The CO (conditioner only) washing thread

[DaniVerde]

I am trying...but why be patient I wonder? Its obvious this is for my hair I am trying to get back to (crazy, poofy, frizzy, in need of the grease CO gives) unlike my hair now that NEEDS volume and poof and curl and...wow I never thought my stupid hair would come to NEEDING volume...just wow....now I want to cry, again

Listen, I am going to be very blunt here. Please excuse me if I offend, as I do not mean to. English is not my first language, and things can seem harsher when you're reading them as opposed to hearing them.

Whenever you try something new to your body, whether it be to your hair or somewhere else, you need to give yourself time to adjust. You've been CO for what, a grand total of 2 days??! Your poor hair/scalp has no idea what's going on, what you're doing to it.

This is on top of the fact that you've tried at least 3 different things over the course of the past few weeks, without giving your hair time to adjust.

It seems like you're looking for an instant fix, some magic potion to "bring your curl back". Guess what? It doesn't exist. There may be things your hair likes, or seriously dislikes, but anything you try will take time. And you should be prepared to put that time into caring for your hair, instead of bouncing from thing to thing every 3 days/week.

You have said that "Oh, I'm impatient". You've even said this to me, earlier in this thread. It may be a matter of fact that you are impatient, but you'll just frustrate yourself more and more by dwelling on your problem. Or you could work on your impatience instead of flippantly announcing that you're impatient on Tuesday and then running to try something else on Wednesday.

CO may not be for you..but give it, and everything else you try, a fighting chance before dismissing it.

Your hair may be too damaged from heat to curl again. You may have to wait until the damage grows out. My hair was permanently straightened, so I have to wait a while...and suffer through the frizzy roots and stick straight ends. But I'm willing to wait, since that means that I'll have my head of 3 curls again.

If your hair is that damaged, you will either need to wait until it grows, or cut it and start again.

While you figure out how damaged your hair is, I suggest you work on trying something for longer than 30 seconds.


I apologize for writing a book, but...I can get wordy sometimes

[Hollyfire3]

Listen, I am going to be very blunt here. Please excuse me if I offend, as I do not mean to. English is not my first language, and things can seem harsher when you're reading them as opposed to hearing them.

Whenever you try something new to your body, whether it be to your hair or somewhere else, you need to give yourself time to adjust. You've been CO for what, a grand total of 2 days??! Your poor hair/scalp has no idea what's going on, what you're doing to it.

This is on top of the fact that you've tried at least 3 different things over the course of the past few weeks, without giving your hair time to adjust.

It seems like you're looking for an instant fix, some magic potion to "bring your curl back". Guess what? It doesn't exist. There may be things your hair likes, or seriously dislikes, but anything you try will take time. And you should be prepared to put that time into caring for your hair, instead of bouncing from thing to thing every 3 days/week.

You have said that "Oh, I'm impatient". You've even said this to me, earlier in this thread. It may be a matter of fact that you are impatient, but you'll just frustrate yourself more and more by dwelling on your problem. Or you could work on your impatience instead of flippantly announcing that you're impatient on Tuesday and then running to try something else on Wednesday.

CO may not be for you..but give it, and everything else you try, a fighting chance before dismissing it.

Your hair may be too damaged from heat to curl again. You may have to wait until the damage grows out. My hair was permanently straightened, so I have to wait a while...and suffer through the frizzy roots and stick straight ends. But I'm willing to wait, since that means that I'll have my head of 3 curls again.

If your hair is that damaged, you will either need to wait until it grows, or cut it and start again.

While you figure out how damaged your hair is, I suggest you work on trying something for longer than 30 seconds.


