Tuesday, March 5, 2013

Homemade hair treatment for hard water damage and dry climate

2 1/2 years ago my family relocated from Washington state to Nevada. I immediately noticed a difference in my skin and hair. I attributed the changes to the lack of moisture here compared to Washington and was told by a few hair stylists that my hair was just used to more moisture so to use moisturizing shampoos, shampoo less and do deep conditioning treatments. I spent a lot of money on special shampoos and treatements but nothing was helping my hair. No matter how much I conditioned or trimmed it, my ends were ALWAYS splitting. This was the opposite of what I was used to...
Recently while I was getting my hair done by my new stylist there was conversation about our water and how hard it is on our hair. We have very hard water where I live in Nevada but it never really occured to me that maybe that was my main hair problem.
After leaving I went home and looked up the affect of hard water on your hair and was SHOCKED at what I learned. I will try to explain this as best I can... Our hair "cuticle" lays like roof shingles, layered one on top of the other, hard water leaves deposits on your hair which prevents your cuticle from laying flat (split ends!!). No wonder my hair was breaking so stinking much. After some more searching I read a couple people had been using white vinegar as a rinse in the shower to remove the deposits left by the hard water. Since I buy white vinegar by the gallon already for my homeade cleaning solutions and had it on hand I gave it a try and have continued rinsing once a week with it and guess what... No split ends!!
I have to say though that I also had just changed a few other things in my hair care routine. I started using Organix brand shampoo and conditioner because it is sulfate free and has argan oil (moroccan oil) which is supposed to be amazing for hair and sulfates are not...

In addition to that I purchased some 100% argan oil off of Amazon and have been using that too. This is the brand I purchased.

So my hair routine now (split end free!) is that I wash with the Organix every other day and once a week I rinse with a mix of vinegar and water after I shampoo and let the vinegar sit for a bit before rinsing it out and conditioning and after every wash I apply some of the 100% argan oil to my hair. I am at over a month since my last hair cut with no split ends!
I hope this helps someone out there who may be dealing with a similar hair crisis!! 

Thanks for reading!
~Casey

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