More About My Hair

[marcmagus]

[If this is too frequent/uninteresting, feel free to filter these posts out on the "hair" tag if your aggregator allows it. If it doesn't, complain to the manufacturers for giving you a crap product.]

I've spent much of the last couple of days reading around at CurlTalk and learning more about how curly hair works and how the whole CurlyGirl/no-poo thing works from a chemistry perspective.

One thing that kind of jumped out at me as I was reading was that most of the basic hair care regimens suggested sounded like they'd be less stress on my arms than all the brushing and combing I've been doing, so I'm going to start experimenting.

Yesterday I walked to CVS and got a cheap ($0.06 due to luck and a kind cashier) bottle of VO5 Free Me Freesia conditioner. This morning I washed my scalp and hair with it thoroughly, put a bit more in, rinsed with dilute vinegar, squeezed out most of the water, and gathered things up on top of my head with a T-shirt for a couple hours to dry out of the way while I went about my business.

I know I'm probably going to have to look into some sort of finishing product to hold things together and prevent the top from lifting off and frizzing, but two things dissuaded me from doing so yet. The main one was that I was kind of paralyzed by indecision looking at shelves and shelves of options (and the product mosephine kindly recommended wasn't carried). The second is that by only introducing one new product to my routine, I can kind of get a sense of what and how much it does on its own before adding something else in. Yay data.

So, this is what I've got, about half an hour after letting it out of the shirt. Not sure how I feel about it, but it's definitely . . . different.

My camera, having lost power when I unplugged it over the last couple of days, randomly decided to step the resolution up to 1024x768, so that's what you get.

Note this is no more than three hours after shaving. My facial hair is a source of much frustration, which has convinced me I don't want to go for a smooth bald shaved head, even though I think my skull might have interesting enough features to pull it off.

Comments

[miintikwa]

I may have read it, but link me! I am curious to see what it says.

I did a lot of research and messing around while trying to find the "right" treatments for my hair (speaking of-- have you read about the coconut milk conditioning treatment?), and my hair actually does *better* with silicones. I tried a silicone free shampoo and conditioner for two weeks, and my hair was a WRECK at the end of it. I couldn't even run a comb through it. I know that the one site I read said things would get worse before they got better, but my hair was dry and breaking. So I went back to the silicones and my hair went back to being easily managed.

I find it fascinating the different results people have with this type of stuff! :)

[marcmagus]

As barometry pointed out, the CurlTalk forum is a great reference. Particularly some posts in the newbies forum.

I found the explanations at Live Curly, Live Free (that page and those which follow) particularly helpful, as it gets into the why of it all. I always feel better following advice when I have enough information that it makes sense in my head.

(The gist is that the combination of silicone sealants and sulfite detergents works, but in a kind of over-the-top way that leaves you really dependent on continuing to use them in alternation. Dropping them would give the "worse before better" effect [I was lucky; I dropped everything except the occasional acid wash a while ago, so I don't have to go through that]. Dropping only one would probably result in a mess (immediately if you dropped the silicone but not the sulfites, in a few weeks if you did it the other way around).)

[miintikwa]

Interesting! Thank you. I'll look at it. I've been thinking of going to the Ion curly shampoo-- I tried it a while back and it was amazing-- because I think it doesn't have the silicones. I'll have to check my current shampoo to see if it has them.

I switched, recently, from a protein-based shampoo and conditioning treatment to a moisture based one, and it's made a lot of difference, but the conditioning doesn't stick around. The day I wash my hair, it's great. Smooth and curly. The next day, it's a frizzy mess again. I'm still searching for something that will help for more than a day.