Dry Hair Dominican Hair Alliance

How to Use Silicon Mix (5 best steps)

by DHA's DIY | Apr 15, 2022 | Conditioning, Dominican Blowout, Heat, Straight Hair, Blowout, Deep Conditioners, Dry Hair, Hair Straightening, Silk PRESS

The Perfect way to use Silicon Mix

What’s the best way to use Silicon Mix? If the only thing consistent about your hair lately has been its dryness and resistance, then this Silicon Mix-atrActiva combo might be exactly what it needs.

This Silicon Mix-atrActiva treatment combo is designed for distressed, damaged or rebellious tresses. If you’re lucky enough to have tresses that don’t currently fit any of those descriptions, you can use it as a preventative measure to make sure your hair stays happy, or even to revitalise that bundle of Remy hair you were hoping to reuse. Whichever reason, this treatment combo gives such deep conditioning moisture that it carries you through the week.

The penetrating nutrients, hydration and slip that atrActiva-Silicon Mix delivers and seals in, makes your hair healthier, more elastic, more manoeuvrable, and thus easier to style.

It works because Silicon Mix is the ideal sealing treatment, created to form a protective layer over damaged tresses, smoothing uneven cuticle layers along the way. By locking in the nutrients and moisture needed for strong healthy hair, Silicon Mix acts like the haircare equivalent of that final coat of sealant on a freshly painted wall.

Silicon Mix Tratamiento awards blog SMALLER

For all the acclaim it gets on its own, to really put Silicon Mix’s super-sealing powers to work requires an equally powerful underlying deep treatment, one which can provide the healthy nutrients and vital moisture that Silicone Mix is designed to lock in.

Enter: atrActiva’s Multivitamin Treatment, La Reina of long-term moisture. atrActiva’s Multivitamin Treatment’s plentiful nutrients (it includes Vitamins A, D, E and K) make it the ultimate, nourishing underlayer.

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Not only that; it’s formulated for longlasting hydration of dry, damaged, hard-to-smooth hair. If you’re struggling to find a conditioner that actually absorbs into your low porosity hair, atrActiva Multivitamin is it; its silky micro-emulsion is designed to sink into resistant textures that most conditioners fail to penetrate.

like paint…

To get the best out of these two conditioners, you don’t mix them; you treat them like paint and layer. While mixing won’t result in flaking or clumping, these two Dominican conditioners work best together when you plaster your hair with one on top of the other. Since atrActiva Multivitamin Treatment is a super-moisturizer, and Silicon Mix is a super-sealer your hair gets the most benefit when layering Silicon Mix over atrActiva, on freshly washed wet hair. This way you’ll be moisturising with atrActiva Multivitamin Treatment, and sealing with Silicon Mix Treatment.

Now, you are ready to begin

For best results, there are 5 steps to take when using Silicon Mix:

Step 1: Cleanse
Step 2: Rinse
Step 3: Apply atrActiva Multivitamin Treatment
Step 4: Apply Silicon Mix Treatment
Step 5: Rinse

Step 1: CLEANSE

Sometimes conditioners, grease, gels, leave-ins, pomades and even certain shampoos leave residue on our hair shaft that prevents us from getting the ultimate benefit from deep treatments. So, the first step of reaping the benefits from your deep treatment is to thoroughly clean your hair.

You’ll know your tresses are thoroughly clean when water droplets run clear from your hair (non-coloured hair only), there is no hint of a layer of grime on your scalp, and your strands feel free and move with ease.

The best way to ensure that your hair gets thoroughly clean, (and to prevent tangling) is to section your hair. Wind it up it into 4 parts, and shampoo each section separately (big twists, or slide-in clips usually facilitate ease in unwinding and help hold hair well).

Step 2: RINSE

Rinse for longer than usual, ensuring that all shampoo suds have been washed free. Use warm water and remember to maintain your hair’s sectioning; by taking one section at a time, carefully opening it up to rinse through it thoroughly, before winding the section back up, and moving on to the next.

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atractiva multivitamin treatment best moisturising for dry hair in grass

Step 3: atrActiva Multivitamin Treatment

After using a towel to blot the water droplets out of your freshly shampooed hair, start with your first section and generously apply atrActiva Multivitamin Treatment along the perimeter of the section, from scalp to tips, squeezing it through the section before taking smaller subsections, and gently working it through. This way, atrActiva begins detangling your hair before you divide the sections further. Continue to ensure atrActiva is applied from the root to the ends of your hair.

Then secure this section before moving into the next.

Step 4: Use SILICON MIX

2 minutes should have passed in between layers. Waiting a little before you start applying Silicon Mix Treatment gives atrActiva time to soak into your hair and moisturise your strands inside out and generate serious slip.

