Weird Product Wednesday: Afro Detangler

What smells pretty, is a popular leave-in among curly heads, and is only sold by the half-gallon? Why, it's Afro Detangler!

This product is yet another one that sort of slipped by me until throngs of people were using it. I finally looked up, said "Huh? Wha'd I miss?" and asked kathymack for a sample. Because ain't no way I was going to shell out $49 for a product I'd never tried. And that's some kinda confidence, don't you think, for a company to sell a product only in an impossibly large container? Based on the raves at NC.com, though, maybe that confidence is justified.





Plus, who the hell needs a product that takes up as much space as a half-gallon of milk?





Now, even though I am a bit of a lemming when it comes to product experimentation, I did want to see what was in this stuff before I committed even to a sample. Here are the ingredients:

Active Ingredients: water, avocado/mango/shea butter, vitamin E, avocado oil, lecithin, green tea extract, orange extract, CitroZine™ (Organic) as a preservative, natural fragrance.

"Well, that's a pretty nice list," I thought, eyebrows raised in interest as I PayPaled kathymack for a sample. I love avocado oil and shea butter as nighttime treatments (I sleep in one of them or coconut oil every night). Vitamin E is a known moisturizer and anti-oxidant for hair. And I didn't see anything on that list that I didn't understand, so I went ahead and ordered.

It smells very pretty indeed. Not overpowering or weird, just pretty. And if I didn't have fine hair, I think I would be in love with this product.

But alas, I do have fine hair, and all those oils make my clumps skinny. I like my clumps fat.

Thick, coarse hair is bound to love Afro-Detangler, and probably medium hair will, too. And although it did not weigh my hair down as I suspected it might, it did react on my hair like straight oil does, and that is to give me many smaller curls instead of fewer big curls.

Does anyone else experience this with products containing oils? I don't know the science behind the phenomenon but I do know that although my hair feels conditioned and soft with a small amount of the right kind of oils, it also separates into a bijillion curls. I guess that would be okay if that's the look I was going for, but most days, that isn't what I want.

Also, Afro-Detangler absorbed into my hair very quickly, as if it contained aloe vera. I wonder what ingredient made it do that?

So, I don't dislike this product at all. In fact, if it came in a container that didn't require two hands to wield, I'd probably buy some to use on occasion because it does condition beautifully and I can see why people would love it as a leave-in. For me, though, it just doesn't deliver the kind of curls I like.

So what do you think? Do you love it? What does it do for you?

What to use in cold weather

A couple of months ago, I wrote about cold-weather hair care. I had a few product recommendations, but mostly I wrote in general terms about which ingredients to seek out and which to avoid.

But because I know that a lot of you don't want to be bothered reading labels and pretending to be a scientist, I'm going to make your life easier. I'm going to ask some other curlies to offer their suggestions about what products have worked for them!

I'll begin with myself, mostly because I am the easiest for me to contact.

I live in San Francisco, where dew points don't vary nearly as much as they do in other parts of the country (or the world, for that matter). Dew points here are in the 40s for most of the year, although in the winter there are probably a few weeks where they dip into the 30s. And at unpredictable times, there are days where the dew point creeps up over 50.

But last Christmas, I found myself in New England, where the dew point never went above 20. I was pretty frightened, I don't mind telling you -- I had no clue whether my theories about what would work for my hair would actually prove out. I packed Karen's Body Beautiful's Super Silky, which has no glycerin. I figured I'd use it as a curl creme.

Well, I used it that way and got some very pretty curls (see photo -- but know that the curls were prettier in person). But what amazed me even more was the way I could squeeze a bit into my palms, scrunch it into dry hair, and watch my hair perk up at midday when the dry air started to take its toll. I was very impressed with Super Silky and highly recommend it for cold weather!

But you know what? Not everybody's hair is the same. I know, it's shocking. So I thought it might be fun to ask some other curlies what they use when the dew point is the same as one's dress size. I turned to the fabulous Nikki, of Curly Nikki blog fame, who knows a thing or two about hair -- especially her own! Can you believe how gorgeous this woman's hair is?

"My go-to ingredient/product is Shea Butter, of course! I truly believe that this mystical butter has single-handedly saved my ends from splitting and breaking off during the harsh winter season. I style my hair twice a week (twist-n-curl) using rich water-based conditioners to moisturize (DevaCurl OneCondition + Jessicurl Weekly Deep Treatment), and Shea butter to seal the goodness in. I also touch up 2-3 day old hair with Shea- it de-frizzes and somehow moisturizes! I also like that the weight of it prevents extra shrinkiness. I hope to continue my love affair with Shea Butter well into the summer."

If you're wondering about quantities, Nikki uses a pea size amount, melts it between her palms and applies it to the ends of each curl with her fingers. She calls it, "tedious, but effective."

And so I'm closing with one more photo of her to-die-for locks. Just amazing.

Tune in tomorrow, when I will be posting yet another curly's secret product for cold-weather hair beauty...

And the winner is ... coconut oil!

Playing with my oil sampler has been one of the more revealing experiments I've conducted. Different women on the boards at naturallycurly.com swear by different oils. Jojoba is supposedly the most similar to human hair and skin. Neem is praised by some. Others swear by olive oil (and I like it, too). When I read (at the Beauty Brains) that only coconut oil actually penetrated the hair and got to the core, I had to try it.

