Searching for high-quality scalp and hair care products can be daunting when so many ineffective brands infiltrate the market. Divi’s passion for creating our Scalp Serum for hair health led our research team to seek out the most powerful, high-quality and proven ingredients capable of working together synergistically to:
- Stimulate blood flow to the scalp
- Increase hair follicle size and inhibit follicle death
- Increase the anagen (growth) cycle of hair
- Reduce symptoms associated with various hair loss-related conditions
- Boost hair strength and shine while helping hair feel smooth and silky
So we rolled up our sleeves and researched the leading hair growth ingredients to find the most effective ones. Among the key ingredients in Divi's Scalp Serum is sodium lactate for hair growth. This article discusses how sodium lactate interacts with your body, scalp and hair follicles.
What Is Sodium Lactate?
Sodium lactate is an organic sodium salt of lactic acid, commonly used as a broad-spectrum preservative in various beauty and skincare products to regulate PH levels, reduce moisture loss, and enhance the effectiveness of preservatives. The ingredient's primary function in health-related products is to pull moisture into your skin while stabilizing and preserving the product as a buffer component.
How Is Sodium Lactate Produced?
Classified as an alpha-hydroxy acid (AHA), sodium lactate comes from the fermentation of a sugar source, like beets or corn. After fermentation, the sodium lactate compound is the result of neutralizing the lactic acid.
In commercial scenarios, most manufacturers use dairy-free products to ferment the lactic acid and create sodium lactate. Common ingredients used in production include potatoes, molasses, cornstarch, sugar, and tapioca.
Do Humans Naturally Produce Sodium Lactate?
The human body naturally produces various lactates during physical activities, including sodium lactate and potassium lactate. Many living organisms can produce sodium lactate as a by-product of glycolysis.
What Does Sodium Lactate Do to Your Body?
Sodium lactate is a humectant moisturizer that attracts water from the atmosphere to your deeper skin layers, binding it together to prevent water loss.
Your body naturally includes sodium lactate in your skin's top layers as part of the natural moisturizing factor (NMF). The NMF also contains various sugars, amino acids and electrolytes to hydrate your skin's surface. As you age, your NMF gradually depletes from years of products and cleansing agents, resulting in drier, flakier and tighter skin.
Introducing sodium lactate to your scalp through a hair serum helps replenish your skin's natural moisturizing factor and reverses the drying effects.
Where Can You Find Sodium Lactate?
You can find sodium lactate in many foods. For example, processed deli meats, yogurt, cheese, milk, breakfast cereals, rice products, seasonings, mustards, processed vegetables, and soups may contain sodium lactate to preserve the product's freshness. Unfortunately, consuming trace amounts of sodium lactate in various foods will not improve your scalp and hair health.
Instead, you need to use topical forms of sodium lactate in hair care products that offer direct absorption to your problem area. For example, Divi's Scalp Serum features sodium lactate plus a full suite of other powerful hair health ingredients that you can easily apply directly to your hair and scalp for the most targeted results.
Sodium Lactate's Properties for Hair Growth and Scalp Health
Cosmetic brands take advantage of three of sodium lactate's unique properties. Sodium lactate for hair growth can operate as a preservative enhancer, buffering agent, and humectant moisturizer.
Humectant Moisturizer
Sodium lactate’s ability to attract moisture, bind with water molecules, and draw water vapor into your skin's surface makes it an excellent moisturizer for scalp health products. Sodium lactate can increase your skin's moisture by up to 84%, making it one of the most powerful humectants.
Buffering Agent
pH refers to the level of acidity or alkalinity in any given environment. Imbalanced pH levels can harm your body in many ways and result in hair damage. One clinical study found that many popular shampoo brands contain high alkalinity levels, which can increase the negative charges on the surface of hair fibers, resulting in increased friction that causes breakage and cuticle damage.
Sodium lactate is a buffering agent in many beauty products, keeping the ingredients within a product stable in both functionality and pH.
Preservative Enhancer
Sodium lactate is a bacteriostatic agent, which prevents bacteria from reproducing. Because it doesn't kill bacteria, it's only classified as a broad-spectrum preservative, so manufacturers must use it with other ingredients for effective results. Many full-spectrum preservatives use sodium lactate to prevent microbial contamination and extend the product's shelf life.
Sodium Lactate's Therapeutic Uses for Hair and Scalp Conditions
Often, underlying scalp health conditions are to blame for your hair loss or damage. Soothing the symptoms of these conditions is an effective way to improve your hair's health. Sodium lactate can help with symptoms related to dry and itchy scalps, psoriasis, and scalp malnourishment.
Soothes Dry, Itchy Scalps
Dry scalp environments can cause itching and dandruff. Aside from these annoyances, this condition can cause increased oxidative stress that impacts hair growth and retention.
Sodium lactate's buffering agent provides anti-irritant properties capable of soothing common dry and flaky symptoms associated with various hair products.
The ingredient also has a natural moisturizing property able to hydrate dry skin to help you combat dandruff. You can find sodium lactate in many popular anti-dandruff shampoos, which are highly effective in addressing dry and flaky skin conditions.
Improves Psoriasis Symptoms
Psoriasis is a skin condition causing patches of thick, scaly, red skin across the body, including the scalp. Psoriasis increases oxidative stress and damages the scalp's environment, which can lead to temporary hair loss.
Sodium lactate's moisturizing agents can prevent skin on your scalp from generating the dry and flaky patches associated with psoriasis. The ingredient can replenish moisture levels and encourage a healthy scalp environment.