If you have been sticking to the 4-part method, then there is no need to wait an additional 2 minutes; simply start with the first section you applied atrActiva to, and in small finger length and width sections, slip a coat of Silicon Mix over the lengths of your hair, from root to tip.( As you already have atrActiva underneath apply only a thin layer of Silicon Mix).

Then move on to do the same to your second, third and fourth sections.

Comb through each section, and massage* scalp for up to 5 minutes. Then cover with a plastic cap for at least 15 minutes without heat, 10 max with heat. Silicon Mix Tratamiento 300x300 1

(*Skip the massage, if you have high blood pressure or have been advised accordingly by your doctor.)

Step 5: RINSE AGAIN

Rinse thoroughly and enjoy your super moisturised, super smooth, super fortified hair! Using these two superconditioners in combo should leave your tresses sublime for up to a week. Repeating this treatment weekly will allow your hair to accumulate the benefits of each treatment, for longer, stronger, shinier tresses.

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From step 5 on, it depends on your styling plans; if you are blowdrying or straightening, then protect with atrActiva Shine Drop Serum first. If you’re letting your hair air-dry, then try your favourite pure oil on wet hair first, before adding leave-ins when dry.

This Silicon Mix-atrActiva Multivitamin Treatment works fantastic on Remy hair as well, so if you want to extend the life on your weave then keep a lookout for your step-by-step post coming soon.

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For a mini-course and FREE printable on straightening without heat damage, look here.

I have low porosity hair: Do I need a steamer?

by DHA's DIY | Mar 31, 2022 | Deep Conditioners, Dry Hair, Low Porosity, Porosity, Super Low Porosity

If you have low porosity natural hair, you’ve probably heard that you need to steam your hair to get your conditioner to penetrate.

But every good steamer comes with a price tag and if that’s not in the budget right now it’s OK.

Here’s how you can get some of the benefits of a steamer just by turning up your conditioners and your method.

Why is steam good for natural and low porosity hair?

At DHA, we’re big fans of moist heat, aka steam. because of the way it can bring hydration to the most resistant, impenetrable low porosity hair.

The ‘steam’ your hair actually comes into contact with when using a steamer is really water vapour, droplets of H2O that have gotten hot and light enough to float in the air, but not quite hot enough to be steam.

Using steam can help moisture from conditioners penetrate low porosity hair. Image by Bryant Churckyno.

These droplets work so well at hydrating low porosity hair because when they’re in this vaporous state, water molecules have way more energy than in their regular liquid form. They move faster and more freely, which makes it quicker and easier for these droplets (aka moisture) to penetrate your hair strand.

Another big reason why hair steamers hydrate better than normal, liquid water is because the surface tension is reduced to almost zero. You know how when water is still, whether in a glass or a calm lake, the surface looks really flat, almost like it has a skin over it? This is because of surface tension, or the way the molecules at the surface of a liquid naturally cling together.

Water’s high surface tension gives it a flat surface in this glass. Image by Manu Schwendener.

Water’s surface tension makes it harder for it to penetrate your hair since its own surface is holding it back. Add that to the resistance of low porosity hair to absorb pretty much anything and you’ll see why it takes so long for your hair to get wet – if it gets wet at all.

For the water droplets released by the steamer, surface tension is effectively gone. This is what frees them to float onto and drift into your hair, making their way into the few gaps your low porosity hair permits – and finally getting it hydrated.

All this added moisture is what makes deep conditioning low porosity hair with steam so effective.

What is better a hair steamer, a heat cap or a dryer?

Using just heat, e.g., a heat cap, does make your conditioner more fluid and so more able to give good coverage. But since heat caps don’t emit water vapour, they don’t deliver the level of hydration you’ll get with a steamer.

Using heat from a hood dryer can also help ‘activate’ your conditioning treatment, but it won’t add moisture. Plus, if your hair is not properly sealed with plastic or you stay under the dry heat too long, it can even dry out your hair.

Why deep penetrating moisture is so important to low porosity hair

Natural hair needs moisture because our strands’ internal structure actually uses water for strength. Water also increases hair’s plasticity; it makes it more flexible, which in turn makes it more manageable, easier to style and able to resist breakage.

Straight low porosity hair tends to take care of its moisture needs on auto pilot, especially when it comes to virgin hair. The different structure of curly hair makes holding onto moisture more complicated, so the hair’s natural moisture needs to be topped up.

Tightly-curled low porosity hair is prone to breakage if moisture levels get too low. Image by The Collab.

