A wise man (well, the father of toxicology, Paracelsus, actually) once said,
“Poison is in everything, and no thing is without poison. It’s the dosage that makes it either a poison or a remedy.”
In other words, using exactly the right amount of an ingredient is critical to achieving performance and results. We choose to spend a lot of time here at Noughty, perfecting this art and understanding exactly the right amount of each ingredient to use in each of our formulations. So what defines the right amount? First of course, a safe level. Then the effective, active level to achieve the desired performance of a specific product.
Take alcohol. Alcohol is the family containing any organic compound whose molecule contains one or more hydroxyl groups attached to a carbon atom. Now, we all love our families, right, but if we’re really honest, isn’t there always someone you’d rather spend time with more than another? The fatty alcohols (the alcohols beginning with c and s) condition the hair, so they’re positive inclusions and they are the ones we love to hang out with. So you’ll find them sprinkled liberally throughout Noughty products.
Then there are the more challenging alcohols like isopropyl alcohol. This one helps to evenly disperse the gorgeous fragrances in our products, so we can give you a lovely experience every time you open our packs. We only need to use teeny amounts of it, less than 1%, to do this. At that level, it’s too diluted to have a measureable impact on the moisture level of your hair, but boy would you notice a difference without it. After all, we all have people like that in our lives too right? You don’t see them often enough to really influence your everyday, but boy would you notice the difference if they weren’t there.
And then there’s denatured alcohol (or alcohol denat. as it appears on the INCI listing). Used too generously, this one, like isopropyl alcohol, can be drying on the hair. However, used cleverly at just the right dose, it delivers performance in a natural formulation that would otherwise have to be in the realm of silicones. Or alternatively, impossible to create.
In Noughty’s new To The Rescue Anti Frizz Serum, we want to leave important water-based actives on the hair to deliver on the heat protecting and anti-frizz performance we promise you. Five percent (a relatively small fraction of the whole formulation, we think you’ll agree) denatured alcohol enables us to evaporate off some of the water, leaving behind the actives in the hair where they can get to work on moisturising, protecting, and barrier-forming. Our formulation experts know, that used at this relatively low percentage, and working alongside the other ingredients in our formulation, there are no negative effects on the moisturisation of hair. Zero. Nought. None. A phrase we love at Noughty.
Determining the right ingredients, used at exactly the right amount to deliver on our commitment to high performance, 97% natural haircare, is just one of our Noughty choices.