June 5th, 2024

Amika Haircare Finds New Ways To Perk Up Hair This Summer

I confess, I love dry shampoo. It’s the perfect antidote to keeping your hair looking fresh without washing every day. Everyone is different, but as a woman in the beginning stages of menopause, if I were to wash my hair everyday, the shampoo would strip out all of the important oils and leave my scalp in a dry, irritated state. Add the fact that I regularly see my hair stylist to have her put in color treatments, which we all know fade with frequent washing and styling, using products containing sulfates, added salts, and even alcohols, exposure to sunlight, UVA and UVB rays, and even minerals in your water. So I may shower everyday, but leave my “hair care days” to the days when I also exercise. What makes Amika dry shampoo so popular is it’s enriched with ingredients like sea buckthorn berry and rice starch- not aluminum or talc powder. (Original Perk Up) Amika’s Perk Up Plus adds ingredients buckthorn berry, arrowroot powder and mandelic acid (an AHA to balance the scalp) to it’s ingredient deck.

For an aesthetician who specializes in oncology and autoimmune disorders within the scope of skincare, I can truly appreciate a talc free dry shampoo. As we know talc has become an ingredient that is considered highly controversial. This became known in the mainstream news when a stage III ovarian cancer survivor sued the baby powder company Johnson & Johnson citing the links between ovarian cancer and long term talc powder use.

Johnson and Johnson’s subsidiary LLT Management LLC has agreed to pay $6.475 billion to settle current and future claims that its talc-based products caused ovarian cancer. This is an attempt to try and resolve nearly 54,000 talc cases still awaiting trial against the company. Its important to note that J&J stopped selling talc powder products in 2020 in the US, and globally in 2022. (1)

Studies for the last 25 years have in fact, shown a relation between use of talc powder and ovarian cancer. (2)

Knowing this, it’s easy to understand why Amika dry shampoo is so popular. It may be a higher price than other box store brands, but there is no doubt that it’s a product that I feel is safer for my clients and myself. Testing also showed that in addition to there not having any talc or aluminum in the ingredient decks, there was also no 1,4-dioxane and benzene, both known carcinogens. (3)

In 2022 Valisure, a New Haven, Connecticut-based analytical laboratory, tested and found unacceptable levels of benzene in 34 brands of dry shampoo and found 70% of the 34 contained benzene. Not Your Mother’s, Batiste, Sun Bum, and John Paul Mitchell Systems dry shampoo brands were affected. Unilever (parent company) recalled it’s brands Dove, Tresemme, Suave, Bed Head, and Rockaholic dry shampoos from shelves. (4) In November 2022, Amika released a statement of their testing, showing that all Amika in-market aerosols were batch tested for benzene content, all of which came back with no detectable benzene (down to 0.1 parts per million (ppm). Which again, just strengthens my brand loyalty to them.

It’s a perfect compliment to the two they already have in the product line. So which one is best for you?

Original Perk Up 5.3oz $28.00

Original Perk Up 1.8oz $15.00

Original Perk Up Travel Size (Bliss Bucks Item) 0.75oz $8.00

Perk Up Ultra 5.3oz $30.00

Perk Up Ultra 1.8oz $16.00

Perk Up Plus 5.3oz $30.00

Perk Up Plus 1.8oz $16.00

*Pricing to change per manufacturer price changes

Resources & Research

https://www.asbestos.com/news/2024/05/07/jj-to-settle-ovarian-cancer-lawsuits https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3621109

https://loveamika.com/blogs/the-strand/amikas-safety-testing-results-published

https://time.com/6227492/dry-shampoo-benzene-cancer