

by: Better Not Younger May 30, 2020 4 min read
Thickening and volumizing — Many beauty magazines and advertisers use the terms synonymously when referencing shampoos, but are they the same?
There is a definitional difference between volumizing and thickening:
How do these definitions apply to your hair and, more importantly, to the shampoo you use? By and large, volumizing shampoo concerns your entire head of hair while thickening shampoo treats your hair strands.
What is the difference between thickening and volumizing shampoos? Maybe it is how each shampoo cares for your thin, fine, aging hair biology.
Your hair follicles are a tube-shaped structure in the outer layer of your scalp and determine the density of your hair strands. Your hair begins life at the bottom of your hair follicle. Your hair root is constructed of protein cells and is sustained by blood vessels nearby. Hair grows out of the skin as more cells form. Nearby sebaceous glands create sebum oil which conditions your skin and hair.
In their younger years, women have about 80,000-120,000 hairs on their heads, and they usually lose about 100 each day. As you age, less blood reaches your follicles, your glands produce less sebum, and follicles go dormant. The amount of hair you lose each day goes way up, causing:
Furthermore, your still-active follicles contract producing:
Thickening shampoo is meant to eliminate hair gaps by thickening hair strands. While some products include ingredients that promote hair growth, most of them work by creating the illusion of thickness by temporarily plumping up the strands.
Some thickening shampoos aim to solve your thin hair woes by infusing your locks and scalp with a protein and vitamin to wick in moisture for added width. Other shampoo companies use polymer ingredients to achieve the same effect. After rinsing away the shampoo, the coat left behind makes your strands look and feel more expansive.
Many women suffer disappointment in their thickening shampoo because they may be unsure of why it does not work.
Like all good things, they come to an end. The thickening layers only stay on until your next shower. If you continue to use these products, the polymer coatings can build up on your hair over time, exacerbating your fine hair’s flatness by packing on weight and tapering bounce.
To restore your hair to its pre-polymer glory, you will need clarifying shampoo to strip away the residue. Unfortunately, the heavy sulfates in clarifying shampoo can abrade and weaken your aging hair’s already fine structure, causing dull, lifeless hair, plagued with split-ends and breakage.
A protein called keratin makes up 90% of your hair; the main ingredients in some thickening shampoos are keratin and a B-5 vitamin called panthenol. These two ingredients work in tandem to thicken your hair.
Keratin bolsters and protects your hairs' outer cuticle layer while the B-5 permeates your scalp to generate and attract moisture. Boosted moisture equals bloated strands; however, fine hair has a limit to the amount it can swell, meaning it may not work on your fine and thinning locks, leaving more exposed scalp than you would like.
Rather than bulking the width of your hair, volumizing shampoos produce lift. Your tapered locks tend to lay flat, so fullness is attained by adding three-dimensional body and boosting your hair from the roots.
Volume starts at the roots, so volumizing shampoo targets your scalp, follicles, and the base of your hair shafts. Build-up and residue are minimized, providing your hair with bounce and buoyancy.
Many shampoos use harsh sulfates and heavy ingredients that dry out your fine hair and inflame your scalp. Aging changes compound these complexities, leaving you with brittle, thinning hair, prone to breakage.
Volumizing shampoos incorporate ingredients to enhance follicle structure, maximize lift, and clean without leaving residue build-up. For long-term volume, choose Better Not Younger’s Wake Up Call Volumizing Shampoo, formulated for your fine hair’s changing physiology with ingredients like:
Follow your shampoo regiment with Better Not Younger’s Wake Up Call Volumizing Conditioner and Lift Me Up Hair Thickener spray to lock in extra volume.
The nuance between thickening and volumizing shampoos relates to the challenges each is trying to solve. Thickening shampoos create temporary density by swelling strands with polymers and other ingredients.
Shampoos like Better Not Younger’s Wake Up Call Volumizing Shampoo gives you lasting volume and thickness and gently cleanses your hair without harming your delicate cuticles.
Check out our wide variety of sulfate- and paraben-free products on our Better Not Younger Shop page.
Leave your comments below: