My grandma died at 86.
When she died, her hair looked like that of a person 50 years younger.
How is that possible?
Did she wash her hair with holy water?
No.
Did she wash her hair with a silicone-free conditioner?
No.
None of that.
So what was the secret that gave my grandma such incredible hair at 86?
My grandmother washed her hair with soap once a week.
Yes. Once a week.
With common soap!
That was my grandmother’s hair washing routine.
Which makes me think the following.
How do we go from there to needing to wash our hair every day?
How do we go from there to needing more and more products?
Why do we need shampoos, conditioners, masks and hundreds of other products… and our hair is still a mess?
I’ll explain why.
Because 95% of the products we use to wash our hair today have a lot of chemical components.
These chemicals are very harmful to the hair.
Especially when you abuse them.
That’s why my grandmother had perfect hair by washing it with simple soap and we have hair like a scarecrow’s even though we use hundreds of products.
One of the main chemicals in all shampoos is sulfates.
One of the main chemicals in all conditioners is silicones.
In today’s article we’re going to concentrate on conditioners.
In today’s article we’ll find out:
- Do all conditioners have silicones?
- How do you choose a silicone-free conditioner?
- What are the best silicone-free conditioners?
- Why are silicones so damaging to your hair?
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Tabla de Contenidos
Do you buy your conditioner at the supermarket? This will interest you
The other day I went to the supermarket.
My husband stayed at home working. The boys also stayed home.
Long ago I learned that going to the supermarket with the boys is a real nightmare.
“Can I buy this cereal?”
“Mom, I want that…”
“Mama, will you buy me …?”
And so on.
So I decided to leave the boys at home.
It was a Saturday afternoon, so there were not many people in the supermarket.
I wasn’t in a hurry because I knew the boys were with their father.
I had all the time in the world.
What can an obsessive hairdresser like me do in the supermarket with an open afternoon in front of her?
In addition to making the weekly purchase, I had another idea that seemed bright.
At least for me.
I was so excited thinking about this idea that I almost crashed the car on the way to the supermarket.
I was about to turn into the Sherlock Holmes of hairdressers.
I was going to find out how many conditioners at the supermarket contained silicones.
Of the hundreds and hundreds of conditioners available at the supermarket…
How many have silicones?
I would spend my afternoon like that.
Alone. At the supermarket. Reading the label on each conditioner bottle to learn whether or not it had silicones.
Complete insanity, I must say.
Want to know how many of the supermarket conditioners have silicones?
Ninety-seven percent.
Ninety-seven percent of all conditioners available at the supermarket have silicones.
I’ll tell you the truth of how I got to that number.
After some time I realized I was getting tired of reading the small letters on the conditioners. As you can imagine.
If you have ever read the labels of 70 or 80 conditioners, you know that it can become tiring. Surely you never thought about doing such a thing, but believe me, it’s a tiring exercise.
I checked the labels of 100 conditioners.
How many of them had silicones?
Ninety-seven conditioners of 100 had silicones or some derivative of silicone.
Surprised?
In fact, I was quite surprised. I expected a different result.
I thought I would find more silicone-free conditioners in the supermarket.
I thought that the brands were slowly beginning to realize that the trend is to use less harmful and aggressive hair products. Total naiveté on my part.
Hair brands do not care about trends, health, people, or anything. They care only about selling a lot of shampoo and conditioner.
The concrete thing is that if you buy your conditioner at the supermarket, you will have a difficult time finding one that does not contain silicones.
I left the market thinking about this question.
Do we have to submit to the use of these conditioners full of chemicals that damage our hair?
Not washing our hair is not a good idea, especially if you share the bed with a partner.
Unless you want to end up sleeping on the couch in the living room.
Maybe we should stop using conditioner.
Or maybe we should return to my grandma’s washing habits.
But there’s a better solution.
Look for silicone-free conditioners.
The benefits of using a silicone-free conditioner are endless.
Is not easy to find them, but if you know where to look you can get one.
But how do we know if a conditioner has or does not have silicones?
That’s what we’re going to talk about now.
How do you know if a conditioner has silicones?
In a few moments we’re going to talk about some conditioners without silicones, but I think it is important to explain how to determine whether a conditioner does or does not have silicones.
There is not much science behind it. Nor do you need a microscope to evaluate the ingredients of the conditioner. You don’t need a master’s degree in Chemical Engineering, either.
If I did it in the supermarket, anyone can do it. You just need to know how to read.