Nourishes the Scalp
Nutritional deficiencies in your diet can result in hair loss and damage. As a natural humectant, sodium lactate for hair growth helps draw more moisture to your scalp, which can replenish any necessary nutrients that your hair lacks. Improved nourishment benefits the scalp, bulbs, follicles and shafts.
The Final Verdict: Can Sodium Lactate Help With Scalp Health and Hair Growth?
Yes, sodium lactate contributes to your scalp's health and can help with hair growth if you suffer from scalp dryness or imbalanced pH levels. The ingredient's humectant moisturizer agent hydrates your scalp, improving dry skin conditions related to poor hair health. Sodium lactate's ability to act as a buffering agent may also help soothe irritations to various shampoos, conditioners, or other hair products you've used that may have contributed to hair damage.
Sodium Lactate Hair Growth Benefits
Sodium lactate supports hair growth in a few ways. By increasing your scalp's moisture, sodium lactate can boost hair elasticity, which reduces breakage and brittleness. With improved hair strength, you should enjoy thicker and more voluminous hair.
Improves Scalp Moisturization
Sodium lactate's most significant benefit is its ability to increase scalp moisture. Improved moisture contributes to two critical hair growth processes.
First, hydration improves the scalp's environment, encouraging more follicle growth. Water contains essential minerals, such as zinc, iron, copper, and calcium, that your hair needs for optimal growth conditions. Dry and irritated scalps may produce fewer new hairs than flourishing environments filled with the necessary moisture and nutrition for growth.
Second, increased moisture can improve follicle health. Such hydration can result in improved hair elasticity and reduced damage, which we'll discuss next.
Increases Hair Elasticity
Hair elasticity refers to how much the strands can stretch before they break. Poor elasticity levels can result in brittleness, increased breakage, dullness and more. Moisture is critical in improving hair elasticity as it helps seal the cuticle, so the hair's cortex can receive the hydration needed for flexible, stretchy and healthy results.
By drawing moisture to your follicles and scalp, sodium lactate stimulates cuticle hydration, improving hair elasticity. More elasticity makes your hair shinier, healthier and easier to style.
Reduces Hair Breakage and Brittleness
Increased hair elasticity directly results in reduced hair breakage and brittleness. When your hair follicles suffer from too much dryness, they can easily break, causing your hair to appear thinner, duller and frizzier. Sodium lactate improves moisture retention, which increases hair elasticity, ultimately supporting less breakage and damage.
Is Sodium Lactate Safe?
Yes, sodium lactate is safe to apply to your hair and scalp. The Cosmetic Ingredient Review Expert Panel is an independent organization which reviews common ingredients in various cosmetics and beauty products for their safety. The panel concluded that sodium lactate for hair growth is safe and shouldn't cause adverse reactions.
The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) also approves sodium lactate use in the commercial production of various foods for its preservative properties. Essentially, sodium lactate is safe to apply to your skin topically in larger concentrations.
Is Sodium Lactate Suitable for Vegans?
Yes, most sodium lactate products are suitable for vegans. Manufacturers produce sodium lactate using non-animal-derived ingredients like corn, potatoes, and sugar.
Our product, Divi’s Scalp Serum, which includes sodium lactate, is 100% vegetarian and vegan. We do not use any animal-derived products to produce our serum. We prioritize creating a clean formula with clinically-proven, cruelty-free and safe ingredients.
Who May Benefit From Sodium Lactate?
Both men and women can benefit from sodium lactate products for hair growth. Everyone experiences hair loss and damage for various environmental, genetic or condition-related reasons.
For example, men may suffer from hair loss because of the sex hormone dihydrotestosterone (DHT), which affects the hair growth cycle and potentially shortens or shrinks hair as men age. Men also frequently suffer from male-pattern balding, resulting in receding hairlines and thinning spots.
Conversely, women may experience hair loss from hormonal changes, like menstrual cycles, pregnancy, and menopause, potentially resulting in female-pattern baldness. Both sexes may suffer hair loss from various underlying conditions, such as:
- Thyroid disease
- Fungal infections
- Scalp inflammation (lichen planopilaris, lichen planus, folliculitis, etc.)
- Telogen effluvium (trauma-related hair shedding)
- Loose anagen syndrome (loose hair roots causing excess shedding)
- Alopecia
- Aging
- Iron deficiencies
While sodium lactate cannot cure the various underlying conditions related to hair loss in men and women, it can improve some related symptoms, supporting a healthier scalp biome. If you suffer from any of the above conditions, the ingredients in Divi’s Scalp Serum, including sodium lactate, can help support natural cell renewal and advanced scalp support.
How To Apply Sodium Lactate Using Divi’s Scalp Serum
The best way to enjoy the effects of sodium lactate for hair growth is with a concentrated hair serum that directs hydration to your scalp and hair follicles. Divi's Scalp Serum with sodium lactate offers potent, fast-absorbing and targeted effects. The comprehensive formula for hair growth includes clinically proven ingredients that promote thicker, healthier, and stronger hair.
To take advantage of sodium lactate using Divi’s Scalp Serum, simply apply ¾ of a dropper on top of your scalp then massage it in. You can rub the serum across your whole scalp or just the affected areas. Apply the serum once daily for at least three months for full results.
Achieve Fuller, Healthier Hair With Divi's Scalp Serum Today
Achieving fuller, healthier hair doesn't have to be complicated. At Divi, we believe everyone deserves to feel confident with luxuriously healthy locks. Our carefully designed formula includes all of the most powerful research-supported ingredients for hair growth and health, including sodium lactate, in a clean and easy-to-apply serum.
If you’re interested in sodium lactate for hair growth, purchase Divi's Scalp Serum online today, or contact us to learn more.