When porosity is extremely low, which happens naturally on many tight curly hair types, especially “4C”, your hair can become so dry it breaks off. This happens because the natural moisture stores within the strand are not enough, and it’s so hard to get moisture to penetrate with typical haircare methods and products.

Using steam is one way to overcome that barrier and allow these hair types – which are prone to breaking off before they hit their terminal length – to grow long. Add to that the fact that when your hair’s moisture level is correct, it also feels a lot softer and smoother to the touch, and just more fun to play in.

How steaming helps increase your hair’s moisture level faster

If you’re trying to correct your moisture protein balance or get your hair moisture trained, a steamer, with its higher energy water molecules, is a much faster way to hydrate your hair.

A weekly steam will mean your hair (provided it is not extremely damaged) gets to its ideal moisture level within 1-2 months, as opposed to several months if you try to achieve this by weekly treatments with a typical deep conditioner and no steam.

How much does a good hair steamer cost?

Good steamers aren’t cheap. A decent steamer will cost you in the region of £150, and the price can get a lot higher the more premium the model you’re looking at.

How to get the benefits of steaming WITHOUT a hair steamer

If a steamer is sounding like exactly what your hair needs, but the cost is prohibitive right now, don’t worry. It turns out you can get almost all the benefits of steaming if you just switch to a conditioner that penetrates better, and change the way you apply your conditioners.

OK there’s no question: adding steam to this improved conditioning method would take your moisture levels up to stratospheric. But if you’re looking for a moisture increase that’s equivalent to the level that steam + any decent treatment will bring, then upgrading to a stronger treatment + this method will do the trick and then some, with no steamer needed.

Using a superconditioner, the right application and timing hydrates hair like a steamer. Image by DHA.

The trick is threefold: first, it’s about finding the right conditioning treatment for your low porosity hair, then learning how to apply it to low porosity hair so it absorbs, and thirdly making sure the timing is correct. Getting all these three things right will give you dramatic results. Here’s how you do it:

Step 1: Pick the right treatment

f you want moisture at a steam type level, you need to use a conditioning treatment, not a regular conditioner. You can use rinse out conditioner as an additional product, but you’ll need to use a hair mask, too. Treatments or hair masks are designed to be more intensive, which is what you need to get anywhere near the effects of steaming.

And don’t just throw on any conditioning treatment and hope for the best. Go for a superconditioner if you want to replicate the work a steamer does and then some. Superconditioners are extremely concentrated, high performance conditioning treatments. Because they contain many times the typical level of conditioning ingredients, they feel a lot richer and can hydrate your hair way faster and on a deeper level than even good quality conventional deep conditioners.

atrActiva Multivitamin Treatment is a superconditioner that can be used to replicate the steaming effect.

How to identify the best treatments for steaming hair

Cetyl alcohol is fatty, solid and conditioning. It shouldn’t be confused with drying, liquid alcohols.

You’ll know these superconditioners by their thickness, and their higher concentrations of the ingredients that count. These are the ingredients that hydrate your hair, strengthen it and smooth it, by penetrating or adsorbing onto to your hair.

Ironically, the ingredients that do this hard work generally aren’t the botanical extracts and natural oils most brands boast about on their labels.

Instead, look for actual conditioning agents high up on the list: cetrimonium chloride, cetyl alcohol, stearyl alcohol, to name a few. Silicones have gotten a lot of negativity in the media, but having one or two somewhere in the middle of the ingredients list is usually good news for your hair, too.

Also avoid very oily or buttery conditioning treatments when steaming low porosity hair. If there’s too much oil or butter in the treatment, these ingredients can act as barriers, especially on low porosity hair which has limited room on the surface or inside the strand.

Finally, the treatment you choose should be very slippery to the touch. This characteristic, known as detangling slip, means the product has good movement along the strands. Not only does this help with combing more easily, it’s also a sign of good coverage, which is essential for proper conditioning on low porosity hair.

For treatments that tick all these boxes, atrActiva Multivitamin, La Aplanadora Treatment and Halka Baba de Caracol are some good options. We list quite a few more here.

Step 2: Apply your conditioning treatment the right way

Once you’ve picked your treatment, it’s all about the application. We’ll be blunt: you need to be generous. Don’t bother trying to get away with using just a teaspoon or a quarter size on low porosity hair, especially if your hair is very dry. Give your hair what it needs.

The goal is to take your hair right to the point where it’s seaweedy with conditioner. That feel signals that your hair has started to absorb the treatment. We have a step-by-step guide on how to get products to penetrate into low porosity hair that explains exactly how to do it.

See how seaweed always looks drenched and slimy? That’s what your hair should look like once you’re done applying conditioner. Image by Matt Dawson.

