The much-recommended SMT (Snowymoon's Moisture Treatment)

**truepeacenik** · April 30th, 2016, 10:20 AM

Originally Posted by Lavendersugar

Going to give this a try soon. Looks like I will need to pick up some V05. Only have Suave and Pantene at the moment and Giovanni smooth as silk.
My hair is dying for moisture lately. Living in a dry area doesn't help.

Was thinking about clarifying then towel drying and applying the mixture. Anyone try this with good results?

Suggestion from a former desert denizen, if you live where there isn't a lot of humidity, create some (steamy bathroom, hot tub area, what have you) or skip the honey.
Honey is a humectant; it takes moisture from one substance and moves it to a less moist substance. If the humidity is low, honey will move moisture from your hair to the air.

I would run a humidifier in the bathroom, use SMT while smoking in a hot bath.

**Lavendersugar** · May 1st, 2016, 10:09 PM

Originally Posted by truepeacenik

Suggestion from a former desert denizen, if you live where there isn't a lot of humidity, create some (steamy bathroom, hot tub area, what have you) or skip the honey.
Honey is a humectant; it takes moisture from one substance and moves it to a less moist substance. If the humidity is low, honey will move moisture from your hair to the air.

I would run a humidifier in the bathroom, use SMT while smoking in a hot bath.

Thank you ! I had plan to omit the honey because my hair does not like it. I wish I could create a steamy room but our bathroom does not have a door. Will see if can figure something else out. Maybe steam with a towel over my head and a sink.

**Daydreamer.** · May 3rd, 2016, 03:25 AM

Could you do the SMT without heating everything up? Also, can you use glycerin instead of honey?

**Horrorpops** · May 3rd, 2016, 05:29 AM

Originally Posted by Daydreamer.

Could you do the SMT without heating everything up? Also, can you use glycerin instead of honey?

You sure can, I do without heating it all the time. I think heating it is meant to primarily stop the honey from reacting and producing hydrogen peroxide and causing hair lightening. I've never got any hair lightening or perceivable damage from an SMT so I don't bother.

As for glycerine I can't see why not but I've never done it.

Now I also have a question:
How long can you leave it on? I've never tried an overnight treatment but was wondering if anyone has tried this or has an experience with it? I've personally noticed more benefits from a 3+hr soak compared to a 30min soak so I was wondering if that correlation continues or whether there is a ceiling. Thanks!

**Anje** · May 3rd, 2016, 01:22 PM

Originally Posted by Horrorpops

Now I also have a question:
How long can you leave it on? I've never tried an overnight treatment but was wondering if anyone has tried this or has an experience with it? I've personally noticed more benefits from a 3+hr soak compared to a 30min soak so I was wondering if that correlation continues or whether there is a ceiling. Thanks!

I personally wouldn't leave it in that long. Then again, I also don't want to henna overnight. My scalp doesn't like being wet for terribly long, or it starts to feel weird, and I know I'd never be able to sleep with stuff on my head. I've done maybe an hour or so, before the drips got to me.

This is relevant reading, though: http://www.thenaturalhavenbloom.com/...-time-and.html

**meteor** · May 3rd, 2016, 01:45 PM

Originally Posted by Horrorpops

How long can you leave it on? I've never tried an overnight treatment but was wondering if anyone has tried this or has an experience with it? I've personally noticed more benefits from a 3+hr soak compared to a 30min soak so I was wondering if that correlation continues or whether there is a ceiling. Thanks!

That's such a great question.

And I agree with Anje on this.

That Natural Haven Bloom post is great.

I know you mentioned that you notice more benefits from a 3+ hour soak, but is that benefit softness and malleability, or is it something else?

I know I definitely get much softer hair with more plasticity from long conditioning soaks, but I'm not too sure if it's always necessarily a good thing due to nature of hair fiber.

Generally speaking, I'm not into very long soaks for comfort reasons and also for scalp health and potential hygral fatigue concerns.
But I'd love to hear more opinions and experiences on this.

