Sneaky Silicones - Are you as frustrated?

[leilani]

I am so sick of perusing the haircare aisle searching for good conditioners without silicone. Nay, ANY conditioners without. Tresseme Naturals might be the only one! I wanted an intensive protein pack and I bought one that wasn't cheap after searching for ten minutes, because I didn't see any cones in the ingredient list. However, got home and realized I missed it. It wasn't in the first half of the ingredients and I guess I missed it while my kids were yelling at me to hurry up. PLUS, a Garnier repairing conditioner I thought was silicone free and have been using here and there for months, on closer inspection, has Amodimethicone after all, how did I miss that? I checked the ingredients more than once. Am I blind??
I suck at this.

Have you guys ever unwittingly put cones in your hair?
Or am I the only dumb one?

I clarified twice with baking soda which I normally don't use (I wash with indian herbs usually) and put an aloe vera 'organic' conditioner on it (that I hadn't yet tried, no offensive ingredients in that one), rinsed with lemon juice, and am waiting to see if perhaps there was buildup that I will now notice is gone. Let's see....

[lapushka]

I clarified twice with baking soda which I normally don't use (I wash with indian herbs usually) and put an aloe vera 'organic' conditioner on it (that I hadn't yet tried, no offensive ingredients in that one), rinsed with lemon juice, and am waiting to see if perhaps there was buildup that I will now notice is gone. Let's see....

TBH, that's going a *little* overboard here. No need to clarify with BS, and it's *extremely* drying. You'll be doing more damage with the BS than you'd be doing using cones on your hair.

[spidermom]

I agree about the baking soda being far worse than a little bit of amodimethicone. Plus buildup generally happens over time and comes from all kinds of products, not just cones.

I like silicones. My hair can be a nightmare to de-tangle without them. I generally do a clarifying shampoo about every couple of months when I notice that my hair is dull or seems very dry and sticks to itself like Velcro.

[leilani]

I like baking soda mixed in with my regular shampoo, once every few months to clarify. I haven't noticed any problems with it. I always follow up with acv.

[chen bao jun]

I'm fine with cones myself, but I get your annoyance with the not very clear packaging.
I have had this experience when dealing with a son who had severe alllergies--not being able to find food he could eat, and thinking I had found it and then realizing that it had the ingredient and they disguised it or obsfucated it.
Maybe you could do an internet search on the ingredients of various hair products and have a list before you get to the store, because you sure can't be too clear-headed when shopping with kids. Maybe some cone avoiders will weigh in on this thread stating some products that they use or else you can start a new thread which just asks straight out, what cone free conditioner do you (US people) or wherever you are...

[TrapperCreekD]

For protein, Mane & Tail (Original) is cone free; the Suave Naturals line, and V05 conditioners are also don't contain cones.

[spidermom]

I like baking soda mixed in with my regular shampoo, once every few months to clarify. I haven't noticed any problems with it. I always follow up with acv.

Amazing. I would think that hair would be hair, but when I used baking soda for clarifying, it made my hair matt together like felt. I was afraid I would have to go get a very short pixie. It took a full two weeks of daily conditioner soaks - which is the only way I could comb my hair - to return to normal.

What's really frustrating is that my daughter has a severe allergy to coconut, and you'd be surprised how many products in shampoo and conditioner are derived from coconut. There's no way to tell by the name of it; you have to research every single ingredient.

[Bitstuff]

Putting baking soda in conditioner to clarify is better than using it on its own.

[Carolyn]

I had the same results as Spidermom when I tried BS to clarify. I won't ever use it again on my hair. I am a label reader but I will use coney conditioners in my product rotation. I switch products each and every wash. I get very little build up even though I occasionally use a coney conditioner. I washed every other day and would guess I clarify once every 2-3 months. I think rotating products is what prevents the build up.

[sarahthegemini]

Baking soda damages hair over time, although I would have thought using baking soda twice in a row would have dried the hell out of your hair.

[chen bao jun]

Spidermom, I get you on the coconut.
It's getting more and more difficult to avoid things. I have a severe shellfish allergy. I knit. I once almost bought a yarn and fortunately didn't and went home and looked it up. It was 'green'--made out of recycled ingredients, which included shellfish shells.
And by the time they 'derive' things out of other things and give you no clue with the name, forget it.
Not to speak of, nowadays they genetically engineer plants and are not required to tell you. Which means, they can add something that is an allergen to you when they are making a new version of 'supercorn' or whatever and you won't know. and when you die, they will just write up something like 99.9% of people are not harmed by this--too bad for the .1% who is dead.
It's all about the profits.

[two_wheels]

I was fooled by the cyclopentasiloxane cone-in-disguise grrrrr....
Which pales into insignificance compared to people who have actual allergies. Labelling sucks.

[chen bao jun]

Maybe one day we will a Congress not paid off by big business and get actual truth in labelling. But I'm not holding my breath.

[Firefox7275]

Amodimethicone resists building up: see articles by Curl Chemist Tonya McKay on NaturallyCurly. As Spidermom says many ingredients can build up, the worst I experienced was cetyl esters (waxy) which the L'Oreal group is fond of using.