Wow - instant results! Moisturising and sealing works

I'm 3 days into my hair journey and I am amazed and oh so please to be reaping immediate benefit of a bit of "hairducation" - after just two nights of moisturising and sealing my hair before wrapping it for bed I can already feel and see a noticeable difference.


First - for those who stumble upon this blog and are fellow newbies on the journey to healthy black hair you may be like I was just a few days ago and saying to yourself "I've heard of moisturising but what on earth is sealing"? 


Well basically a lot of women with textured hair make to mistake of thinking that we can "moisturise" our hair with oil or oil-based products; this is not so - what we actually need to do is moisturise with a water based product and then seal the moisture in with a hair-friendly oil (i.e. one that will ultimately penetrate the hair shaft, not one that will lay on top for days making the hair lank and greasy as oil builds up on top of oil). It's all explained really well in The Science of Black Hair (SoBH) as well as on numerous blog posts, hair forums and youtube videos.


In my mission to find out just what moisturising and sealing was I came across this fantastic video by Sunshyne from hairlista.com:

Inspired by Sunshyne's truly hairtastic hair and the apparent ease of this regimen staple I couldn't wait to try it out on my own hair. I haven't decided what my regular moisturiser and sealant will be yet but I have so many hair products lying around that I figured I must have something that I could use to try it out.


Night 1
On Wednesday night I tried out moisturising and sealing the ends and lengths of my hair using:

• Moisturiser: L'Oreal Elvive Colour Protect Conditioning Protect Spray - a daily leave in conditioner treatment I'd bought ages ago when I coloured my hair (circa 2010). I chose this because I'd been reading posts on blogs/forms where people with relaxed hair had been saying they moisturise with leave in conditioner.
• Sealant: Keracare Overnight Moisturizing Treatment - a conditioning treatment that I've had for a while. I chose this because it's something I've had for a while and I've liked the results it has given me in the past when used on recently washed hair. Also even though it's a moisturising conditioner and not marketed as an oil the third and fourth ingredients are sunflower seed oil and coconut oil which means that there should be a reasonably significant amount of these oils in the product.

Night 2
Last night I tried out moisturising and sealing the ends and lengths of my hair using:

• Moisturiser: John Frieda Frizz-Ease Emergency Treatment Leave-in Conditioning Spray - another leave in conditioner treatment I've had knocking around for quite some time. I switched to this on night 2 because I'd been doing some more reading (particularly from SoBH) and I'd been learning about humectants (generally good for moisturising) and "cones" (not always so good).As I result of my reading I read the product label on each conditioner and found that the John Frieda contained glycerin (a humectant) as the second ingredient, panthenol (Vitamin B5) as the fifth, and few/small quantities of cones; whereas the L'Oreal one contained a lot of cones and a lot of alcohols, so I figured the John Freida would be "healthier" for my hair.
• Sealant: Keracare Essential Oils - as I mentioned before the Keracare overnight treatment is produced as a moisturizer and not an oil. Following my further reading I'd found out a bit more about the type of oils that are "good for" hair - I remembered that I had a sample of the Keracare Essential Oils that I'd been given by a hairdresser and as it seemed to be a blend that cointained many of the popular oils (castor oil, coconut oil. olive oil to name a few) I decided to give it a try.

Results

I am SOOOO pleased with my results. I had good results after night one - overnight my hair had gone from a frazzled and parched feeling mess to touchable hair. After night two my hair was soft, supple and shiny! I think that this is a combination of the "better" products used on night two and the lingering effects of having moisturised and sealed on night one.

Of course this was done on dirty hair (relaxed 9 days before night one) which will have had a bit of product build up, but in spite of this my hair was "transformed" by adding and locking in a bit of moisture. If these are the results on dirty hair with randomly selected products that I just happened to have to hand I can't wait to see what it's like when I get into a regular routine.

Wish me luck!

Ms Henissi