and how do these 3 in 1 products fit in?
In: Chemistry
Shower gel and shampoo are both the same in the way clothing is all the same.
Clothes all cover your body. Different kinds are made in different ways to cover certain body parts. You *can* use a shirt as a skirt, but not quite as easily/well as using a skirt as a skirt.
So shampoos and shower gels both use surfactants to clean you. (Think basically soap, but there is technically a difference). Certain surfactants are great at cleaning skin, but would be way too rough on hair. And surfactants that are good at cleaning hair aren’t always great at cleaning skin.
As for 3-in-1, they pick a surfactant that is a good middle ground. They aren’t as good at hair as shampoo surfactants, but they’re better at hair than shower gel surfactants. They aren’t as good on skin as shower gel, but they’re better than shampoo.
There is also the ingredients outside of the surfactant. Shampoos have a bit of conditioning in them, ingredients that stay on the hair to make it soft. Those same ingredients would sit on the skin and be kinda filmy. And shampoos have ingredients to adjust pH. The wrong pH on hair makes problems. Shower gel is the wrong pH for hair.
And again for 3-in-1, they strike a middle ground. You won’t get some of the extra ingredients of a shampoo or shower gel, because the ones good for hair are bad for skin, and vice versa.
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