Petroleum and Mineral Oil for hair

Petroleum (aka petrolatum, petroleum jelly, soft paraffin, white paraffin, and mineral oil) is a common ingredient for black hair care. I bet if you check the ingredients on your tub of blue magic, petroleum is the first ingredient- meaning it is the number one ingredient. For many years (centuries even) its been used as a hair moisturizer. When in fact, it only coats the hair instead of penetrating it. Mineral oil basically coats the hair not allowing the moisture to penetrate. Hair that has no moisture is more likely to frizz (which is not cute!).
Also, these products clog the pores of the hair shaft. So whether you spend $3.99 on a hair product with soft paraffin, or a $59.99 product with petrolatum in it, you're most likely wasting your money.

The reason these products and their AKA's are so widely used in black hair care products is:
a) they are cheap
b) they give our hair an artificial shine

This is why on your hair journey it is important to check the ingredients to make sure they do not contain these products.

Other ingredients to avoid:
Propylene Glycol (PG): not exactly sure, I just know its bad :)
Isopropyl Alcohol: drying
Polyethylene Glycol (PEG): strips of moisture
Sodium Lauryl Sulfate (SLS)/ Sodium Laureth Sulfate (SLES), TEA lauryl : cheap, stripping, irritating
Diethanolamine (DEA), Momoethnanolamine (MEA): can cause cancer (then again, what doesn't cause cancer in this world?)
Silicones: builds up, other bad stuff..

Personally, i just make sure it doesn't have any petroleum or mineral oil in it.

Essential Oils vs. Carrier Oils

Essential Oil:
-concentrated
-more expensive
-extremely strong smell (potent)
-should not be applied directly to the skin (should be diluted with a carrier oil)
-smaller bottles
-found in bark, roots, leaves or other aromatic parts of a plant
-does not spoil (but can lose their therapeutic qualities)
-should not be used to moisturize and seal with out being diluted by a carrier oil
examples: peppermint, clove, eucalyptus, citrus, etc.

Carrier Oil
-vegetable oil
-comes from the fatty portion of a plant- usually the kernels, seeds or nuts
-light smell (if any) (if a carrier oil has a strong smell, it most likely has gone bad)
-can spoil
-often used in health and beauty products
-can used to moisturize and seal
-cheaper
examples: sweet almond oil, coconut oil, grapeseed oil

Massaging hair benefits

If you're not looking to start a whole new regimen and spend a lot of money but you want your hair to grow, there are small things you can do to stimulate growth. One thing is to massage your hair when you have shampoo or conditioner in your hair or randomly throughout the day. If done correctly, scalp massages will increase blood circulation to your hair and boost the strength of your roots. Scalp massages help prevent avoidable hair loss and will also make you feel serene and calm.


How to give a scalp massage:


First choose an oil: almond, sesame, lavender oil, peppermint, rosemary- all good choices for a proper scalp massage
Don't use too much of an essential oil. only add a maximum of two drops essential oil for every tablespoon of the oil that you are using (olive oil or almond oil, etc.)
Brush your hair thoroughly to get rid of the flaky dandruff in your hair. you'll want to flip your hair upside down and start from ends to tips. (if you have long hair)
Dip your fingers into the oil that you are using
Use your fingers to apply gentle pressure at the base of the neck, then move towards the hair line
Make sure to start slow, then speed up
Rake your fingers through the hair, then wrap a moist and warm towel around their hair

hmm... is aphogee too much protein for my hair? Protein-Moisture education

So earlier i wrote a blog entry about how much i LOVED aphogee. that was about two days after i used it and before i unwrapped my hair this morning. I unwrapped my and was about to moisturize and seal my hair and for the first time today i felt it. My hair was super hard. :( It doesn't feel good at all so right now I have DC in my hair with a plastic cap on. i don't know how to describe it. My hair didn't have that flow and was hard to bend and when i put moisturizer in it it didn't do ANYTHING! So I decided to do a late night DC before I go to bed. I want to leave it in for a LONG time to make sure my hair feels better by the time i go to bed. So the next time i use aphogee, I'll use the Silk Elements shampoo and the 2 minute recon. or I'll use the aphogee shampoo and silk elements conditioner to hopefully balance out the protein-moisture to make sure this tragedy doesn't happen again. (when i run out of SE, I got my eye on elasta qp stuff!)

