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

Shea butter is a soft ivory-colored fat extracted from the nut of the African shea tree.

Benefits of Shea 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 oils and butters 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.

Cocoa vs. Shea Butter

cocoa (left), shea (right)

Cocoa butter and shea butter are not perfect substitutes. Shea butter is soft and sticky, whereas cocoa butter is hard and brittle. Cocoa butter will tend to thicken/harden a product whereas shea butter will not.

Different butters perform each of these functions to different degree therefore it is better to compare one butter to another rather than just stating what a butter does. Shea butter offers a little protection from UV light because it contains something called cinnamic acid ester.

Good Substitutes For Shea 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.

The best substitutes to shea butter are: mowrah, cupuacu and mango butter. Mango butter is less moisturising than shea butter though because it contains more tannins. 

If you use mango butter rather than shea butter in a DIY Hair Recipe you should add greasier oils to compensate for the less greasy mango butter.

---

SATURATED c.47%

• stearic acid (35-50%)
  
• palmitic acid (2-9%)
• arachidic acid (<1%)

MONOUNSATURATED c.47%

• oleic acid (40-60%)
  
• palmitoleic acid (0–2%)

POLYUNSATURATED c.6%

• linoleic acid (3-11%),
  
• Linolenic acid (<1%)

Compared to cocoa butter shea butter has a little more stearic acid, oleic acid and polyusaturated fats but about 3 times less palmitic acid. 

• Both stearic acid and oleic acid condition and protect hair by fortifying it (shea butter better than cocoa butter)
  
• Linoleic acid helps with sealing in moisture (shea butter slightly better than cocoa butter)
• Palmitic acis helps to protect the scalp by locking in moisture so it doesn't get dry (cocoa butter better than shea butter)

I do like cocoa butter but I always use it in collabo with a much softer butter. I use 15% cocoa butter in my "Soothe Me" Whipped Butter and the texture is super, super creamy.

Shea Nut

Melting Point Of Shea Butter: 37 °C (99 °F), i.e. body temperature.

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

---

​Get your FREE ebook on How To Grow Long, Healthy Natural Kinky or Curly Hair.


You might also like:
Neno Natural's DIY Hair Recipes


References: 
wikipedia.org, swiftcraftmonkey: on various butters and on shea butter (note that swift's focus is skin not hair), lush, hyperphysics, hairloss-research.org, humblebeeandme.com

---