Some interesting articles on this:
Hair Swelling in Water: http://science-yhairblog.blogspot.ca...-in-water.html

Swollen hair has several problems. One is that swelling increases pressure and pressure tends to strain tissues. Strain after strain weakens hair over time. Swollen hair's increased girth means that the cuticles stand out - as though you glued tiny shingles on a balloon and then blew it up. That allows water into areas which should be protected by the cuticle. Swollen hair gains weight as well as girth. This causes it to either express its curliest version of itself if the curl is strong (then the curls lose definition to poufy frizz), or go limp when curls are present but not strong relative to the weight of the fiber+water.

Swelling and loss of proteins:
The area just beneath the hair's protective cuticle layers or "endocuticle" of hair may be the area most prone to swelling. It is also loaded with water-soluble, polar -therefore water-attracting- amino acids. It is covered by the membrane-like exocuticle and the sebum from your scalp, both of which provide water and chemical resistance, but both of which are also subject to chemical and physical degradation. In other words, when you get your hair wet, you lose amino acids (protein) from your hair.

Hair Shaft Damage from Heat and Drying Time of Hair Dryer: http://pmcc.web-t.cisti.nrc.ca/artic...cid=PMC3229938
Bulging in the intercellular lipid layers of the cell-membrane-complex from being water-logged: http://pmcc.web-t.cisti.nrc.ca/artic...e=figure&id=F5

It took over 2 h to dry the hair tress completely under ambient conditions. The hair shaft swells when in contact with water, as does the delta-layer of the CMC. The delta-layer is the sole route through which water diffuses into hair, and so we speculate that the CMC could be damaged when it is in contact with water for prolonged periods. Longer contact with water might be more harmful to the CMC compared to temperature of hair drying.
[...]
It is conceivable that a long lasting wet stage is as harmful as a high drying temperature (and may be even more dangerous to the CMC).
Further evaluation about contact time with water or wet environment and hair damage is needed.

**Anje** · May 3rd, 2016, 02:14 PM

It is worth mentioning that one of the articles that Natural Haven Bloom post cited (the 1992 one) did indicate increasing cationic surfactant adsorption at lower pH for longer periods of time, though overall adsorption was lower at low pH than at high pH. Not that I suggest you deep condition at a high pH. It's more like adding vinegar to your treatment will decrease the effects, sort of thing.

**Lavendersugar** · May 3rd, 2016, 05:53 PM

Originally Posted by meteor

That's such a great question.

And I agree with Anje on this.

That Natural Haven Bloom post is great.

I know you mentioned that you notice more benefits from a 3+ hour soak, but is that benefit softness and malleability, or is it something else?

I know I definitely get much softer hair with more plasticity from long conditioning soaks, but I'm not too sure if it's always necessarily a good thing due to nature of hair fiber.

Generally speaking, I'm not into very long soaks for comfort reasons and also for scalp health and potential hygral fatigue concerns.
But I'd love to hear more opinions and experiences on this.

Some interesting articles on this:
Hair Swelling in Water: http://science-yhairblog.blogspot.ca...-in-water.html

Hair Shaft Damage from Heat and Drying Time of Hair Dryer: http://pmcc.web-t.cisti.nrc.ca/artic...cid=PMC3229938
Bulging in the intercellular lipid layers of the cell-membrane-complex from being water-logged: http://pmcc.web-t.cisti.nrc.ca/artic...e=figure&id=F5

To go a bit off topic here but does that mean air drying is thought to be just as damaging as blow drying?
I know there was some study that found blow drying on low temp x amount of distance from hair was better than air drying. I just shrugged it off as it depending on what you do while blow drying. For example needing to use a brush or more products like heat protection.

To stay on topic, I am doing this treatment tomorrow as it is my clarifying day. I'm oddly excited as I dislike doing treatments.

**Horrorpops** · May 3rd, 2016, 07:58 PM

Oh thanks so much Anje and Meteor for your comprehensive answers!

