SMT and no-poo/WO routine

[teal]

I've been reading up on SMT (http://forums.longhaircommunity.com/showthread.php?t=128) and would like to try it out, but I have a couple of questions which haven't been answered in my LHC forum travels.

First, does anyone have any comment about trying this with a no-poo (ie. BS/ACV) or WO routine? Currently I wash/rinse with BS/ACV dilutions every 7-10 days with WO washes in between. I've been doing this for about 6 weeks now (previously was S&C) and since the sebum production has settled down quite a bit I don't want to disrupt that. I see many people COing or otherwise washing after the SMT and wondered whether that was a necessity since I'm not really interested in going back to conditioning or shampooing right now... I did see one reference to rinsing with ACV after the SMT and I might try that since I already know the ACV mix to work well on my hair.

Next, I've been putting coconut oil on the ends of my hair from time to time as it has damage from straightening and blow-frying. (LOVE that moniker, by the way - whoever coined it was a genius! :D) Since my purpose for trying SMT is to preserve and enjoy my damaged hair until it is eventually trimmed off (this will take a few years), should I be concerned about the SMT's ability to "take" to oiled ends or is this a non-issue? Could/should I wash the lengths with my regular BS mix before SMT? (I usually massage that on scalp only.) How about the ACV mix?

Last, I looked in the SMT lists to see if Suave Naturals Tropical Coconut was there and it's not. Has anyone had any experience with it? I notice that it has some silk proteins in it, which can apparently cause some problems - thoughts? Here's a full list of ingredients:


Aqua, Cetyl Alcohol, Stearamidopropyl Dimethylamine, Lactic Acid, Potassium Chloride, Parfum, Disodium EDTA, PEG-150 Distearate, 2-Bromo-2-Nitropropane-1,3-Diol, Methylchloroisothiazolinone, Methylisothiazolinone, Propylene Glycol, Tocopheryl Acetate, Silk Amino Acids, Honey, Urtica Dioica (Nettle) Extract, Rosmarinus Officinalis (Rosemary) Leaf Extract, Cocos Nucifera (Coconut) Fruit Extract

Please forgive me if these have been asked before! I tried a variety of searches to see if this had been discussed and I didn't find anything more than little tidbits... I'm trying to put together a complete picture. :o :flower: (Then again, I might not have got the hang of this search engine... searching for "smt" in "all open forums" came up with nothing! :confused: )

[Narya]

I can only answer to the first part, I have no experience with coconut oil or Suave Naturals...

When I SMT I don't wash after, I use the SMT itself as a sort of CO: I put it on dry hair (I suppose putting it on wet hair wouldn't change the results, either), put a cap and a towel and sit in the sun for as much as I can stand (1h, 1:30h...) and then go to the shower, wash my body/face/shave/brush my teeth... only at the end I take the shower cap off, massage the scalp a bit, and rinse, rinse, rinse. Sometimes I finish it with an ACV rinse, sometimes I don't, but when I do my hair behaves better (as usual with ACV rinses for me).
So no shampoo, no extra conditioner, just the SMT, a scalp massage, and rinsing thoroughly do marvels for me. I do it once every two weeks since I discovered it, and I couldn't be happier.


(Also, about the search engine: I think it can't manage searching of less than 4 characters. You could try with SMT*, for example, and see if it works)

[teal]

When I SMT I don't wash after, I use the SMT itself as a sort of CO: I put it on dry hair (I suppose putting it on wet hair wouldn't change the results, either), put a cap and a towel and sit in the sun for as much as I can stand (1h, 1:30h...) and then go to the shower, wash my body/face/shave/brush my teeth... only at the end I take the shower cap off, massage the scalp a bit, and rinse, rinse, rinse. Sometimes I finish it with an ACV rinse, sometimes I don't, but when I do my hair behaves better (as usual with ACV rinses for me).
So no shampoo, no extra conditioner, just the SMT, a scalp massage, and rinsing thoroughly do marvels for me. I do it once every two weeks since I discovered it, and I couldn't be happier.

Thanks for your experience! :) Are you currently on a CO wash routine? If you're on WO, did you notice any change in sebum production once you added SMT to the routine?

[Narya]

I CO, I'm still afraid of what may happen if I try WO. I suppose that sebum production wouldn't change much since the SMT it's not really striping it as much as a shampoo, but I really don't know.