Tuesday 7 August 2012

Taking Care of your Hair

If you have been following our blog, you would know that I've tried dyeing my hair about a year ago due to greys, and as much as I liked the idea that I can cover my age, and my reviews on the hair dyes still stands - I regret dyeing my hair!

The chemicals in hair dyes are terrible for your hair and scalp! And honestly I'd really rather have my greys than what the dyes did to it! So until I explore natural hair remedies to cover greys - that are not harmful to hair or scalp - I have been trying all ways to recover the softness in my hair.

I am all about departmental brands or herbal natural remedies when it comes to beauty aids - mostly because I cannot afford the luxurious brands or facials every month etc. If you can then great for you! Go do that because yes it is true, money can really buy you better skin, better hair, better health and better everything!

So for the middle class folks like me, we have to experiment... and I did. So here is the best result thus far in repairing my damaged hair.

My Hair 2 months ago-

Ok bad photo, but good enough to see how frizzy and split my hair was... you can see the ends of my hair are now brown as it gets that way after the chemicals in your hair dyes are stripped over the months of washing.. 

At this point, I was using Dove intense repair series. It was wonderful when I used it before dyeing my hair.. but after, not so much. Considering that the intense repair series is supposed to help hair that are damaged by chemicals, it did not really help. 

So I tried getting a hair trim at my neighbourhood saloon - bad move! The silly scissors that is half-comb and half-blade that is used for thinning the hair [to get the layered effect] is really bad, it gives split ends! And that was what the saloon used and I ended up with plenty of split ends... But still workable.

I then decided to bite the bullet a little, and bought Organix hair products. I've always seen this brand on the shelves, and for frugal people like me, this is much higher priced than most other products in a pharmacy. But I was desperate, so I got the Moroccan Argan Oil leave on conditioner and Vanilla Silk Serum at about $15 each. I also ventured a little further for my pockets, I went to L'occitane and bought the Volumising shampoo.





Ok firstly, I wouldn't suggest the L'occitane shampoo to everyone, I got it on impulse and got sucked in by the store's warm and sweet smelling and dreamy marketing strategies. It's really expensive considering it's only a 500ml bottle of shampoo [that's gonna end up down the drain anyway] at $53. But I do like the idea that it's supposed to be for volumising, because I have very thin hair, and have quite bad hair fall.

I liked this collection as they are all organic products, and I'm quite conscious these days about Parabens - especially after using Korres [no parabens in Korres products is the biggest selling point - ok to digress a bit.. Parabens is an ingredient in plenty of beauty products that has been causing some controversy as research has shown that breast cancer cells have shown a presence of Paraben in them - although no solid proof has linked that the ingredient of Paraben in beauty products are the cause of breast cancer.., but then again, if you can avoid it, why not right?] So none of these contains Parabens, and the all natural and organic oils etc sounds all so delicious for my hair!

So my routine is - Shampoo, leave on the conditioner, towel dry hair and apply serum to hair. The bottle for the conditioner says for ultimate effects, apply conditioner then wrap in warm towel - but I'm too lazy. I started doing the conditioner like once in 2 weeks, and the serum after every shower. But these past couple of weeks I've been doing it every evening.

Hair now-

Okok bad photo, I just took it while in the office... but hey even so, you can see the difference! I can feel the difference too! My hair is back to it's softness from before the hair dyes! And it's far less tangly too! 

I find that the one product that made the biggest difference was the Moroccan Argan Oil conditioner. It really left hair so soft and silky. The serum is pretty good too, just that if applied to completely dry hair, it gets really sticky and heavy - so don't use too much of it. The Shampoo is good too, but it doesn't lather as much, of course considering that it is supposed to be mostly natural ingredients - its volumising effect has yet to show much results but who knows, maybe in a couple months!

Cheers,
E.L.

p.s. see my follow up on these products here