Post rewind again, here is a post from January of this year. http://essjay23x.wordpress.com/Have you ever had a question where no matter how many times you ask it, you never get an answer to pause your pondering? I have. Some of them I am even willing to share with you. Here is the first one and guess what? I may just have found an answer. Years of hair extensions, straightening, blow drying, travelling and drinking too little of the right things has left me with damaged and dry hair. Now (and I'm quite proud of this), it is not as damaged or dry as it used to be but I think to some extent, my hair is always going to be dry and quite possibly damaged. Every time that I go to the hairdresser, I'm reminded that conditioner is my best friend and I try, I condition and I condition. And this is where we come to my question, many conditionors such as Aussie's Three Minute Miracle say that if you leave this conditioner on for X amount of time, you will get a deep conditioning treatment. Great but I'm always looking for more and so we come to my big question! I wonder if maybe I took the recommended leave in time and multiplied by 3 or 5 even 10 before rinsing out. Would that mean I would get multiple results? Does 10 times longer equal 10 times better conditioned hair? I have spent hours sat in the house, a towel on my head. My barnet saturated in conditioner underneath and I want to know has this made any difference to my hair or has it all been just a blatent waste of time? My hair feels ok especially compared to how it used to feel. On the other hand, maybe it still would have felt ok if I'd only left the conditioners in for just the recommended time and not hours longer. Maybe the product does its work in the recommended time and then once this time is up, all the goodness has ran out and any extra time, is pointless because there is nothing left in the conditioner for my hair to absorb. Well as sad as it seems, this has troubled me for a long time. I even e-mailed Aussie once to ask them what they thought but I got no reply. So I kept on slathering the barnet and sitting in the towel just in case that was making a difference. Then one day, I asked about this on the wonderful forum at Beauty Judge.com ( http://www.beautyjudge.com ) and got quite a few responses. Some said that to get extra conditioning, you should leave the conditioner on for about twenty minutes and then rinse out. Another said not to leave the conditioner on for too long in case, it was a protein one. Conditioners are either protein or moisture based and apparently too much protein is bad for your hair and another said, that if your conditioner (I'm guessing, moisture or protein) is left on your hair for too long then the product will just dry your hair out. Somebody else said adding honey and olive oil to your conditioner can be extra moisturising. Such great responses and plenty of ideas for experiments to come. However, there was one response which I wanted to look at, in more depth here. I was referred to a post on the Beauty Brains website. This was actually quite a scientific post (for me!) but possibly explained in simple terms an answer to the question that I had always been wondering about. Basically Beauty Brains say that not only do you not need to keep conditioners in for hours (ahem!) but that you do not even need to keep them in for the recommended amount of time stated by the brand. Apparently conditioners mainly work on the surface of the hair and little penetration is needed. The conditioner hits the surface of the hair as soon as you apply it. I'm guessing you would only need time if the product needed to work in to the hair to work which it seems conditoner in the large, does not. It seems it is better to spread the conditioner through all the hair so all the individual hair surfaces are covered and to take your time doing this rather then slapping it on your head and then leaving it there untouched for hours. Apparently companies give recommended leave in times etc to give their product a powerful image. Beauty Brains do admit that oil based conditioners such as Coconut do need time to penetrate but I believe, in most markets these are not the most purchased conditioning products. There are a couple of responses to the blog post and they seem to question the Beauty Brains's theory. There is also another interesting post which suggests if your hair needs lots of conditioning. You could use a rinse out conditioner as a leave in as long as your hair seems happy and does not feel weighed down. The rinse out conditioners apparently are stronger then the leave ins so it is not worth using a leave in as a rinse out but a rinse out could be extra conditioning to your hair if you apply it to towel-dried hair and leave it in. Due to the concentration and weight of a rinse out conditioner, not all hair types will be suited to this but if your hair looks, feels ok and basically seems happy then Beauty Brains suggest that this is ok as long as your skin does not feel irritated and you confine such conditioning to the ends of your hair only. Hmmm, so how does this reconcile with the earlier Beauty Brains post which suggests there is little bonus from leaving a conditioner in before rinsing out? Is there a difference here because you will never rinse the product out? I'm starting to lose track a little now. Maybe the brain ache has set in but none of this seems too dangerous to me so I think I will try some of these ideas out and see what happens. If it is anything exciting then you will be the first to know. Who knows? Maybe I can banish dry hair forever, after all? I hope I have explained what I have learnt ok but I suggest before you put any of this in to practise that you check the posts yourself in case I have confused or missed anything. What do you think? What do you do when it comes to conditioning your hair? What is your hair like? Any hair tips or myths that you want to expose? Any hair growth tips? What beauty questions have spent a lifetime bugging you? Your comments and subscriptions will always be welcome here;-) Right, I'm off to explore the Beauty Brains website further. I think it could become another obsession! X |
Tuesday, 18 May 2010
POST REWIND: Does time equal beautiful hair?
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