Give your hair some muscle

Curlies are always trying to get as much moisture into their hair as possible. But sometimes in the frenzied search for oils, emollients, and moisture, we forget that our hair (at least 3a hair like mine) needs protein, too.

About three weeks ago, I noticed the top of my hair was looking a little flat, no matter how I would clip and dry it every day. So, last weekend, I gave myself a three-minute protein jolt with Nexxus Emergencee and BAM! What a difference! It's been a week since that treatment and my hair is still looking healthy and full.

I've also been using cassia obovata since March. At first I was using it once a month. In August, I started using it every three weeks. I still am unconvinced that it's truly doing anything. But I'm too afraid to stop! I had hoped that protein treatments wouldn't be necessary if I used cassia regularly but it looks like I need to abandon that hope. And yet, there's a little voice inside me that wonders if my hair would be even more limp if I discontinued the cassia... I'll keep using it through the end of the year, and then I will stop. We'll see if there are any effects. At least cassia is not expensive. By the way, if you're interested in trying it, you can read about it and buy it here.

But back to the glory that is protein! Don't be fooled by all the homemade treatments that recommend using raw eggs. Egg molecules are too big to penetrate hair, so applying it topically is not going to do much good. Better you should eat the egg than smear it on your head.

Using Nexxus Emergencee could not be easier. I get in the shower, get my hair wet, apply as much Emergencee as I would if I were using regular conditioner and I let it sit on my head for three minutes. I rinse it out thoroughly, and then I do a conditioner-wash. After I rinse that out, I condition my hair as normal. So, really, this routine adds about five minutes to your normal co-wash regimen. And it's totally worth it.

(By the way, the thinner your hair is, the more protein you need. Curlies with thick hair frequently find they need little to none. Why is that? I will explain in my next post!)

Let's define "curly"

Being the crankypants that I am, I get irked more easily than most. And my irk meter went off tonight when I say this slideshow on Total Beauty. It's called "Trend Alert: Curly Hairstyles."

Promising, right? Yeah, well, not really. It's the usual "here are some celebrities sporting curls they paid somebody to give them" crap. Hey, Total Beauty, here's a little dose of reality for you:

1. Most of those celebrity hairstyles are so unremarkable, it's hard to contemplate why they merit special attention

2. With the possible exception of maybe two out of the ten, they are all celebrities with straight hair who manipulated (through rollers or chemicals) it into a curly style. Maybe this helps straight-haired people embrace a new look. For a curly-haired person, however, it is as illuminating and inspiring as an interview with Sarah Palin.

3. Um, several of the styles are hardly even curly?! (Like the Gwyneth Paltrow look I've posted here.)

And of course, there's also the issue of having a hairstyle that looks great on Jennifer Lopez also looking good on the rest of us. Sure. That'll happen.

Oh, and while I'm dissing celebrities, I want to know WTF is going on in Andie MacDowell's head? For years, she was a curly icon, proudly sporting her signature hair. But now she's doing ads for L'Oreal again and suddenly, her hair is smooth and moves with the perfect swish of a rollerset. Nice, Andie. Is this a temporary change in look or have you decided that for real glamour, you have to straighten your hair?

Damn. I should go eat some chocolate. I need an attitude adjustment.

Acceptance

A few times a month, somebody compliments my curls. I am always flattered and -- because accepting compliments never comes easily to me -- invariably I then tell them that a year ago, I decided to stop fighting my curls and just accept them. That's true, of course, but there's also the part that I don't tell them, which is that I finally learned how to care for them.

So, the other day I was reading magazines in the doctor's office and I saw an American Express ad that featured designer Diane von Furstenberg. It was structured like a questionnaire and she provided answers that were designed to give readers a glimpse into her personality and outlook on life. When asked for her "epiphany moment," she wrote "The day I decided to let my hair go naturally curly."

You go, honey!

If I were thin enough, I'd buy something she designed to thank her for that.

The low-down on emollients

Sometimes I write like I know everything. But I don't.

So, the issue I raised a couple of months ago about "empty conditioners" nagged at me. If there were people who loved conditioners that were exclusively emollient-based, and had great results from them, could they be all bad? Maybe I had vilified those products unjustly. Seeking a good, scientific answer, I went to Tonya McKay, MS polymer and colloid chemist, who writes the Curl Chemist column at naturallycurly.com. Knowing she's got her hands full with a new baby, I tried to keep my questions to a minimum. She graciously answered them! Here is that interview. (And by the way, that photo is not a picture of Tonya.)

Lorraine Massey defines as good conditioner as one that contains oils, humectants, emollients, and proteins. Obviously, different conditioners have different proportions of these ingredients, and I've also noticed that some conditioners contain only one or two of them. Typically, humectants and emollients comprise many of the conditioners I see lately, and I'm thinking that that's almost like "fooling" hair into thinking it's gotten some benefit! You've written some excellent articles on humectants and I see their value, but I'm not as clear on emollients.