And by god, those Beauty Brains are right. Coconut oil has become my very favorite oil.

It's light, odorless, and from what I can see, is also helping my hair to curl more (healthy curly hair will do that!). I bought the version that's kinda hard but melts at 76 degrees Fahrenheit -- you have to melt it in your hands, but it melts very easily. I'm loving this stuff and use it just about every night now.

Runner-up in the oil contest is avocado oil. Also very light and odorless, avocado seems to be fairly well absorbed into my hair, too, but it's not quite as perfect as coconut. But really -- it's close.

And what of the shea butter, you're wondering? Well, that's still good and in fact I'm using it tonight. I think, however, that it's a little too heavy to use on my hair every night. I don't use much at all, but still ... I notice a wee bit of buildup if I use it consistently. By buildup, I mean that it weighs my hair down a little. Nothing major but in comparison with the coconut oil, well, there is no comparison!

Nighttime treatments

Although I have no head for science, I really do wish I were a scientist. Then maybe I could tackle the perplexing question: Why does everyone's hair react differently to products and treatments?

I have 3a hair. It's thin but there's a decent amount of it, so people often think I have thick hair. But it gets weighed down easily so I do have to watch how much oil I put in my hair.

Or so I thought!

The shea butter experiment continues to yield terrific results. And this surprises me because most of the shea butter proponents at naturallycurly.com have thicker, curlier, coarser hair than I. But then, maybe I am just using the right amount for my hair.... When I scrunch a dime-size amount of this stuff into my hair at night, I have great curls the next day. I don't even co-wash it out -- I just condition my hair like normal.

I used to sleep in Too Shea once a week or once every two weeks, but I haven't done that in at least a month. The shea butter treatment seems to do the job just as well, and I don't have to rinse it out before taking my crack-of-dawn daily walk, like I would have to do with conditioner.

I have also started experimenting with oils. I found this fabulous oil sampler at Oils by Nature and got Avocado, Coconut, Rice Bran, Sweet Almond Oil, and Apricot Kernel Oil. I haven't tried the almond or apricot yet, but I am very happy with the avocado and coconut. The rice bran, I'm still not sure about. Again, the amount is key. For me, coating my hands and scrunching it in seems to be the way to go. The avocado oil in particular left my hair soft and curly, and gave me great curls the morning after.

I just find it very interesting that any of this works for me, because my first experience with oil was with Jessicurl's Oil Blend. Now, that has coconut, jojoba, and avocado -- so you'd *think* I'd like it! But no matter how I used that stuff, my hair looked awful: flat, frizzy, not curly. I am now inclined to believe that my hair doesn't care for jojoba oil.

Another nighttime treatment that I really like is plain ol' olive oil!

It's fun to experiment with all of this. Have you got oils or nighttime treatments that work really well for you? I'd love to hear about them.

Shea butter

You know, aloe vera is not the only thing I like to feed my hair.

Over the past few months, I've noticed that my hair responds well to Too Shea conditioner and Shea Moisture Leave-in. So, I recently decided to buy some unrefined shea butter to see if my hair will respond well to it.

Why unrefined, you wonder? Good question! Just like with food, you want to use shea butter that has undergone as little processing and adulteration as possible to preserve its natural gifts. To quote from the Agbanga Karite site:

...refined shea butter has usually been extracted from the shea kernels with hexane or other petroleum solvents. The extracted oil is boiled to drive off the toxic solvents, and then refined, bleached, and deodorized, which involves heating it to over 400 degree F and the use of harsh chemicals, such as sodium hydroxide. Shea butter extracted in this manner still contains some undesirable solvent residues, and its healing values are significantly reduced. Antioxidants or preservatives such as BHA (butylated hydroxyanisole) or BHT (butylated hydroxytoluene) may be added as well. The end result is an odorless, white butter that may be aesthetically appealing, but lacks the true moisturizing, healing, and nutritive properties of true traditional shea butter. In addition, refined shea butter is often hard and grainy, not smooth and creamy like pure, unrefined shea butter. All that can be said for refined shea butter is that it has an extended shelf life, a white, uniform color, and no odor.

I ordered mine from Shea Terra Organics (because I got a money-off coupon!). The smell ain't great, but then, I wasn't really expecting it to be -- I'd read enough to know that it doesn't smell all yummy like refined shea often does. I also learned that the aroma of shea butter varies depending on where in Africa it is from. Mine really doesn't smell all that bad. It reminds me some kind of barbecue or oven smell. And it doesn't linger, which is good.

I was really excited when it arrived today. After dinner, I rubbed about a dime-size worth of it (maybe a little less) between my palms until it was very melted (almost like oil) then I grabbed handfuls of my hair and squeezed. (My hair was very curly today -- lots of fog! -- and I didn't want to disturb those curls by pulling on my hair to distribute the shea butter. I've found that the heat from my hands is often a good way to transfer product of any kind from my hands to my hair.

I didn't want to use too much of this stuff because despite my hair's affinity for shea butter in other forms, I know that it doesn't take much to weigh my fine hair down. So rather than scrunch in so much that my hair felt coated, I stopped short of that and just made sure that everything in my palm got absorbed by my hair.

You should see my hair now -- even curlier than when I started applying it! Whee!

Depending on how my hair looks tomorrow, I might make a habit of this application every night. We shall see.