Chemistry of your hair: The hair strand – the cuticle (updated 2023)

The cuticle is the part of the hair that probably concerns us the most on a day to day basis. When our hair emerges from our scalp, it has about 6 to 10 layers of cuticle about 50 micrometres on a side and about 0.5 micrometres thick. The cuticle is attached to the cortex and...

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Emollients you will love: Babassu oil (INCI Orbygnia Oleifera (Babassu) Seed Oil) – updated October 2022

If you’ve spent any time on the blog, you’ll know how much I love love babassu oil! Let’s take a look at this gorgeous solid oil! Yes, babassu oil (INCI Orbygnia Oleifera (Babassu) Seed Oil) is a semi-solid, white oil that’s solid at room temperature, but melts at 24˚C (76˚F), which which means it will...

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Triglycerides: Why coconut oil & shea butter don’t mix! Part two!

Welcome back to this short, introductory series on the importance of triglycerides, heat, and choosing our ingredients wisely. In yesterday’s post, we looked at fatty acids and triglycerides, the importance of temperature, and why we need to be using a thermometer all the time when we’re formulating instead of guessing by touching or observing the...

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Triglycerides: Why coconut oil & shea butter don’t mix! Part one!

In our short series on the “terrible recipe” for a pumpkin spice anhydrous body butter with actual pumpkin puree and in the post on making a lovely pumpkin spice themed body butter without pumpkin puree, I mentioned that I wouldn’t use coconut oil in an anhydrous product like these with shea butter because they don’t...

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Q&A: Why can this company include water in their sugar scrubs? Why doesn’t it dissolve the sugar? (Updated June 2022)

In this month’s Q&A, Sehrish asked, I want to know that as it is said in sugar body scrub we should not add water based ingredient. So how tree hut’s body scrub is made i am just curious that how it is made in the ingredients list there are sugar, glycerine, poly 20, aqua, oil based ingredients...

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