Then, take some plastic wrap and cover your head. Make sure all the hair is in, including the edges, and wrap it around your head a few times.

Step 3: Get the timing right

Leave your treatment on at least 20 to 30 minutes to allow it to truly take to your hair, then rinse it all the way out with warm water. If you’ve never ever steamed your hair, chances are you’ve never experienced your hair like this before. If you have steamed, then you know what to expect: intensely silky, soft, flexible hair unlike anything your regular rinse out conditioner, hot oil or deep conditioner can do alone on low porosity hair.

With a superconditioner and this intensive application method, you can consistently achieve steamer-fresh hair on low porosity hair without needing a steamer.

This method is so good to your hair, in terms of softness, smoothness, shine, manageability, growth and potential for definition, it’s worth doing this every week to keep your hair in this pristine condition that is unlike anything you knew it could achieve.

This method will work especially well if you have ‘hard hair’ aka super low porosity hair that no conditioner, treatment or method ever seems to work on. To get the results, you need to follow every step to the T. If you have any questions on getting the steps right, just let us know in the comments section below.

The Super Low Porosity Survival Kit

We’re putting the finishing touches on our first batch of the DHA Super Low Porosity Survival Kit. It’s a compilation of the products that really work on super low porosity hair – the most extreme kind of low porosity hair out there – and a free course on how to care for this hair type. You can preorder your kit via the link below. Press the pink button for details.

Drying Oils: The Ingredients That Secretly Dry Out Your Hair

by DHA's DIY | Mar 31, 2022 | Dry Hair, INCI: all about the ingredients, Oils

Drying oils are used by paint manufacturers to make paint dry faster.

They’re key ingredients in linoleum, putty and varnishes too.

So what are they doing in your hair products?

Drying oils: The low-key ingredients that dry out your hair

By now most naturals know: oils can’t moisturise your hair on their own, but did you know there was such a thing as a ‘drying oil’?

Drying oils are added to paint to help it dry faster. And guess what? They’re in several haircare products, too. If your hair normally ‘likes’ oils but you’ve noticed your strands feeling stiffer or brittle after using a particular oil-containing product, it could be because that oil is a drying oil.

What is a drying oil?

So what oils are drying oils? Un-natural petrochemicals like mineral oil? Synthetic ‘moisture blocking’ silicones? None of the above.

Most drying oils are 100% natural, so plant-based and pure you could eat them. They’re nutritious, often brimming with Omega-3s and a ton of health benefits. But they can leave your hair feeling like straw.

Some of the most common drying oils you might recognise from the back of your leave in or oil blend: flaxseed oil, hemp oil and soybean oil. Yes, those.

Flaxseed oil is a popular drying oil and can leave hair feeling brittle. Image by alexdante.

This definitely runs counter to the way we’re supposed to think about ‘good’ and ‘bad’ ingredients in the natural hair community. That simple logic — where natural products, especially oils, are the best thing that could happen to your natural hair, and unnatural ingredients like silicones are bad — it kinda breaks down when the drying oils show up.

But could something as innocuous as cold-pressed flax seed oil really have a worse effect on your hair than the likes of Vaseline? To get why these oils can be so problematic, you need to know a little bit more about them. Here’s how they work:

Drying oils: How they dry out your hair

Drying oils don’t actively lift moisture from your hair, like a wicked short chain alcohol would. What they do instead is dry on your hair. While water dries off your hair, turning into vapour and floating away, drying oils are different. They dry by oxidising or reacting with oxygen in the air, and they stick around.

The oils have a unique chemistry that allows them to do this. They’re all high in unsaturated fatty acids with one, two, or three double bonds like oleic, linoleic and linolenic acid, all on one molecular chain.

From the top, oleic acid, linoleic acid and linoleic acid, fatty acids in drying oils. Ben Mills

As they oxidise, these unsaturated bonds crosslink, forming a tangled 3D network. The result is a hard coating that forms relatively quickly and sets on the surface.Ever notice a viscous, sticky layer around the rim of a bottle of flaxseed oil you’ve had for a while? That’s the oxidised version of the flax oil, linoxyn. Exposed to air, flax seed oil dries up. It eventually becomes a gummy solid, almost like an extra seal on the rim.

This is exactly why oils like flaxseed oil are used in painting. On its own, paint takes forever to dry, so to speed up drying time, painters mix in drying oils. Once they’re exposed to air, and spread into a thin film over a surface, the oils become hard and tough and somewhat elastic.

This tough, protective coating with limited flexibility is perfect for a painting, helping the paint to set before gravity or humidity start moving the artwork around. Drying oils also impart the firm, glossy seal that can make an oil painting last hundreds of years.

But your hair is a different story.