Can you read?
Then you can differentiate a classic conditioner from a silicone-free one.
Let’s say you’re in front of the all conditioners in the grocery store or wherever you buy your hair products.
You pick up the first one and find its label.
Up to now it’s very easy, right?
Among the ingredients on the label we will look for those with the following endings: xane, cone, and conol.
All ingredients that end with these syllables are silicone derivatives. In other words, silicone
Those are the ingredients that we should avoid if we want to reach the age of 120 with the hair of a Barbie doll.
I will name some of the silicones as an example.
- siloxane
- dimethiconol
- dimethicone
- cyclohexasiloxane
- amodimethicone
We will not go into scientific details about what exactly each one is. Let’s just say that they are derived from silicones.
Did you pay attention to the endings?
All these ingredients end with the syllables we named before.
WARNING
Do not be fooled by the packaging of the conditioners.
There are many products whose packaging says that they are organic or natural or blah blah blah. They really aren’t. It’s pure marketing. To check if a product actually has silicones, it is safest to look at the ingredient list.
Here we aren’t looking for a product that has nice packaging. Or a fashionable product. What we’re looking for is a silicone-free conditioner.
The ingredients that appear first in the list of ingredients are those that predominate in the product.
If, for example, the first ingredient in the list ends with “xane”, that ingredient is the most important in the composition of the conditioner.
The earlier an ingredient appears on the label, the more important it is in the overall composition of the product.
What are silicones and why are they so harmful to the hair?
Just as most shampoos have sulfate, most conditioners have silicones.
Silicones are responsible for leaving the hair silky and shiny. It’s that beautiful feeling that conditioner leaves on the hair. When one does not use conditioner, the hair looks dry and is difficult to brush.
So far, so good.
What’s wrong with silicones, then?
The problem is that silicones pile up on the hair just like people pile up at the subway at rush hour.
Each wash during which we use conditioner creates a thin layer or film around the hair.
This layer is supposed to protect the hair from all kinds of external agents, such as weather, dust, wind, etc.
The problem is that this layer is so efficient that it makes the hair totally impermeable.
Impermeable materials are those that do not allow certain substances to pass through them. For example, a waterproof jacket does not let water enter it.
When hair becomes impermeable, it allows nothing to enter or exit. When I say nothing, I mean nothing.
No air.
No hydration.
No light.
Nothing.
As you can imagine, hair needs all those things to stay healthy.
If this impermeable layer does not allow light or water to enter, the hair tends to dry out, become damaged, and finally break.
That is what conditioners with silicones do to the hair.
At this point, we should note that not all hair is the same.
Not all hair is exposed to these chemicals in the same way.
There are people who use this type of conditioner every day and who have perfect hair. Congratulations to them. Luck is on their side. But not everyone has this luck.
There are also people who have more sensitive hair for different reasons. Those are the ones who should use silicone-free conditioners.
How is your hair? Should you avoid silicones?
- Dry hair
- Hair with curls
- Hair with frizz
- Treated hair
If you have dry or damaged hair, you should change to a silicone-free conditioner.
The same applies if your hair is frizzy, over-processed or dyed, or if you had a keratin treatment.
In all those cases, changing conditioners would be a really good choice.
Each hair type is different. It has different needs.
In addition to the genetic factors that make each hair type different, there are other variables that affect the characteristics of the hair.
The weather. Washing and caring habits. The use of capillary tools. Etc.
You must evaluate the needs of your own hair to know whether you should use a conditioner without silicones.
As a general rule, finer hair is most exposed to these chemical ingredients. Thicker hair is more protected because of its structure.
The 3 best silicone-free conditioners
In today’s article we are going to talk about the 3 best silicone-free conditioners.
It’s not that they are the best because I say they are. Or because my Aunt Martita says it.
These are the conditioners I have recommended to my clients over and over again. That’s why I’m convinced they really work. They leave hair silky, shiny and nourished. And all that without having silicones.
One of my clients had hair so dry it looked like sun burn. I recommended that she start using one of these silicone-free conditioners.
After one month of using Pura D’or conditioner (the first on the list), her hair looked like someone else’s. The woman could not believe that a simple conditioner change could make so much difference in her hair.
Let’s not waste any more time. Let’s see the conditioners.
Alisa has been my friend for 25 years.
We went to school together.
Now we are both mothers and we have our occupations, but every now and then we make time to get together to have a coffee.
The last time I saw my friend, her hair was horrible.
