My roommate in college used to buy cheap shampoo - until I pointed out that one of the major ingredients listed in it was formaldehyde.
I have the same type of hair. I mix shampoo and conditioner - a bit more shampoo - and then apply a volumizing product and put my hair up. Results in much more body. I try not to use heat appliances on a regular basis.
Same here, right down to the bar of Ivory. But … I once decided to grow my hair out for Locks of Love, from my normal crewcut to long, flowing, salt and pepper old man hair. I learned a lot about hair care products. A bar of Ivory results in a tangled mess.
There are tons of good drugstore brands you can find easily. Is Pureology worth it? No, but there is a nice middle ground between $1 White Rain and Pureology.
Diosa’s mention of Loreal’s Ever ____ lines (ever pure, ever stay, ever something) is excellent. Aussie’s 3 minute miracle deep conditioner is too, as is Neutrogena’s triple hair mask – both for thick, unruly hair. Whole Foods makes a nice shampoo and Suave Pro Rosemary + Mint is excellent as well. The John Frieda lines are excellent (weather works and straight fixation and frizz-ease). Nexxus makes fine conditioners as well. Nexxus has this sick new conditioner called Pro-Mend that uses ions to bind your split ends together to smooth them out and “stick” to each other.
Above all it’s about using products that compliment your hair: using shampoos/conditioners/products for curls if you’ve got curly hair and a good mousse or leave-in conditioner, using a straightening shampoo and conditioner if you’ve got frizz, using a thermal protectant spray or straightening cream with thermal protection every single time, and using a clarifying shampoo now and then to get out all of the product and start fresh. If you have thin hair, a volumizing mousse goes a long way on the roots. Women shouldn’t be shampooing and conditioning every day, it’ll kill your hair. Dry Shampoos are now abundant (Suave Pro Keratin for the win!) in drugstores and work wonders on shiny scalps.
Men who use a simple 2-in-1 shampoo and conditioner always have the best hair. If you’ve got dandruff you should be alternating T-Gel and/or Head & Shoulders &/or Selsum blue (all have different active ingredients). A little American Crew pomade for the ethnic and Jewish guys makes them ready for prime time, especially in the summer.
ETA: hard gels are out for any type of hair. Soft, touchable curls and soft straight hair is the ticket. **Guinstasia **needs a volumizing shampoo and a volumizing conditioner. Blot your hair dry – never rub it. Turbie twist is best for 5-15 minutes. Apply volumizing mousse to the roots, then spray thermal protectant all over. Blow dry your hair with your head upside down (with a heavy, long barreled dryer), focusing on the roots and rubbing the roots as you go.
Uh-huh. Ions, you say. Exactly what is the chemical process by which this works?
I, too, have fine hair. I don’t use a specialized volumizing shampoo and conditioner, but I know lots of folks who do and love them. To get my hair the biggest, I use a root lifting mousse (I like Big Sexy Root Pump Plus) sprayed directly onto my roots, then I blow dry with a 1.5 inch round brush, making sure I left the roots up as much as possible. Sometimes, I’ll part my hair deeply so it’s flipped on the other side of my head and blow dry it that way. . . sort of like blow drying upside down, but without the head rush :p.
ETA:MsWhatsit –
Good job at violating the “don’t be a jerk” rule without contributing anything to the thread itself! I don’t need to defend what I said, I’ll let some cosmetic scientists do it for me.
Diosa, you’re just less lazy. I find the head rush a fair trade off 
I have pretty bad dandruff (tried T-Gel, Selsun Blue, H&S, etc with poor results) and consequently use two prescription shampoos on alternating days. One is generic and only costs me a few bucks but the other is $45 a bottle for probably about 5 ounces. It’s ridiculous. But I haven’t had dandruff flakes in the three years I’ve been using them. Fortunately, my hair is short so I only have to use a tiny bit each day, so each bottle lasts me for several months.
I wasn’t trying to be a jerk. I just thought your post was a great example of the sort of stuff that always crops up in cosmetics discussions: Lots of advice on what’s great and what works and what doesn’t work, with absolutely no evidence backing any of it up, and maybe a bit of pseudo-science mentioning ions or glycolic acids or whatever.
Your linked post does seem very science-y. I would be interested to see if there is a measurable difference between split ends treated with the ion stuff and split ends treated with regular conditioner.
I’m not saying, by the way, that all shampoos and conditioners are the same. But the lack of actual data on what exactly makes a shampoo great vs. crappy and which products meet those standards, is continually frustrating to me.
I’m not a hair scientist or anything, but just think about what a standard conditioner does: it coats your hair with something that makes it slick-- it doesn’t bond anything together. I think the completely unscientific comparison here would be between putting lotion on your skin and putting some of that liquid bandage stuff.
(obligatory mention of Paula Begoun’s book, ‘Don’t Go Shopping For Hair Care Products Without Me’). It’s all so confusing. I always go with Pantene because, well, we’re Pantene girls around here, so I’m just sticking with it. I’ve also liked Infusium leave-in treatment because regular conditioner makes my hair too greasy no matter how little I try to use.
