Thursday, April 23, 2009

Oh No...Frizzies!


Hi Everyone! Sorry I've been away so long! The business and motherhood has been crazy (in a good way!) and unpredictable, so I've neglected posting, but I finally have a spare moment so...on to business! I've been getting some interesting general questions from people that I think would make good blog posts, so each post, I'll try to address a question/topic. This week I'm going to try to tackle the topic of frizz/frizziness.

What's causing this? Well, from what I've learned it mostly likely can stem from 3 main things:

1)Differences in your hair's natural texture. You may have tightly coiled, curly and wavy hair all in the same head and sometimes right next to each other and that can cause what looks like frizz.

2)Over conditioning/product buildup - Sometimes we tend to overuse conditioners, leave-ins and stylers which can lead to overconditioning (hair becomes almost too soft, frizzy and lifeless with undefined curls/coils). If you are using a really good moisturizing conditioner already, be careful not to overdo it by adding say, a leave-in and a styler that already has conditioning ingredients. I find that usually less is more, so if you have a creamy, moisturizing styler (like the CoffeeCoco Curl Creme), you probably don't need a leave-in conditioner underneath. If you want more hold, then you can top it with a little gel of choice (say the Aloe Fix or Smoothing Gellie :-), or your preferred gel) and that should do ya! Sometimes adding an extra product like a leave-in to this combo or similar combo can cause frizziness from overconditioning. I usually use a leave-in alone or with a gel product or I use a creamy product by itself so I avoid this problem. If the frizzies have you in their grasp, I find that clarifying (with a shampoo or ACV rinse, etc.), followed by a conditioner with a little protein (like Curl Theory) usually helps smooth out frizzies.

3)Dry weather (low humidity) - This is where you really want to use a good moisturizing rinse out conditioner followed by a leave-in conditioner with a low amount of humectants and plenty of smoothing emollients (like Curl Assurance leave-in) to seal in moisture. If you use a leave-in with a high level of humectants in this situation, your hair may "reach out" to the air looking for moisture (and then if it doesn't find it, the humectant can pull from the hair itself causing dryness and...frizzies!) which can give the appearance of frizzies!

These are the main causes I have found, although there are sure to be others as everyone's hair is different and we all live in different climates and do different things to our hair (coloring, highlighting, blowdrying, etc.) Hope this helps and feel free to contact me with questions you'd like to see answered in a future post!