Even though the raw oil you might find in a natural hair product won’t have the intense drying power of the boiled flaxseed oil used in industry, that tendency to form a firm seal can leave your strands feeling stiff, brittle and unmanageable.

And hair that’s stripped of flexibility and softness is not the only problem: if the oil is drying enough, and you leave it on for long enough, it can also be harder to shift when you try to wash it out.

The tough buildup that drying oils leave naturally becomes more resistant the longer it’s exposed to oxygen. If you like to leave oils in your hair for days on end (or even longer), you’re increasing the time available for a drying oil to harden on your hair.

The more oxygen a drying oil is exposed to, the stiffer and more stubborn it becomes. Which means you might have your work cut out for you when you do get around to shampooing.

What are semi-drying oils?

Every oil has its own drying rate, depending on the ratio of different fatty acids it contains. Scientists measure this using the oil’s iodine value — the amount of iodine 100g of an oil can absorb. Drying oils like flax seed oil have a high ratio of polyunsaturated fatty acids and so have an iodine value of 130-190+. Article continues below…

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Anything under 100 is a nondrying oil, like olive oil, which has mostly monounsaturated fatty acids. Nondrying oils keep their liquid form for the most part.

Right up in between these two, are the semi-drying oils. The iodine values of semi-drying oils range from 100-130. These oils dry more slowly, and never achieve quite the same solidity that drying oils can get. Both rapeseed and sunflower oil are semi-drying oils.

How stiff or dry can drying oils make your hair?

How stiff these oils can make your hair will partly depend on your hair’s own natural elastic modulus – or stiffness factor. If your hair isn’t naturally very stiff, then drying oils won’t have as dramatic an effect. But the higher your hair’s modulus, the more likely it is that these oils will leave your hair feeling dry and stiff.

And if your hair is already low on moisture, the effects of a drying oil will be more obvious. Much of our hair’s flexibility comes from its water content. Hair that is undermoisturised is already brittle; using drying oils on it will multiply that brittleness.

Using drying oils on hair that is undermoisturised will increase dryness and stiffness. Image by Mwabonje.

Another factor that affects how stiff or dry a drying oil will make your hair feel is time. The longer you leave it in your hair, the drier your hair will feel, as the oil oxidises, creating a barrier that’s increasingly tough, and difficult to penetrate.

How can I wash oils out of my hair?

Non-drying oils like olive oil don’t harden when exposed to air; they stay much closer to their original liquid form. These oils tend to wash out easily, even with co-washing.

Depending on how often you wash your hair, semi-drying oils like sunflower oil oil may not have time to build up that strong cast that gives a lot of people stiffness and buildup.

You can remove these oils with a mild cleanser, use Baba de Caracol Sulphate-Free Shampoo. Even drying oils take a while to set on your hair, so if you’re washing frequently and only using small amounts, they may be less of a problem to remove. With low usage and frequent washing, you should be able to remove them with a gentle shampoo, just like with semidrying oils.

Now this is the worst case scenario: say you’ve used a drying oil and left it in for quite a while. Maybe your hair was in a protective style, and you didn’t really pay it any mind. Now, you notice there’s a firm residue on the surface of your hair, it feels dry and almost glued together in some places.

In this scenario, you’ll definitely need to clarify your hair — with shampoo. But first, gently prise the hair apart; it needs to be detangled before it’s washed or you could make the tangles worse and inflict breakage.

If there is major matting, use a detangling leave in with tons of slip like La Aplanadora Leave In first. That will help separate the strands which the drying oil can knit together. Work your leave in through the tangles one by one; you’ll need to make sure they are all out before you clarify.

Once you’ve detangled, use a clarifying shampoo like atrActiva Anti-Stress Shampoo to remove the drying oil build up. Be warned though: if the film has properly set, you might not be able to get all the residue out in one go.

I’m not using a drying oil. Why is my hair still dry?

Drying oils aside, one common reason why oils can cause dry hair, is using oils on dry hair. A lot of people use oil as a moisturiser, but no oil can do that job singlehandedly.

Moisture only comes from water. If you apply oils on dry hair, then even the silkiest, most softening, non-drying oil could leave your hair feeling dry. That’s because even nondrying oils create a hydrophobic film that can lock out a lot of hydration.

Using oil on dry, dehydrated hair is only going to make it greasy and drier. So unless you’re doing a pre-shampoo oil treatment, only apply oil on wet hair, damp hair or hair that has been moistened with a water-based product. Using oils this way should help you seal in moisture and get soft, hydrated results.

Is coconut oil a drying oil?

Coconut oil is not a drying oil; it doesn’t have the right chemical structure. Coconut oil is composed mostly of saturated fatty acids, while drying oils have higher percentages of unsaturated fatty acids.