I’ve been loving the One 'n Only brand from Sally Beauty Supply. I too am a huge fan of the L’Oreal Sulfate Free stuff but I feel guilty using it (then again, they own the Pureology, which I used for years). However, I own pretty much the entire line of One 'n Only products, and it’s amazeballs, especially the deep conditioning masks.
My other favorite is the Chi Nourish Intense Hydrating Bath shampoo, which you can usually pick up at Marshalls or TJ Maxx, though it’s not that expensive even on its own.
My all-time favorite shampoo is by Aquage, but it’s incredibly hard to find and inordinately expensive.
By the way (board at large, not Diosa) the Hair Board at Makeupalley is a great resource.
Whenever I happen by a Sally’s, I get their “Generic” brand stuff (no, really, that’s what it’s called!)- I’ve found it works exactly like the salon stuff it’s imitating.
GVP!! I love that shit, even better when it’s on two-for-1. GVP Conditioning Balm is pretty much the best thing to happen to hair.
Y’all, I have to take a picture of my “Hairs Closet” as my dad likes to call it. I am not one of those who will find her HG products and then stick to them. No, I’m always on the hunt for more crap to put on my hair.
Me too. It seems the only constant is Spray and Play Hairspray by Big Sexy, Root Pump Plus by Big Sexy, and el cheapo henna and placenta hair masks. Everything else is forever rotated.
Lots of the products I mentioned are top rated on Amazon. Naturally what works for most won’t work for all. I’ve mentioned it in the “rich girl hair” thread but a truly healthy diet and a good multi vitamin often go unmentioned because those things take actual work as opposed to money. That’s fairly common knowledge.
Also, glycolic acids are advocated by dermatologists. There’s plenty of evidence that they speed cell turn over, just as Retin-a does / all the derivatives of Retin-a. Wanna be sure of what you’re getting? Look at the percentage of AHA/glycolic acid. Alpha Hydrox brand offers the best bang-for-your-buck by ounce and percentage of active ingredient.
Yes, real cosmetic scientists are by definition “science-y”.
Trial and error and product reviews are a good place to start. I look to Amazon: see what is top rated and best selling in particular categories and going from there. That’s how I found Suave Pro Keratin dry shampoo. The Beauty Brains and Paula Beaugnon (sp?) do thankless work as well.
And what continually frustrates me is that here we are, trying to have an intelligent discussion about a wide variety of products. And you come in to stomp around and throw your hands in the air saying “it’s too hard / this stuff can’t be quantified / I’m frustrated”.
ETA: salinqmind, good mention of Paula’s book. I forgot to mention it.
I get mine from Amazon if I don’t want to pay my salon’s price. The Aquage website also has a salon locator to find it in your area. It is WHOA expensive, for sure. Their healing conditioner is my go-to after the 3.5 hour color/highlight/cut appointment I have every six weeks, and the root touch-up in between. I also like their leave-in spray conditioner, and I use the color protecting shampoo.
Yeah, I’ve seen a bit of stuff on Amazon but the company that makes Aquage is super crazy serious about diverted product, so though I’m usually cool getting stuff on Amazon, I won’t do it for them because I’m seriously concerned it’s not original. Unfortunately I don’t live near a salon that carries it right now, although one of my clients is an authorized retailer and sent me some as a Christmas gift.
But yeah, they make amazing stuff. Beats both Pureology and Kerastase hands-down for me. Another mega-splurge is the Christophe Robin Lemon Cleansing Creme, but even I won’t go that far!
Nobody is stomping or frustrated or throwing their hands in the air. You’re using bullshit bullying tactics to deliberately make **MsWhatshit **look inferior, and I’ll be goddamned if I let you.
I mean really, who the fuck shit in your Post Toasties this morning? She was asking quite reasonably for a citation on a questionable claim made by you. Ions sound, at first glance, as full of magical woo as body thetans and homeopathic dilution. Why can’t you get off your high horse? If you’d simply answered the question in the first place with a modicum of grace and without screeching like a harpy, we wouldn’t be having this argument.
I don’t know what’s wrong with you, but you should really stop pretending to be superior to *everybody *else *all *the time. You might actually be taken seriously if you stopped trying to make yourself look better at the expense of others’ credibility.
Yeah, well, I express my frustration that there’s not enough science involved in beauty product testing, and you tell me that the solution to my problem is Amazon reviews, well-renowned for being peer-reviewed and repeatable.
You and several other people in this thread are trading anecdotes back and forth. This product worked for me; that product has good Amazon reviews; this product has some kind of scientific effect that is supposed to repair hair. What this thread, and all other such threads, are lacking, is actual evidence, done by repeatable trials, with quantifiable results. It’s not your fault that there haven’t been any such trials, but it is your fault for pretending that Amazon reviews and “I tried it and it works for me” are a substitute for actual data. And of course people are going to be more likely to give good reviews to a product they spent a lot of money on. They don’t want to feel like they got ripped off, so unless the product actively gives them chemical burns or turns their hair into hay or something, they’re going to be inclined to think it worked.