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I know I’m kinda late to the party, but I’m totally hooked on Point of Interest. I stumbled across some articles about conditioner, and was surprised to find that my DIY conditioner isn’t technically a conditioner! Apparently, conditioners contain cations, often supplied by using BTMS-50, or something similar, as the emulsifier. These cationic compound things sound pretty neat, so now I’m adding BTMS-50 to my wishlist…
Did anybody else know about this, or was I the only one in the dark?
Hello! Marie had a post, “Two-in-One Creamy Hair Conditioner. I think this was my first introduction to BTMS-50. And I have loved it ever since!
And you’ve got my interest…. what is your hair conditioner recipe?
I wonder how I ended up missing that post… weird. 😛
My hair conditioner is evolved from one of Marie’s conditioners, I don’t remember which. It’s still being developed to something just right for me, and I change it a bit whenever I make it. But this is what it generally looks like:
*
4g E-wax
7g oils (combo of jojoba, coconut, grapeseed, argan, or olive)
Squirt of vitamin E (my scale isn’t very accurate at the gram level, so I just squirt and hope for around a gram…)50g water
30g Aloe
8g glycerin
1/4 tsp silk (I believe this is somewhere near 1/2 gram. If I every get a better scale, it would be nice to know)Essential oils
Preservative
*Again, this is in-progress. I want to cut down on the oils by a couple grams, swap the E-wax fr BTMS-50, and go from there. Adding some ‘cones and hydrolyzed proteins would be fun, if I ever get about ordering some, but for now it works pretty well. I’m also thinking of developing it to include less oils, more other goodies, and more emulsifier to make a cleansing conditioner. I’ve always wanted to try CO washing, but regular conditioner tends to not be quite cleansing enough for me.
I’ve thought about making my own co-wash too since I mostly co-wash my hair. I have BTMS-50, thanks to Susan’s POI blog, and have made conditioners, but not a co-wash. I wonder if you could add a low level of a gentle, non-sulfate surfactant to a conditioner recipe, maybe around 5% or so, to boost the cleansing a bit? I’ve not tried it, but it’s been rumbling around in the back of my brain for a while. Susan posted, waaaaaay back in the day, a dupe of Curl Junkie’s Daily Fix Cleansing Conditioner. Maybe that post will give you some ideas.
What is a “co-wash”? And what exactly is a “cleansing conditioner”? I’m afraid to Google I don’t want to get lost on the internet. I’ve eyeliners to make today!
Co -washing is short for conditioner washing. It was started by Lorraine Massey, who wrote The Curly Girl Handbook for curly hair. If you have wavy/curly/coily hair, it’s definitely worth looking into. I started using the Curly Girl Method two years ago and have not looked back. It has done some amazing things for my fine, wavy/curly hair.
Oh, and a cleansing conditioner is basically a conditioner with little to no surfactants in it. People with wavy/curly/coily hair generally use it to keep their hair more moisturized, since curly hair tends to be oily at the roots and dry on the ends. It can take a while for your scalp to adjust to it if you’re really oily. It took me about two months but it’s been awesome ever since. My scalp actually gets very dry now in the winter and I have to oil it with a few drops of argan oil.
I don’t actually have curly hair (it’s barely wavy), but it gets so incredibly dry and damaged at the ends! That’s why I want to try a cleansing conditioner. I imagine mine might need a bit more surfactants and emulsifiers and less oils in it than what a curly girl might want, though.
I will caution anyone who wants to start co-washing to read up on it first and learn how to do it properly. If you’re not washing with a sulfate shampoo, you cannot use silicones or you will get build up. Sulfates are the only things that remove silicones. Also, take the time to really scrub your scalp. I’m talking aching arms! I tend to shampoo once a week because my hair gets limp and sort of gooey feeling if I don’t, and co-wash the rest of the week to keep it moisturized. That seems to be about the perfect balance for me. I also deep condition and use a protein treatment every week to two weeks, which really boosts the curls and strengthens my fine hair.
http://Www.naturallycurly.com is a good resource for learning about this stuff. Or Google “curly girl method”. My hair was what I called “funky straight” because it wasn’t really straight, but it wasn’t curly either. Fast forward two years and I have people touching my hair. A lot. Asking if my curls are natural and how I style it. This just happened this past weekend at a party. This woman kept touching my hair and telling me how beautiful my curls were. I’m really not used to that! Haha!
I read Susan’s post on conditioners and the must-be-cationinic bit earlier this year, which definitely means I’ve shared one or two not-actually-a-true-conditioner hair “moisturizer” recipes. Oops! They still make my hair feel pretty, if nothing else 😛
You’ll probably be surprised to hear 1/4 tsp is not even halfway to half a gram of silk! Silk is soooooo light. I just weighed out 1/2 tsp and it was 0.44g 🙂
Also, can I just say that I wish I had curly hair? I know the grass is always greener, but my mum has curly hair and I’ve always been sad I didn’t inherit it haha.
From my reading on POI, Cetrimonium Chloride is also good at removing silicones, so if you are trying to avoid sulfates but don’t want to sacrifice silicones, that could be a good alternative 🙂
Isn’t Cetrimonium chloride an ingredient you’d need a pH meter to use? If so, that would be why I haven’t bought it. Haha!
Marie, your hair is beautiful! It looks so thick and healthy! I do get the whole “grass is always greener” feeling, though. My hair is classified as wavy, since the roots of my hair aren’t curly. I am envious of girls (or guys) who have big, thick, beautiful curls all over their head instead of the finer, limper (is this a word??), wavy stuff I have growing out of my head. I have to try really hard to love the head of hair I have some days.😊
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