Even though it’s not actually a drying oil, lots of people do notice that coconut oil dries out their hair. The reason for this is not known, but there are some clues.

The dry, brittle feeling could be related to the fact that coconut oil is one of very few oils that can actually penetrate the hair shaft, due to its high presence of straight chain fatty acids.

Once inside, it binds to your hair’s own proteins, making their bonds stronger. This should strengthen your hair — and studies show it does — hair treated with coconut oil shows less protein loss after washing.

So why does it make some hair brittle? Could it be because coconut oil makes hair more hydrophobic? Or because the presence of the oil inside the hair shaft makes individual strands feel thicker and stiffer?

Coconut oil is not a drying oil, but does leave some hair dry and brittle. Image by Jonas Ducker.

The fact that coconut oil increases hair’s tensile strength means its stiffness should increase too. For some hair though, too much stiffness can mean a loss of elasticity, which can result in breakage. We see this sometimes with protein treatments, which are designed to strengthen the hair, often by making it stiffer.

If the proteins are too effective at stiffening the hair fibre, the result is increased fragility and breakage, even though the product is supposed to make hair stronger. This over-stiffening effect might be the reason people report dry hair after using coconut oil. But that doesn’t make it a drying oil

— nor does coconut oil does contain protein, in case you were wondering.

What if all oils make my hair stiff and dry?

Oils don’t have to be drying oils to make your hair feel dry.

For some hair, especially extremely low porosity hair, most oils can stiffen strands, making them feel crunchy or rough, whether you apply them on wet hair or not. This could be because the oils can’t bind well to the resistant cuticle on low porosity hair.

On these hair types, nondrying oils can cause many of the same problems as drying oils: buildup, roughness, dehydration and even extreme breakage. If this sounds like your hair, it’s probably time to stop force-feeding your hair oils.

Water-based rather than oil-based products might be the answer if every oil might as well be a drying oil to your hair.

How do I know if an oil is a drying oil or not?

As well as the popular drying oils we’ve mentioned in this article, there are tons of other drying and semi-drying oils; too many to list here.

If you want to be able to spot drying oils that aren’t covered in this article, just download our Drying Oils guide. It breaks down dozens of popular natural oils into drying, semi-drying and nondrying so you know what you’re dealing with. You can get it here.

Silicon Mix Bambu vs Silicon Mix: Which is best?

by DHA's DIY | Mar 30, 2022 | Blowout, Deep Conditioners, Dry Hair, Hair Growth, Hair Straightening, High Porosity, Low Porosity, Natural Hair, Porosity, Super Low Porosity

These days, Silicon Mix Bambu Treatment is almost as popular as the shine-amplifying Silicon Mix original. But what’s the difference between these two Dominican superconditioners and which one is best for your hair type?

What is Silicon Mix Conditioner?

Unless you’ve missed the Caribbean wave of hair products that’s swept the beauty world in recent years – from Jamaican Black Castor oil to Dominican superconditioners – you’ll already have heard of Silicon Mix.

Hailed for its services to blowouts, silk presses and weaves everywhere, Silicon Mix is a line of conditioners, shampoos, leave ins and stylers from the Dominican Republic – the Caribbean island nation famous for its exports of rich, exotic conditioners. There are actually four lines under the Silicon Mix name: the original Silicon Mix (Hidratante), Silicon Mix Argan Oil, Silicon Mix Proteina de Perla, and Silicon Mix Bambu.

Silicon Mix is best known for its conditioners or more accurately, its conditioning treatments: rich, creamy formulas with tropical scents and tons of slip that leave hair gleaming, no matter how damaged, dry or brittle it was before.The original Silicon Mix treatment has become the stuff of hairdressing legend. Once the Dominican salon’s best-kept secret for creating mirror-shiny blowouts on hair textures other salons couldn’t straighten, it quickly spread out to other stylists in cities like NYC, with strong connections to the DR, and

is now used around the world.

Silicon Mix Treatments. Clockwise from top left: Bambu; Hidratante; Argan Oil; and Proteina De Perla.

How Silicon Mix Treatments work

All the Silicon Mix treatments use a proprietary mix of silicones and substantive conditioning agents alongside other ingredients to create a protective layer on the hair that silkens away roughness, smooths curls and amps up the hair’s shine.

While the silicones tackle the surface, ingredients like cetyl alcohol and cetrimonium chloride make the hair softer and more flexible, as well as helping draw moisture into the strand, leaving it hydrated.

The protective, yet weightless layer it encases strands in has gained the original Silicon Mix a second claim to fame: this time for reviving wigs and weaves. Extension specialists use it to maintain Remy hair, extending the lifetime on these costly human hair extensions, allowing them to be reused multiple times.

