January 15, 2010

Do this.  To your hair.  Now!

I’m not kidding, you’ll thank me!  You may already have this product in your pantry, but if not, you can easily pick up a jar.  You don’t need to go to the beauty supply or the salon though.  And you don’t need to take out a loan to buy it!

What is it?  Coconut oil!  You can get it at Whole Foods, Sprouts, or any health food/natural foods store.  You can order it online from Swanson Vitamins or Vitacost and probably tons of other sites.  You may even be able to find it at a well-stocked grocery store.  I get mine at my favorite hippie health food store called Natural Grocers/Vitamin Cottage.  For a 16 ounce jar, you can expect to pay only around $10.

I have coconut oil in my pantry because I put it in my smoothie each morning.  I never thought about smearing it on my hair though until I was reading on Beauty Brains about an expensive hair treatment called Ojon ($55).  Ojon is made of palm oil from the rainforest, plus fragrance and some extracts. The Beauty Brains said that coconut oil and palm oil are essentially the same thing, and each will actually penetrate the hair’s cortex.  Most conditioners only coat the surface of the hair shaft, and don’t get into the hair itself.

Penetrating the hair’s cortex can help replace the natural oil that we lose simply by washing our hair.  When you replace that oil, you’re “refatting” the hair.  The Beauty Brains suggested that using a coconut oil based conditioner could be as effective as Ojon.  I’ve since seen online that lots of girls are just using plain ol’ coconut oil, and getting good results so I had to try it.

Coconut oil is solid in my house right now since it’s 60-something degrees, but it will be liquid when the inside temp is in the 70s.  Since it’s solid I took a blob and warmed it in my hands a bit til it softened.  Then I just started rubbing it into my hair.  My hair’s almost shoulder length and is a little thin now (dang hormones), and I used three walnut-sized blobs of coconut oil.  I combed it through, and let it sit for about an hour.  Ojon recommends leaving their treatment on overnight when possible, so I may try that with the coconut oil when I can.

After an hour, I rinsed really well with pretty warm water, and then had to shampoo twice before the oil was out of my hair.  I did use my regular dab of Pureology conditioner afterward, since the coconut oil is supposed to work inside the hair and not outside.

What were the results?  My hair was softer, shinier, fuller and had more body.  It even had less frizz before flat-ironing.  After the next shampoo two days later, the results are still there.

I’m planning to give my hair this little tropical treat once a week.  It’s easy, it smells fabulous, I can do it myself, and it makes my hair happy.  What more could I want?  Give it a try and let me know how you like it!

~BigSis

August 13, 2009

I don’t know about anyone else, but this Summer has taken a toll on my hair.  And if I didn’t pay a frappin’ fortune for highlights and  low-lights, I really wouldn’t care so much. I sure wish that I didn’t have the challenges of gray hair, but I do and I’m not ready to be like Jamie Lee Curtis and go “all natural”. (Not that there’s anything wrong with that.)

It’s taken me years to find a good hair stylist who knows how to do my hair, so I really try to take care of it. As it is now, I go every six weeks in-between appointments instead of every four weeks, which is what I used to have to do! I know, that’s high maintenance, but it’s the lesser of two evils.

Since there is still a little Summer left, I thought that this might be of some interest to those of you that still have that intense Sun wreaking havoc on your hair. When I’m at home, whether at the pool or the beach, I always have a heavy duty conditioner on my hair. Between the chlorine, saltwater, and sun, it doesn’t take long to do some real damage to my hair if it’s unprotected.

I somehow forgot to take a good conditioner with me on my recent trip to Texas so BigSis and I made a quick stop at Ulta to check out some hair products. Originally, I was looking for some sort of color protectant that I had used in the past but we couldn’t find anything similar.

Then, the display of Fekkai Marine Summer Hair Collection caught our eye.

Fekkai Marine Summer Hair Collection

We really loved the ingredients and the scent of all of these products. For our purpose at that time, I decided to buy the Fekkai Summer Hair Beachcomber Leave in Conditioner.

Fekkai Beachcomber Leave in Conditioner

This product is intended to be used as a normal everyday leave-in conditioner, but after consulting with a sales person at Ulta, she agreed that it would be fine to use it to protect our hair while in the sun. To use it in this way, we just got our hair wet first and then sprayed the conditioner in, combed it through, and went on our merry way.