Dry and with terrible frizz.
It was as if she had forgotten to take care of her hair.
Suppose you are trapped on a desert island for a few years.
What would your hair look like after you spent some time washing it with sea water?
Can you imagine it?
Well, her hair looked like that.
At first I didn’t say anything. I didn’t want to offend her.
At one point I finally encouraged myself and asked her what products she used to wash her hair.
Her answer did not surprise me.
“I don’t know,” she told me. “I buy the first products I find in the grocery store. Sometimes I choose the cheapest. Or the one on sale.”
No wonder her hair looked so awful.
But that wasn’t the worst thing.
We continued chatting and she told me that she was not happy with her hair.
“So why don’t you do something about it?” I asked her.
I advised her to start using a silicone-free conditioner.
I was sure that if she changed her conditioner, her hair would start to improve.
Luckily, she followed my advice.
She started using this Pura D’or conditioner and little by little her hair began to look better.
Three months later, her hair looked amazing.
Silky, shiny and with much more volume.
She sent me a photo of her hair and I couldn’t believe it was the same girl who three month earlier had looked like she had put her fingers into the plug.
Before, her hair looked like that of a 70-year-old woman.
Now it looks like that of a 20-year-old girl.
All thanks to a conditioner change.
It really looked like she had gotten some expensive treatment.
But no.
Nothing like that.
She had simply changed her conditioner to a silicone-free one like Pura D’or.
For many people, brushing their hair is torture.
One day the hairs are tangled in the brush.
Another day there are so many hairs on the brush that they think they are going to go bald.
Every time they see a brush, they feel like crying.
This suffering is going to end today.
It’s as easy as changing your current conditioner to a silicone-free one. Like Shea Moisture.
If you have never used a Shea Moisture product, I recommend that you do so. You will not regret it.
Shea Moisture has been making hair products for about 100 years.
They know a thing or two about the matter.
This conditioner leaves the hair ultra-soft, shiny and silky.
The best thing besides not having silicones is that it is made with natural and organic ingredients.
If brushing your hair is torture now, with this conditioner you will discover how easy it can be to brush your hair without problems.
No more tangles.
You will never again lose whole strands of hair.
This conditioner is going to transform your hair forever.
Have you ever washed your hair with a conditioner made from natural ingredients?
If you never did, I recommend the experience.
You won’t regret it.
Look out!
Once you try a conditioner like this, made with natural ingredients, all other conditioners will look like crap.
This conditioner is light years away from any classic conditioners.
Instead of being made with chemicals that ruin the hair, it contains natural ingredients.
- Argan
- Jojoba
- Shea butter
- Natural vanilla fragance
Etc.
An excellent choice at a very affordable price.
One last bit of advice before you start using a silicone-free conditioner
Many times in the comments, people tell me “Carina, I used the shampoo you recommend and it is rubbish.”
“Carina, the conditioner you recommended leaves my hair so greasy and nasty that ghosts choose other people to frighten.”
“Carina, I’m using the conditioner you recommended but it has an unbearable rotten smell.”
And hundreds of comments like these.
That’s why I want to clarify one thing.
If you decide to start using a silicone-free conditioner, keep in mind that there’s an adaptation phase.
A trial-and-error phase until you find the silicone-free conditioner that best suits your needs.
I always recommend two things.
1- Be patient.
Let’s keep in mind that we are making a change that may seem minor, but it’s not.
After years of using silicone products, we are beginning to use products that do not contain it. The hair feels that change. There is a logical phase of adaptation to the new product.
2- If after a few weeks the product you have chosen has not convinced you, look for a second choice.
Suppose you decide to start using a silicone-free conditioner. You go to the store and buy one recommended by a trusted friend or your hairdresser.
After several weeks of using the conditioner, you discover that it does not leave you satisfied. It does not give you the results you expected.
This is something that could happen.
If the first silicone-free conditioner does not work for you, don’t get frustrated. It doesn’t mean that all silicone-free conditioners are rubbish. You simply have to find the one that best fits the characteristics of your hair.
The simple fact that it doesn’t have silicones does not guarantee results. There are products that work very well with some hair types and not with others.
That’s why I’ll say it again.
This is a matter of trial and error. It’s an exercise not fit for anxious people.
If you’re anxious, the best you can do is not waste time and continue using the conditioner you are currently using.
Did you already know about silicone-free conditioners?
What conditioner are you using now and how does it leave your hair?
