What Is Cocoa Butter? What Are Its Benefits To Natural Hair?

Cocoa Butter is an edible pale yellow vegetable fat extracted from cocoa beans. 

Benefits of Cocoa Butter to Hair:

All butters that can be used for hair have more or less the same benefits. They:

• Nourish hair and the scalp with vitamins and minerals thereby helping to keep both healthier for longer. This nourishing feature makes oil great for treating dry, damaged and frizzy hair in hot oil treatments and for massaging the scalp. 
• Have moisture sealing properties thereby keeping hair softer for longer. However, all liquid oils (except coconut oil (which is actually solid anyway) and jojoba (which is actually a wax and not an oil)) can seal hair better than butters because they have a higher proportion of polyunsaturated fats – the type that cannot penetrate the hair cuticle.
• Penetrate the hair cuticle to fortify hair from the inside; they do this better than oils because they have a higher amount of saturated fats and monounsaturated fats.
  
• Help to boost hair’s shine but not as well as liquid oils.

Different butters perform each of these functions to a different degree. 

Compared to other butters cocoa butter is relatively hard. This means that any hair butter or moisturisers with cocoa butter will tend to get thicker or harder over time.

Good Substitutes For Cocoa Butter: 

In the cosmetics industry, seven butters are considered substitutes for each other: cocoa, illipe, kokum, sal, shea, mango and palm but they are not perfect substitutes.

Illipe is apparently considered to be the best substitute for cocoa butter because it has a very similar fatty acid profile. However, illipe contains 3 times more vitamin e (tocopherols). It also has higher phytosterol levels so illipe would be more beneficial to you than cocoa butter if your scalp is inflammed or itchy.

My research suggests that kokum and sal butter are the next best alternatives to cocoa butter. Sal butter also has a similar melting point to cocoa butter.

Fat Composition Of Cocoa Butter:

SATURATED c.60%

• stearic acid (24–37%)
  
• palmitic acid (24–30%)
  
• myristic acid, (0–4%)
  
• arachidic acid (1%)
  
• lauric acid (0–1%)
  

MONOUNSATURATED c.37%

• oleic acid (29–38%)
  
• palmitoleic acid (0–2%)
  

POLYUNSATURATED c.3%

• linoleic acid (0–4%),
  
• α-Linolenic acid (0–1%)
  

Melting Point Of Cocoa Butter: 34–38 °C (93–100 °F)

This means it will melt quite easily when you rub it in your hands to put it in your hair.

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• What Is Shea Butter? What Are Its Benefits To Natural Hair?

References: wikipedia.org, swiftcraftmonkey, 

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