrible for your hair.

Sun is damaging for hair causing hair to degrade and hair color to fade. Unfortunately there are no hair-care products that can protect hair from sun damage. The FDA does not allow hair-care products to have a Sun Protection Factor (SPF) rating because there is no reliable or consistent way to keep the necessary protective ingredients (which can be kept on and do protect skin) attached to the hair shaft (Source: www.fda.gov). Rinsing, styling, and brushing hair removes or degrades sunscreen ingredients so the protection is either nonexistent or short-lived. The only sure-fire way to protect your hair from sun damage is to wear a hat! Until there is a way to keep these ingredients on the hair and assign an SPF rating for hair-care products, the claims about sun protection are fraudulent and completely unreliable.

Pricy specialty treatment conditioners in salons are a complete waste of money. There are no special or unique ingredients in these products! They are just conditioners; compare the ingredients and you’ll see! Stop getting sucked into adding to your salon bill by getting one of these “treatments”.

When a model’s hair looks beautiful in an ad or on television, it is never simply because of the products being advertised! And notice that products in all price ranges are advertised the exact same way! And when you leave the salon your hair looks beautiful because of your stylist, not the products you decided to buy while you were there.

There is no such thing as an all-natural hair-care product. Even ingredients derived from natural sources such as coconut, palm trees, silk, wheat, milk, or soy do not retain their “natural” composition once they are processed and altered to be a cleansing or conditioning agent. Natural ingredients, particularly vitamins, minerals, and plant extracts, cannot clean hair, cling to hair, or perform any function of conditioning or styling. Plus, because hair is not alive these ingredients can’t function the same as they can on skin. The ingredients that hold hair in place or make hair so you can get a comb through it or make it feel repaired, and on and on are anything but natural. And beyond that, plenty of natural ingredients turn out to be problematic for the hair and scalp, while there are lots of synthetic ingredients you do not want to go without.

Changing hair color from dark to light is always damaging and no matter what you do it will always end up feeling like straw and looking frizzy. It takes a lot of effort and styling to make it look healthy, but once you wash it, it’s right back where it was.

Salon hair dyes are not better formulated then drugstore versions. What it takes to dye hair, the chemistry and ingredients are the same regardless of the name on the product or the claims. One is not better for hair then the other. There are horror stories from both the salon and the drugstore sides of the color world (I’ve experienced a few myself). What a great hairstylist can do is custom-blend a color for you, but it still doesn’t mean your hair will end up being the exact color you want.

Perms or hair dyes claiming they don’t contain ammonia are NOT gentler on the hair. Ingredients that work the same way (meaning damaging) are used instead they just don’t have the same odor ammonia does!

Hair-care advertisements may be alluring and interesting, but they are ads, not documentaries. Just because the ads are sensual doesn’t mean the products featured in the ads are, and it doesn’t mean they’ll make you more sensual. Accept seductive ads for what they are—seductive ads, not reliable sources of facts.

There are many reasons why women can suffer through hair loss but anywhere between 20% and 50% of women are affected by “male pattern baldness” they just lose their hair differently (diffuse lost versus front to back or from the center out). The only proven way to deal with this is minoxidil (aka Rogaine, but available generically for less money). The other products claiming they stop loss are NOT telling the truth and many of these “systems” actually contain minoxidil!

Never use a curling iron on wet or damp hair. The heat from a curling iron can easily exceed the boiling point of water. The water content inside the hair shaft can actually boil if you apply a hot curling iron to it, and cause serious breakage and damage in that spot.

Wet or damp hair is more vulnerable to losing its shape. It is best to blow your hair all the way dry and not leave any wetness, not even a little. Unless partial natural movement is what you are after, blow the entire head completely dry in order to keep the style in for as long as possible.

Avoid backcombing or teasing hair. It is damaging, plain and simple, and there is no way around this one.