Thickening Shampoo

Let's be honest about who buys this: you're not in denial, you're not quite at the 'ordering a hair system from AliExpress' stage, but you've started angling the bathroom mirror differently in the morning. Hims' Thickening Shampoo is for that guy — the early-stage softmaxxer who's noticed the hairline doing something unwelcome and wants a first-line intervention that doesn't require a consultation, a prescription, or explaining to your GP why you've been on looksmaxxing Reddit. It's a shampoo, not a miracle. That's the pitch.

The formula leads with saw palmetto, a DHT-blocking plant extract that has some actual peer-reviewed evidence behind it — a 2002 study in the Journal of Alternative and Complementary Medicine found it produced improvements in around 60% of male participants with androgenetic alopecia, versus 11% in the placebo group. That's not nothing, though the caveat is that topical application via a rinse-off shampoo leaves contact time short enough that efficacy likely drops compared to leave-in treatments. Biotin is here too, which is largely cope for anyone without an actual biotin deficiency (most men aren't deficient), but it's cheap to include and the TikTok crowd expects it. The caffeine is more interesting — there's reasonable evidence it can stimulate hair follicles at the scalp level with even brief contact, and Hims uses it at a meaningful enough concentration that it's not purely decorative. The formula is also free of sulfates and parabens, which won't thicken your hair but will stop you stripping the scalp of oils it needs if you're washing daily.

In terms of real-world performance: don't expect to see anything dramatic in the first two weeks. Users consistently report that the texture benefit — hair feeling fuller, strands appearing slightly thicker due to the volumising agents — shows up fairly quickly, within the first few washes. The actual scalp health and shedding reduction story takes longer; realistically you're looking at eight to twelve weeks of consistent daily use before you can honestly assess whether it's doing anything structural. Against benchmarks: it performs comparably to Nioxin System 2 Cleanser (roughly $25 for the same size), which has been the category standard for years, and outperforms Alpecin Caffeine Shampoo on texture and scent without being obviously better on the caffeine delivery. It doesn't touch Kérastase Densifique Bain Densité for the experience, but that's £38 a bottle and you're largely paying for the smell and the French.

At around $20-25 for a standard bottle through the Hims subscription, the cost is reasonable — slightly above drugstore but below the premium salon tier. The subscription model is mildly annoying in the way all subscription models are mildly annoying; you can buy it one-off but the pricing incentivises locking in. Worth being aware that Hims' business model is built on getting you into their ecosystem, so treat the shampoo as a standalone purchase and evaluate it as such rather than a gateway to a $90-a-month hair loss stack. The shampoo alone won't stop significant androgenetic alopecia — that's what minoxidil and finasteride are for, and no amount of saw palmetto rinsed out after two minutes will substitute.

Jamie's verdict: it's a genuine-lever product in the narrow sense that it does what a thickening shampoo should do, uses ingredients with actual rationale rather than marketing fiction, and isn't embarrassingly overpriced. If you're already using a basic shampoo and doing nothing else for your hair, this is a meaningful upgrade. If you're expecting it to reverse three years of receding, you're in cope territory and you know it. Use it, be patient, lower your expectations to a realistic altitude, and consider pairing it with a proper topical treatment if the thinning is genuinely progressing.