Thats good to know! Basically I am happy to sit with a deep conditioning treatment on my head for a few hours, but didn't want to go to the hassle of a longer soak if it wasn't beneficial to my hair at all! Especially because I've heard a few anecdotal tales of overnight conditionings being really good for dry hair etc, but I've never been able to find anything more concrete. And while I don't get any scalp itchies from a wet scalp the dripping and general mess is a bit of a hassle!

Meteor - exactly, the main benefits being more 'moisturised' softer hair - especially at the ends which tend to feel a little dry. That's a very good point, I hadn't considered the effects of prolonged water exposure and hair shaft swelling and the effects on the cuticles or protein loss!

Anje - that blog you've shared is great! That's exactly what I was wondering - if there was a plateau to absorption and/or the benefits of conditioner after a set period of time. Also it's interesting and good to know about the effects of pH. Give me a second: I just need to quickly go and add some oven cleaner to my conditioner

(kidding!!)
I've never experimented with vinegar etc because I still have memories from when I was little of my mum rinsing my hair with vinegar and trying to go to bed with that vinegary smell on my hair - it quite put me off the whole process!

Overall, I guess I might just stick with shorter soaks. You've saved me a lot of mess and hassle so many thanks to both of you!

**meteor** · May 4th, 2016, 09:27 AM

Originally Posted by Lavendersugar

To go a bit off topic here but does that mean air drying is thought to be just as damaging as blow drying?
I know there was some study that found blow drying on low temp x amount of distance from hair was better than air drying. I just shrugged it off as it depending on what you do while blow drying. For example needing to use a brush or more products like heat protection.

Great question, Lavendersugar!

It's hard to tell whether it's as damaging, because the damage was seen on different layers:
- all blow-dried tresses showed cuticle damage (and the higher the heat and the shorter the distance, the more damaging it was)
- only air-dried tresses (took 2 hours in their study) showed Cell-Membrane-Complex damage (bulging)

The researchers did not originally set out to show water damage, they designed the study to show heat damage from blow-drying, the CMC damage finding was unexpected, and they mentioned that further studies would be needed. (Still waiting on that

)

And they didn't use brushes or heat protection. The hair was in separate tresses (*not* attached to scalp, which produces sebum to coat hair) and washed daily, so that's not exactly representative of how hair is washed/dried necessarily.

They used five test groups:

(a) no treatment,
(b) shampooing and drying without using a hair dryer (room temperature, 20℃),
(c) shampooing and drying with a hair dryer for 60 seconds at a distance of 15 cm (47℃),
(d) shampooing and drying with a hair dryer for 30 seconds at a distance of 10 cm (61℃), and
(e) shampooing and drying with a hair dryer for 15 seconds at a distance of 5 cm (95℃)

- (c), (d), (e) showed surface damage, lifting and cracking (Scanning Electron Microscopy).

- (d), (e) showed cuticle damage, punched out cuticles (Transmission Electron Microscopy).

- No group showed cortex damage (TEM).

- (b) showed CMC damage (lipid TEM).

- (b), (c), (d), (e) showed decreased moisture content (moisture content analysis).

- (b), (c), (d), (e) showed color changes (lightness) after 30 treatments, possibly indicating damage.

- (b), (e) showed color changes (lightness) after 10 treatments, possibly indicating damage.

As you can see, everything (except leaving tresses untreated, of course) provided some soft of issues:
- blow-drying: cuticle, surface damage (the higher the temperature and the shorter the distance, the more pronounced the damage),
- air-drying: damage to the CMC and color change (high heat had that effect, as well)
- all forms of drying reduced moisture content and displayed color change (toward lightness).

And notice, how even using higher heat from closer distance for *shorter* period of time still resulted in more damage (cuticle, surface damage and color changes) vs. lower heat at greater distances but used for *longer*. So heat and distance possibly trumped time of exposure to heat source in this case (unless they designed the study to stop using high heat earlier just because the hair would be dry faster anyway)?

Full study: Hair Shaft Damage from Heat and Drying Time of Hair Dryer - http://pmcc.web-t.cisti.nrc.ca/artic...cid=PMC3229938

ETA: Oops, sorry for the long OT