Silicon Mix Treatment works well on weaves and wigs. Image by Tubarones Photography.

The difference between Silicon Mix and Silicon Mix Bambu

When you open up the jars, you notice the difference in these two products right away. The original Silicon Mix is white and very viscous, while Silicon Mix Bambu is yellow and a little lighter in consistency. Silicon Mix has a gentle musky scent, slightly reminiscent of Caribbean vetiver; Silicon Mix Bambu has a more playful, tropical fruit aroma.

They work differently, too. While all the Silicon Mix conditioners use a blend of silicones and fatty conditioning agents to provide intense conditioning and protection to the hair, each of the spin-offs contains its own star ingredient, designed to add a different benefit. For Silicon Mix Bambu, it’s bamboo extract, known for its strengthening abilities. There are a few other differences as well:

Silicon Mix Bambu is protein-free

The overall formulation is different in Silicon Mix Bambu Treatment vs Silicon Mix Treatment. Flip around the jar to the ingredients list, and you’ll see a number of those differences. For one, protein (keratin) is a key ingredient in Silicon Mix original. It’s partly responsible for the strengthening “shock treatment” the product delivers to damaged, brittle hair.

Silicon Mix Bambu Treatment is keratin-free, which is appealing to people with protein sensitive hair. Mineral oil is also lower down in the list in Bambu, which is good news for people with low porosity hair that doesn’t usually ‘like’ this ingredient in higher concentrations.

Silicon Mix Bambu Treatment is lighter

The lighter consistency makes Silicon Mix Bambu easier and quicker to spread through the hair, especially if you have thick or low porosity hair and like to apply your conditioners with a wet brush. That lighter formula also makes Silicon Mix Bambu a good option for people with loose curls who want to keep the curl in their hair as they blowdry.

The original Silicon Mix is designed for blowdrying hair straight which mean it can straighten a little too much on hair where the curl is not that strong. Silicon Mix Bambu delivers the trademark Silicon Mix smoothing without the straightening effect.

Silicon Mix adds more shine, Bambu is more penetrating

Performance-wise, the original Silicon Mix definitely has the most dramatic effect on the hair’s surface, slipping it into an invisible silicone envelope and creating the most intense shine.

Silicon Mix Bambu penetrates easily into low porosity 4C hair. Image by Tubarones Photography.

This is what makes it so good on weaves and wigs which start to look dull as the cuticle wears down. Silicon Mix’s protective casing makes human hair wigs and extensions look brand new again – especially when you blend it with atrActiva Multivitamin Treatment.

On the other hand, Silicon Mix Bambu Treatment is more penetrating. This means it outperforms the original on hair types that find it difficult to get products to absorb into them, and which are harder to moisturise, such as low porosity hair and 4C hair.

Is Silicon Mix Bambu good for hair?

Yes. Let’s count the ways: First, the blend of ingredients that resist heat (like dimethicone), with flexibility-enhancing ingredients (like cetyl alcohol) makes hair easier to blowdry or iron, while also reducing heat exposure. That means Silicon Mix Bambu has a built-in heat protectant component which helps shield hair, even in intense blowdrying.

Secondly, Bambu does all of this without flattening the hair or leaving behind residue – both of which are frowned upon in the Dominican haircare tradition, which prizes smooth, natural-looking hair with tons of movement.

This requirement for strong conditioning that doesn’t weigh hair down means that Silicon mix Bambu Treatment can be used on all types of hair, even fine or extremely straight hair that usually can’t use conditioners – all without a trace of greasiness.

When Dominican women straighten their hair, a flowing, silky look is preferred. Image by ElMarto.

At Dominican Hair Alliance, we do pretty extensive product testing, on hair with different textures, densities, condition and of different origins. Based on our research, Silicon Mix Bambu is good for hair that is curly, straight, wavy, natural, heat-damaged, bleached, relaxed, dyed, texturized, or Brazilian Keratin straightened, with high, low or medium porosity, from people of African, Native American, European, Asian descent.It works – and by that we mean smooths, softens, adds shine, detangles, protects from heat damage and increases manageability – on almost everyone.

No one product will work for every person on the planet. But we love the fact that it can actually penetrate and hydrate super low porosity 4C hair and yet work on fine, straight, bleached hair that needs conditioning but can’t get it from most products because of the weight.

If your hair is dry, damaged and needs a transformation, the statistics are heavily in in your favour with this versatile, super concentrated treatment.

The best conditioners work even better with consistency. To learn how to create the most moisturizing routine for dry hair, download this moisture training guide and FREE course.