I apologize for writing a book, but...I can get wordy sometimes

Wow, I needed that, seriously, I did. It was blunt but I understood your point and am sorry for being so impatient. It just frusterates me because I know my hair can curl, it has before and then the next hair wash gone wonky again. It is not too damaged to curl, it is too damaged to balance itself and STAY curly. I just get so mad and angry knowing the curl is there but won't come out knowing that my perfect hair can be accieved but it needs X Y or Z to do so, it might be moisture or protein, I'll never know, thats why I try so many different things, in the past, the perfect hair days have come from trying one thing 2-3 times and having it correct whatever inbalance was causing the problem. I hate having to wear my hair up, I also worry about this huge scrunchie looped thing causing breakage and I worry i will never fix this. I just wonder if I try something else, in this case, shampoo, will it fix the malfunction? I will CO again tonight because I need to at least prove I can stick to something for 2 weeks, but its killing me not knowing if something else could have worked. I hope this works, really I do, because if not, its back to the drawing board when in reality i just need some sort of easy test to see what my stupid hair wants this moment, I am sick of guessing and sick of failed attempts no matter how many I have tried for short amounts of time, I will stick to this, but it'll be hard and I know it won't work, but I will just deal with it, and pretend I LOVE wearing my stupid hair up (and just for the record, hair, I HATE you with a burning passion, stop being stupid and ruining my confidence!) sorry, its childish, but that helped. Sorry for the book but than you for the one you wrote above, it has helped.

[afu]

for most curly hair its moisture that is needed, if your hair isn't feeling good and you've added plenty of moisture holding treatments - take a wet strand of hair and pull on it, if it feels stretchy it is over moisturised and it's time to try adding protein. If it feels brittle when dry it's likely that it isn't protein you need and it's time to up the moisture. Good luck sticking with it. You will win either way, if CO works your hair will be happy, and even if it doesn't you'll be proud of yourself for giving something a proper chance

[Hollyfire3]

for most curly hair its moisture that is needed, if your hair isn't feeling good and you've added plenty of moisture holding treatments - take a wet strand of hair and pull on it, if it feels stretchy it is over moisturised and it's time to try adding protein. If it feels brittle when dry it's likely that it isn't protein you need and it's time to up the moisture. Good luck sticking with it. You will win either way, if CO works your hair will be happy, and even if it doesn't you'll be proud of yourself for giving something a proper chance

My hair is pretty brittle looking...shouldn't CO be giving it moisture to change that? What else can I do that is CO compatable to add moisture? You're right, although CO most likely won't work, I'm giving it 2 weeks then seeing how it goes.

[GRU]

I'm going to back up what DaniVerde said, and give you even more of the same.

For starters, DV is NOT the most patient person around (seriously, you should see how much stuff she was enabled into buying her first month here! She's pretty much an "OMG-WANT+BUY!" person, at least where her hair is concerned! ), so for her to be telling you to calm down, it REALLY means something. Like if a professional body builder tells you that you're working out too much, it really means something because they know what they're talking about, you know?

A good rule to follow is only ONE new product or technique EVERY TWO WEEKS. Seriously, if you have a good hair day, how on earth are you going to know what product/technique it was that produced that if you've used ten different products in the last week?

Also, your curl was lost to damage... moisture might bring some of it back, but you can't actually "heal" damaged hair. You may very well have to grow out your damage to get back to the curl that you think might be hidden in there. That's why I HATE flat-irons and blow-fryers... they do permanent damage.

If I were you, I'd do one plain old shampoo to get rid of all the new stuff you've put on your hair and choose ONE product to CO-wash with and ONE product as a leave-in (or even the same product for both), then do that for a couple weeks straight. If your hair is just really nasty before then (not "a little limp" but actually NASTY looking) and another CO-wash doesn't take care of it, then you can put that product on the "my hair doesn't like this" list and move on to something else.

Look at this as a weight-loss process. If you needed to lose 200 pounds, would you try a diet for a week and then pronounce it a failure because you hadn't lost 200 pounds yet? Or would you look at it like you've done 200 pounds of damage to your body, and it's going to take a certain number of months/years to undo the damage and get back to "normal"?

For the sake of your tresses and your sanity, put your hair on a diet.

[GRU]

My hair is pretty brittle looking...shouldn't CO be giving it moisture to change that? What else can I do that is CO compatable to add moisture? You're right, although CO most likely won't work, I'm giving it 2 weeks then seeing how it goes.

