You left the salon with a bag of goodies that your stylist swore you could not live without, and now you wonder if what they sold you is nothing more than well packaged snake oil. The simple answer is that salon products are for the most part better than the products sold at your local grocer, but that is only the simple answer to a rather complex question. 1. What makes salon products better than over the counter products? Ingredients. When you examine the ingredient list on a bottle of shampoo, what you see listed first is what there is most of in the bottle, and so on until the end of the list which is what there is least of in the bottle.

The first ingredient will usually be water and the last ingredient is often a dye. Toward the top of the list you will notice an ingredient such as ammonium laurel sulfate, sodium laurel sulfate, or sodium laureth sulfate.

These are surfactants. Their purpose is to make water wetter, or to put it differently, to help the cleaning agents lather. A surfactant can also be a cleaning agent in and of itself. Salon products contain gentler surfactants than your store bought shampoo.

You will then see some conditioning agents listed. Your salon shampoo should contain higher quality protein based conditioners or moisturizing conditioners, thus enabling the conditioner to penetrate deeper into the hair shaft and lock in moisture. These quality ingredients contribute to the cost of the product and is why they are not typically found in store bought products.

The remaining ingredients are usually just consumer appeal ingredients, or what we call 'fluff'. These contribute toward color, aroma, and consumer buzz words such as honey and aloe.

Although it is true that honey can have beneficial affects on your hair, it is very unlikely that it can do anything in the quantity available in the bottle. Honey is added as an ingredient to appeal to your idea of what is good, whether it is based on scientific fact or not. Aloe is nothing more than water unless it is stabilized aloe. They also add the great smell.

Lastly, a few ingredients are stabilizers and preservatives, but the most important ingredient to keep your eye on is the surfactant. We prefer the sodium laureth sulfate. It is the gentlest of the surfactants but will lather very little which is why most shampoos will not ever use it. Consumers believe their hair isn't getting clean unless there are tons of bubbles. In truth lather has no beneficial affect and contributes little to good cleaning.

Of late there have been rumors making their way about the Internet that sodium laureth sulfate causes cancer. To the best of our knowledge this is pure bunk. In all likelihood this rumor was circulated by over the counter manufacturers to combat salon products taking an ever greater hold on consumer preference. To the contrary, it is our opinion that the sodium laureth sulfate is infinitely safer than the ammonium laurel sulfate which is usually found in the cheaper brands.

2. Which is the best product line? Salon products vary in their quality and many product lines were built around only a few exceptional products, with the remainder being only average. To address this problem it should behoove a salon to carry a good variety of product lines to address the needs of all its clients.

The rest is a matter of consumer preference to aroma, color and packaging. Our current personal favorites are, Paul Mitchell, Redken, Wella, American Crew, Rusk, and Mizani for African American hair, but there are many, many more good lines.

3. I bought the salon products and they didn't work, or they worked for awhile and then didn't work anymore. What's up with that? Sadly, very few stylists know anything about ingredients, (or for that matter the manufacturer reps), and what they do know is what the manufacturers have told them, which is to say the least questionable data possible.

In our salon we list two common ingredients on the back board once every week and stylists are expected to learn what their benefits and detriments are. Stylists are then quizzed on these ingredients on a regular basis. You might want to recommend to your salon that they do the same. Hair is 90% science, and 10% creativity.

If your products didn't work at all for you, chances are your stylist prescribed the wrong product for your hair. This is not a reflection on the product itself, but of the stylist or the salon.

If the product worked at first but then stopped working after a few months, chances are that the climate changed. Products that are right for you during one season are not always the best during another. For example, using a hairspray for humidity.

4. What about salons that carry only one line? Unless the salon is owned by someone like Robert Cromeans, who is the artistic director for Paul Mitchell, and thus understandably only carries the one line, I frown on what we call "concept" salons.

A salon should never be a slave to a manufacturer. When a salon does this they are more concerned about what is good for the manufacturer than what is good for the client.

5. My salon has put me on a line of pure organic products, is that good? Yes, its great, but unless they actually blended the products right there from fresh ingredients, its also bull hooey. You simply cannot create a store line without preservatives. The ingredients would spoil way before the product made it onto the shelf.

Some over the counter products are just plain bad for your hair. In our opinion just a few of these are, "Pantene" which can leave heavy deposits on your hair of a silicon like substance that will eventually cause static hair and hair breakage, and we discourage any and all of the non-prescription type "dandruff" shampoos.

Almost nobody has clinical dandruff, and those who do need prescription medication. Dandruff is not flakes. Flakes are caused by dry scalp, not dandruff. The dandruff shampoo industry has made billions convincing Americans that they actually have dandruff. Dandruff is like a yellow or gray oily powder and clumps together in little balls, not flakes. If you use a good shampoo and conditioner, your scalp will soon stop flaking. I know. I used to be a diehard "Head & Shoulders" user.

Hopefully this gave you some insight into the salon product world and all of the traps out there to get your money.