Once Upon A Natural

Hair Problems Part 2

Conditioner is important, it's what makes your hair feel softer and less dry after shampooing . A lot of naturals use only conditioner to wash their hair to help retain the hair's natural oil (sebum) which can be stripped from the hair when you use a sulfate shampoo. Some persons will often choose a non-sulfate shampoo too if they don't feel comfortable with just using conditioner to wash their hair . Either method works. EVERYBODY LOVES CONDITIONER! Except me.

I hate conditioners and let me explain why. Ever since I was younger I always noticed that my hair felt waxy after using a conditioner. The waxy feeling was awful and I minimize my conditioning usage by a half when the frustration became too much to handle. When I transitioned to natural I used conditioner after every wash because other naturals always emphasize how important this step is. I was still learning about my hair and I was new to the natural hair journey so I tried a lot of things that was "good for natural hair" on my hair. Few months past when I started to understand my hair and the my frustration with conditioners just grew ten times worst. Having your feel waxy might not seem like a big deal but anyone whose experience this must know how truly frustrating it can get sometimes. I gave up on conditioners around my 7 months mark of being natural. I only shampooed my hair at that point. My hair felt dry after shampoo but not extremely dry, it was more like a "this thing has been thoroughly clean" type of dry. Moisture can be easily restored to my hair so I don't have a problem with it but I still wanted a shampoo that wouldn't leave my hair feeling dry since I'll be removing conditioners completely. Even non-sulfate shampoo can leave your hair feeling dry sometimes too.

Since recently I decided to try the Aphogee Two Step Protein Treatment. I followed every step of the instruction correctly and this was my experience with the shampoo and conditioner.

Using the Aphogee deep moisture shampoo, I washed my hair as instructed on the bottle. The results SHOCKED me!...my hair felt so soft ! Extremely soft . I instantly fell in love because this shampoo is exactly what I've been searching for since my one year natural journey begun. A sulfate shampoo that will actually strip my hair of oils and dirt but also leave it super moisturized like I never washed it at all.
I followed the other steps through and after I finished my protein treatment I realized that I still had one last step to follow through on; the aphogee balancing moisturizer which basically is a conditioner.
I was really sketchy about using it but it came with the package and since it was the final step I used it anyways just to be careful since this was a intense protein treatment and I did not want my hair to break off in the near future even though my hair felt super soft even after that intense protein treatment. The end results was my hair feeling waxy. A nightmare becoming real!
I tried applying my cantu and tried detangling but the product literally just sat on my hair ready to slide off. I did half of hair and left the other half product free to test a theory.

I got curious as to why the shampoo made my hair feel so awesome but the conditioner did not. Everybody seems to love conditioner so what was wrong with me?
I gathered 4 different conditioners and examined the ingredients. A ingredient that was similar in all of them was Panthenol. I did my research on this mysterious ingredient and this is what i discovered.

Panthenol is extracted from vitamin B5 and this chemical helps to bring moisture, fullness and shine to the hair. Some argued that it gave then a waxy feeling and some argued that it was not true.

Back to my experiment from before. When my hair was freshly washed and i applied products immediately to my hair. The product sat on my hair and it still had that waxy feeling. However, the section that was felt to air dry without products responded better to the product when it was applied to it after air drying .

My conclusion is this. This chemical can make your hair feel waxy , however , it can be easily absorbed by the hair strands and that is why the product did not sit on my hair after it was air dried. Some hair absorbed this product faster than others and thats why persons loves conditioner and others don't.

Many products contain panthenol even shampoos but I can't explain why is affects me more whenever I use conditioners. Maybe it contains a higher dosage , I don't know.

My advise however is that if you are having the same problem as me then you could :
A) stop using conditioners like me
B) wait until the product absorbs in your hair and then everything will be rainbows and sunshine again
C) just ignore it .

This is not a post to discourage you from using conditioners, i'm just sharing my experience, thoughts and views through out my journey. If any of my suggestions has helped you then you made me really happy with just the fact of knowing that i can help someone make their journey easier.

I will continue to use the Aphogee Deep Moisture Shampoo as my regular shampoo from now on since it contains sulfate (which makes me feel like hair is being cleaned properly) but leaves my hair feeling moisturized and awesome.

In the next chapter I'll explain the huge differences that I experienced when I used the aphogee two step protein treatment and a homemade protein treatment.