Jillipoo: I had always considered emollients to be the chemicals that allow other ingredients to work together and blend more easily. I also think of them as "fillers" and "smoothers," but Wikipedia says that an emollient has three components: occlusion, humectant, and lubrication. Can you define what an emollient really is, in hair product terms?

Tonya: I think you may be confusing emulsifiers with emollients, when you think of the ingredients that help other ingredients work together and blend well with one another. An emollient is the main conditioning agent (or agents) in a product. The term emollient is really more appropriate for discussion of skin care products, and the term moisturizer or conditioning agent for hair care products, but you will see them both used in the literature.

An emollient forms a protective film over the surface of hair or skin, which adds gloss and shine to the hair, protects the hair from water loss to the environment (occlusion), and helps the hairs slide easily against one another which facilitates detangling and prevents breakage and damage from tangle, and can act as humectants (but not always).

Examples of emollients would be dimethicone, Polyquaternium-10, dimethicone copolyol, amodimethicone, shea butter, jojoba oil, Cetearyl alcohols, many proteins, coconut oil, mineral oil, petrolatum, alkyl esters, etc.

Jillipoo: Can a conditioner that is entirely emollients (or emollients and humectants) truly condition the hair?

Tonya: I guess I am not sure what is meant by this question, since by definition, emollients are conditioning agents. If you wish to know if externally applied products can truly have any lasting benefit to the hair other than cosmetic enhancement and prevention of further damage, then my opinion is no. The role of conditioning agents and humectants and proteins are all to fill in the gaps where structural damage has occurred, to bring moisture into the hair or keep it in the hair, and to provide lubrication between hairs which leads to less mechanical damage from friction between hairs. Thus, they make the hair more attractive, feel softer to the fingers, and incur less damage. As it is protected by daily use, new hair can grow in and remain healthy and undamaged, so in that sense these products have true benefit.

Jillipoo: Are there some emollients that can actually have detrimental effects on hair?

Tonya: Certainly! Silicone is an emollient. Some feel that build up from the use of silicone can lead to dry, brittle hair eventually that gets damaged more easily. Also, some oils used as emollients can actually increase thermal damage to the hair if a person applies them and also uses heat styling techniques (hair dryers, hot rollers, curling irons, flat irons, etc.). Other emollients, such as fatty alcohols have been known to attract dirt to the hair, making the hair lose its luster and feel greasy.

So ... I am still not inclined to go with an emollient-only conditioner, but at least know we've all got a better perspective on what emollients are and what to expect from them!

The ol' switcheroo

When I first went CG (that's Curly Girl for you newbies), one of the first products I tried was Miss Jessie's Curly Meringue. Yes, that is an interesting choice for a white girl like me! The salon I go to had just started carrying Miss Jessie's products and my stylist felt my hair could easily benefit from Curly Meringue's magic powers. I read the label and was delighted to see that Curly Meringue contained nothing that contradicted my Curly Girl regimen.

My stylist was right. For the first time, my hair was smooth and curly. And the curls were bouncy (which I love). I noticed that the results weren't always great, but they often were, so I was happy.

And then a weird thing happened.

At the end of 2007, Miss Jessie's changed their labeling and came out with smaller sized jars of all their styling products. Well, new labels often signal ingredient changes, and sure enough, the smaller sizes listed the dreaded ingredient "parafinium liquidum" -- otherwise known as mineral oil. And it's the second ingredient, which means it figures very prominently in the product's formula.

The big jars, though, didn't appear to be changing. Several of us at naturallycurly.com wrote to Miss Jessie's to find out what gives. We all got vague, obtuse responses, none of which enlightened us at all.

Well, about a month ago, I discovered that even the big jars had been reformulated. And this annoys me for a number of reasons.

First, Miss Jessie, at the prices you charge for your products, cheap crap like mineral oil shouldn't be in the product at all. Second, how dare you just quietly change a product's formulation without any notice or disclosure to consumers? Had I plunked down another $40 for a tub of this stuff after the ingredients had been surreptitiously changed, I surely would have noticed a difference in the product's performance (mineral oil is impossible to remove without a sulfate shampoo) and I would have been out a lot of money for a product that pretended to be what I'd previously liked. I don't know about you, but I think everything about this formulation change is downright slimy. The price, the ingredient itself, the secret switch.

If you're a Miss Jessie's user and you are CG, I urge you to check the label of the product you're using. It's not likely to contain ingredients you can appreciate. Also, the company recently launched a new product called Quick Curls. You'd do best to run the other way if you are CG -- the product not only contains mineral oil but two very powerful silicones.

I don't like to badmouth a company but when they treat customers with this level of disrespect (changing ingredients without notice and incorporating lower quality ingredients to boot), I think people should be alerted.

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.