Why do you think it won't work? It works for gazillions of people here (as evidenced by the length of this thread alone!)....

And to add on to my previous post, don't expect damaged hair to react like normal hair. If your hair is damaged and porous, it won't hold onto product or react to product like undamaged hair.

[Siiri]

I am using a mousse and it has coating ingredients, maybe this caused the limp hair? It doesn't feel built up and the mousse is cone free, here are the ingredients:
Aqua (water), Propane, Polysorbate 20, Butane, Polyquaternium-11, VP/VA Copolymer, Isobutane, Hydrolyzed Collagen, Quaternium-52, Cetrimonium Chloride, Cocamidopropyl Betaine, Alcohol Denat., DMDM Hydantoin, Parfum (fragrance), Citronellol, Coumarin, Geraniol, Alpha-Isomethyl Ionone.
These should all wash out with CO washing right?

I think no-one has pointed this out yet, but at least Polyquaternium-11 isn't easy to wash out, I think you'd need to use shampoo. So that might be a problem if you use the mousse with CO, but if you are planning to clarify from time to time, it may not be that bad.

VP/VA Copolymer sounds like it could build up too, I'm not sure whether you can wash it out with conditioner.

[DaniVerde]

Wow, I needed that, seriously, I did. It was blunt but I understood your point and am sorry for being so impatient. It just frusterates me because I know my hair can curl, it has before and then the next hair wash gone wonky again. It is not too damaged to curl, it is too damaged to balance itself and STAY curly. I just get so mad and angry knowing the curl is there but won't come out knowing that my perfect hair can be accieved but it needs X Y or Z to do so, it might be moisture or protein, I'll never know, thats why I try so many different things, in the past, the perfect hair days have come from trying one thing 2-3 times and having it correct whatever inbalance was causing the problem. I hate having to wear my hair up, I also worry about this huge scrunchie looped thing causing breakage and I worry i will never fix this. I just wonder if I try something else, in this case, shampoo, will it fix the malfunction? I will CO again tonight because I need to at least prove I can stick to something for 2 weeks, but its killing me not knowing if something else could have worked. I hope this works, really I do, because if not, its back to the drawing board when in reality i just need some sort of easy test to see what my stupid hair wants this moment, I am sick of guessing and sick of failed attempts no matter how many I have tried for short amounts of time, I will stick to this, but it'll be hard and I know it won't work, but I will just deal with it, and pretend I LOVE wearing my stupid hair up (and just for the record, hair, I HATE you with a burning passion, stop being stupid and ruining my confidence!) sorry, its childish, but that helped. Sorry for the book but than you for the one you wrote above, it has helped.

Yes, it is quite childish, but if it makes you feel better, then it makes you feel better.

And there is no reason to be mad at your hair, because frankly, you have damaged it. And now it's recovering, which will take a while. What caused the damage?

Have you been on this crusade since you joined the forum in November? And if you think your hair has some imbalance, have you considered a trichologist?

You're welcome for the book

[afu]

My hair is pretty brittle looking...shouldn't CO be giving it moisture to change that? What else can I do that is CO compatable to add moisture? You're right, although CO most likely won't work, I'm giving it 2 weeks then seeing how it goes.

CO is brilliant for moisture but it does take a bit of time for the 'moisture store' in your hair to build back up, shampoo strips out a lot of moisture so its a gradual process to re-saturate it (kind of like in ktani's oil shampoo method). For many people a post-wash oil application works best for locking moisture in, i use coconut but i'm sure others have other preferences. Products containing a lot of alcohols can also dry hair out. I used to think my hair mousse was brilliant for setting curls, but it was full of alcohols which were just drying out my hair and then kind of glueing it into shape instead

[Hollyfire3]

I think no-one has pointed this out yet, but at least Polyquaternium-11 isn't easy to wash out, I think you'd need to use shampoo. So that might be a problem if you use the mousse with CO, but if you are planning to clarify from time to time, it may not be that bad.

VP/VA Copolymer sounds like it could build up too, I'm not sure whether you can wash it out with conditioner.

I never knew that...I'll keep on the look out for build up, thanks