Review :: Dove Men+Care Anti Dandruff Fortifying Shampoo

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Dove Men+Care Anti Dandruff Fortifying Shampoo Review
2
  • Ingredients
  • Wash
  • Scent
  • Price

Summary

It looks good, it smells good and it cleans your hair with a really luxurious foam. However, unless you have very mild dandruff and skin like rhino hide, this isn’t the shampoo for you

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User Review
3.6 (10 votes)

buy now on Amazon Dove were a game-changing company back in the day.

Before the advent of shower gels, when everyone used soaps, we used to use a soap called Shield and occasionally Imperial Leather. These soaps tended to be full of fragrance and quite harsh on the skin.

Then the Dove beauty bar appeared and was a revelation – white, creamy and actually moisturized the face. It didn’t smell like soap either which was a massive usp for them at the time.

Here we are 30 years later and Dove are a leading brand in personal hygiene products. The heritage of Dove is based on moisturization so I was looking forward to using this shampoo, particularly as I suffer from a dry scalp as well as seb derm.

The shampoo certainly smells nice, if not a bit powerful, with a nice menthol edge to it. It also felt luxurious with thick persistent suds while I washed. My hair felt quite soft after washing, so I read the ingredients with interest.

Does it pass the Dandruff Deconstructed test?

In a word “No”.

The active ingredient in this shampoo is Zinc Pyrithione, an extremely mild anti-fungal agent that is too weak for all but the mildest cases of seb derm. Head and Shoulders, Clear Men, Red Ken and Clynol are among the shampoos that use this and to be honest, its typically a warning sign for us that the shampoo is an exercise in marketing over performance.

Checking the rest of the ingredients had us gawking in horror. For a product that is supposed to moisturize, is it really wise to use a formaldehyde releaser as a preservative (DMDM Hydointon). They preserve dead people with that stuff and it is a recognized harsh contact allergen given a red hazard warning on the skin deep database. The rest of the ingredients reads like a whose who of allergens including 2004 contact allergen of the year Cocamidopropyl Betaine, contact allergen of the year 2013 Kathon CG and two of our old favorites SLS and Fragrance.

If you have the mildest of dandruff and a scalp like a rhino hide then this shampoo may work for you. It’s certainly cheap enough but to be honest, generic zinc pyrithione shampoos will perform just as well for a smaller price.

If you are prone to allergies but have mild shampoo then our favorite zinc pyrithione shampoo by far is Dead Sea Spa Magik Mineral Shampoo.

However if you have moderate dandruff then click home to search again or click here to look at our best seb derm treatments – this stuff will simply not work for you.

Author

  • The site owner. I founded, and have ran this site for too many years now. I have extremely sensitive skin, have suffered from seb derm for all my adult life and this site is my way of doing something about it. Check out my sister site at safehouseholdcleaning.com

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2 thoughts on “Review :: Dove Men+Care Anti Dandruff Fortifying Shampoo”

  1. I have used over the counter dandruff shampoos for 20 years and this is the first one that has worked for me. When I stop using it the dandruff comes back in about 5 days and go’s away when I start using it again for 2 days. I have read your review and am aware that this shampoo is not very good for my skin. I am however very interested in why it works for me when no other shampoo has. What ingredient makes this shampoo different than all the shampoos I have used in the past?

    Reply
    • Hi JB

      Reviews are a flawed beast. I can only look at what’s in a shampoo , tell you what’s in it and give my opinion on the formulation. I can’t tell you if it works or not because we’re all different and react in different ways to different ingredients.

      What I can tell you is the active ingredient in this shampoo is Zinc Pyrithione. And I’ve listed my favorites zinc pyrithione shampoos here . But these are just MY favorites. Yours may very well be different!

      Let me know how you get on though.

      Reply

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