Protein:
Protein is used to give structure, build strength and give structure to hair. If protein is used correctly, it will leave hair soft, full, smooth and healthy. Because I have relaxed hair, i need more protein than people with natural hair. (also, people with color-treated hair need more protein as well) When your hair has too much protein, it can cause problems. your hair will start to:
feel dry
look frizzy
feel like straw
easily tangles
breaks easily with little tension or stress
stiff
lacks elasticity

Moisture:
Moisture and black hair just go together. Like spaghetti and meat sauce, Bert and Ernie, french fries and ketchup. Because black hair is likely to be porous,  moisture easily passes through the cuticle layer of the hair this loss of moisture causes black hair to be dry which means we need to moisturize it a lot more often compared to people of European decent. This is why it is important to moisturize and seal every night if you want to grow your hair. If used correctly, moisture will make your hair soft and increase elasticity. However, if you use too much your hair:
will become 'mushy' or 'soggy' (especially when wet)
weak
limp

This is why a strong moisture-protein balance is needed to make sure your hair is growing and healthy.

3 month length check, haul, reviews



hair as of 10/08/2010



hair growth as of 11/08/10
about to take a shower to wash my hair

 this is my 'new' hair growth. honestly, my hair doesn't look any longer than it did last month. but i will say that my ends look a lot better and I haven't even cut them yet.

HAUL:

this week i got anxious and got the aphogee stuff any ways with out waiting to run out of the SE stuff. I got:

-Aphogee Shampoo for damaged hair
-Aphogee 2 minute reconstructor
 (already had the Aphogee green tea and keratin reconstructorizer)
*and the non-aphogee stuff
-lustrasilk Shea butter mango cholesterol plus
(all costing $16.42 at my local beauty supply store)

REVIEWS:

A. Shampoo:
LOVE IT! its the first shampoo that made my hair feel this soft at home. I only did one wash because that's what the bottle says to do b/c it has so much protein in it. Next time i might do 1 1/2 wash. (just using a small amount of shampoo for the second wash) I like this shampoo because my hair feels clean afterwards, but doesn't feel stripped of moisture or super dry.
A. 2 minute:
I love this too! it made my hair feel softer! I wasn't sure what a 'reconsturctor' was, but its basically the conditioner that goes along with the shampoo. I put a lot of it in my hair, massaged it in then put my plastic cap on for 2 minutes. When it was rinsed out it felt super soft!
Lustrasilk Mango:
eh.. extremely disappointing. I used this as a DC (with out any oils added to it), and it took away all the softness the aphogee products gave me. I got this because I heard a lot of people using it and loving it. Also, its featured on hairlista's top 10 must have beauty products. I got it but it wasn't as wonderful as i hoped. I didn't use any oils or conditioners mixed into it but i will the next time and hope for the best.

I'm loving aphogee so much, I'm thinkin about getting the aphogee  pro-vitamin leave in conditioner too!
I also want to try ORS replenishing pak. (i already tried this before- before i started my hair journey- and i think i liked it but I'm not sure)

Next Friday i'll be the 8 weeks post and I'm excited to get my relaxer! my NG is out of control and it needs to be tamed. lol. If i could find a way to make my NG lay down flatter, then i would stretch for longer but since i can't i won't. I'm supposed to get a relaxer next Friday, but since I have to work I'll get it done on that Saturday after I get off.  :)

Problem with Aphogee:

The future problems I see with aphogee are:
Aphogee is high protein:
A lot of people had to eventually stop using aphogee because it has such a high protein content. Protein will dry out your hair and make it hard if you don't use a good enough moisture-protein balance. (to be explained in a later post) I do a lot of things to my hair that adds moisture (DC, M&S, leave ins, etc). But still fear that it will be too much protein. But if it is, I can use a moisturizing shampoo/ conditioner every now and then to make sure it doesn't happen. (aphogee already makes one just for this occasion.)
Aphogee is for 'damaged hair':
Aphogee is specifically for 'damaged hair'. what happens when my hair isn't damaged any more? What products will i switch too after that? I don't want to rely on aphogee to always make my hair great because one day it won't be necessary. Everybody I watch on YouTube eventually switched off of aphogee to different products. (Ateyaaa switched to NuGro, omgitsvictoriaxd switched to Garnier Fructis then to Aussie, etc.) Does it matter if its for damaged hair or healthy hair?

Short term hair goal:
by the end of the year I hope to be full shoulder length. At the latest, by 1/31/2011 to be full SL.
Long term hair goal:
bra strap length by December 2011.