We loved how this conditioner held up, not only to the heat and humidity, but also to our curly hair! Years ago, whenever we went to the pool or water park, we always used a product called Mermaid, which also contained a lot of seaweed and sea algae ingredients. We loved it and have never found anything remotely similar until now.

This description from Fekkai might explain why we like it so much.

Fekkai Beachcomber Leave-in Conditioner – A lightweight formula that contains marine peptides, sea algae extract and UV shielding ingredients to detangle the hair, boosting its moisture and shine while protecting it against damage fading effects.

For those of us with curly hair, it’s a big deal to find a conditioner that you can just comb through your wet hair and it remains sleek looking all day.

This Fekkai leave-in conditioner was actually that good!! We were both pleasantly surprised! Our hair type is a true test for any hair product and this one held up despite the temperatures and humidity!

Since then, I’ve used it after my regular shampoo and conditioner and my hair was quite happy.  But the last time I used it, I decided to eliminate my regular conditioner and just use this leave-in conditioner by itself to see what would happen. I love it! I’m really happy with the results that I got from using it alone.  Honestly, I’ve had better results with this leave-in conditioner than I’ve had with the past two Enjoy products that I’ve bought at my hair salon.

Unfortunately, I just realized that this is a limited edition product so I’m going to have to stock up!

~LilSis

June 25, 2009

I have the curliest hair in my family.  My 3 sibs all have some wave or curl to their hair, but I got the most by far from our dad, and let me tell you that my school photos revealed what a challenge that was for me! It was brutal!  It literally makes me cringe to remember how I struggled with my hair.  I could show you photos that would scare the daylights out of you, but I’m too vain to do that.  It’s bad enough that my family has seen them. 

FrizzyHair by Joseph Robertson on Flickr

When the Chi flat iron came out several years ago, it literally changed my life.  I am SO not exaggerating!  Before that, blow drying my curly thick hair could take close to an hour, and then it was still too poofy!  The Chi gave me smooth, shiny, soft hair, and I’ve never gone back to the curly look.  Curls look good if you have pretty spirally curls without my frizz-o-rama.  My coworker SA has that kind of pretty curl.  Me?  Not so much.

Now I’ve found another product that makes dealing with curly hair a little bit easier.  It’s called No Frizz and comes from a company called Living Proof.  I first saw it on a TV shopping channel…I know, random.  I don’t watch those but landed on this demo while channel-surfing one time, and had to watch the whole thing to see how it came out.  They had a woman with curly hair, and applied No Frizz to half her head, and blow dried each side smooth.  Then, here’s where it gets interesting.  They took a clothes steamer and held it close to her head for several minutes!  The side without product, of course, got frizzy and big and fuzzy.  The side with the No Frizz stayed smooth!  Really?  I had to see for myself.

I ordered the No Frizz from their web site since I wouldn’t have saved any money going through the shopping channel and I got free shipping at the time (shipping is free now on orders of $48 or more).  You towel dry your hair a little, apply a quarter-size dollop and work it through well.  Then style as usual.  I follow the No Frizz with a tiny bit of the Biosilk Smoothing Balm that I usually use before drying.

Living Proof's No Frizz

I found that my hair seemed to resist frizzing even on a really humid day, but the big test was our recent trip to California for LilSis’ birthday.  We went out on the boat, and drove around in the damp wind.  Guess what?  No frizz!  After close to an hour, I got a tiny bit of poof at my front hairline, but it was very minimal.  Ordinarily, in windy sea air, I’d have a giant puffball on top of my head.  If you have curly hair, you know what I mean!

No Frizz is also available at Sephora, I’ve since discovered, which would save the shipping costs but you’d have to pay tax.  There are several different formulas, but the Living Proof web site’s diagnostic tool will help you choose the one that is right for you.  I will tell you that this product is fairly pricey; at least to me.  The 4 ounce bottle I bought was $24, but it has lasted me about 3 months already and I still have some product left.  I shampoo at least every other day.

I would definitely recommend that you curly or frizzy haired girls give this a try!  I use it every shampoo and will repurchase it for sure!

~BigSis