Is Your Hair Truly High Porosity… Or Is It Just Terribly Dry?

by DHA's DIY | Mar 30, 2022 | Dry Hair, High Porosity, Natural Hair, Porosity

Is Your Hair High Porosity… Or Is It Just Dry?

Do you have high porosity hair?. . .Or is your hair just so dry it’s grabbing all the moisture it can get?

Here’s how to tell the difference. . .

The high porosity hair trend

It took a while to take hold, but porosity has finally gripped the imagination of the natural hair movement.

Now everyone who hasn’t already found out their porosity wants to know: Do I have high porosity hair or low porosity hair?

If you don’t know yours yet, you can take this test and find out:

Why hair porosity is important

Finding the right product and routine that for your hair can be a hit and miss. Curl typing will only get you so far, which leaves people looking for a more reliable approach to finding what works. For an increasing amount of people, that approach is porosity testing.

The appeal behind this is simple: Figure out your hair’s porosity and you’ll know exactly what kind of products and routines work best for you. Your hair will flourish and your natural journey will be that much smoother. At least, that’s the theory.

Knowing your hair’s porosity can help you find products that match your hair. Image by Lucas Miranda.

What is porosity?

So here’s a quick primer on how hair porosity is defined in the natural hair community. (Hair scientists and hairdressers traditionally have a different concept).

Porosity for naturalistas is all about how much (water or product) your hair can absorb. Generally, people use these three categories of hair porosity:

High porosity hair takes in (and loses) moisture the fastest
Low porosity hair takes in moisture more slowly and loses it slowly too
Medium or ‘normal’ porosity hair is somewhere in between.

What causes porosity in hair?

Your hair’s porosity is the result of several factors: how compact your cuticle layers are, how raised your cuticle is (naturally or through damage), and how intact the surface of your hair is.

High porosity or porous hair will usually have one or more of the following: a less than compact strand, a higher cuticle scale angle, or a damaged surface, full of ‘pores’, often with the outermost layer missing.

How common is high porosity hair?

Back in the day, there was a (wrong) assumption that all Afro hair was porous. These days, it’s becoming more obvious that textured hair types, more often than not, tend to have low porosity.

That said, some hair is naturally more absorbent. And, while natural hair textures are increasingly popular, so are not-so-natural hair colours. As a result, porosity changes due to bleach are very common in the natural hair community.

Using hair dyes and bleach can turn naturally low porosity hair into high porosity hair. Image by Anderson Miranda.

So whether it came out of the scalp with its cuticles at a slightly higher angle, or got that way via a texturizer or some bleach, a lot of people have hair that takes in moisture fast and loses it fast too.

To naturals, both these types of hair count as “high porosity hair.”

Do I have high porosity hair?

If your hair sucks up moisture like there’s no tomorrow, only for it to disappear within the hour, you might be thinking you’re firmly in this high porosity category. But you might not be. Here’s why:

Reason #1: Porosity isn’t the same as absorbency

People in the natural hair community often use the two terms interchangeably, but while they’re definitely connected, they’re not the same.

That’s because how absorbent your hair is can vary at any given moment, but porosity is structural. It depends on the physical features of your hair which can’t be altered that easily.

When people talk about natural hair and moisture, sponges are the go-to metaphor. They come in just as handy for illustrating the difference between high porosity hair, and hair that’s just really absorbent because it’s really dry.

So imagine you have two identical sponges. Same material, same number of holes, same size, same weight, same everything. In terms of their inbuilt capacity to soak stuff up, your two sponges have the same porosity.

Both of these sponges are dry to begin with, but then you spray a large amount water onto one of them.

After that, you put each of those sponges into identical bowls, filled with exactly the same amount of water, and let them soak for the same amount of time.What happens when you pull them out?The sponge which was already partially hydrated— the one you sprayed — won’t have taken in that much water.That’s no surprise; it was already wet, so there wouldn’t be much space left inside to hold more water. But the dry sponge? It might soak up all the water in the bowl.This difference in absorption happens even though both sponges naturally have the same porosity.

Wetting a sponge makes it less absorbent but doesn’t change its porosity. Image by Tumisu.

It’s exactly the same with hair. Say you have a hair twin whose hair has roughly the same porosity as your hair. If you keep yours moisturised and she leaves hers desert-dry most of the time, her hair is going to seem like it’s more porous than yours.Should the two of you apply the same conditioner at the same time, her dried out, desiccated hair will likely absorb way more conditioner than yours.

In other words, it’s going to act like the porosity is high. Even if structurally speaking, it’s not.

Her hair is just so dry and empty inside it has room for all that extra hydration.

If these virtual hair twins have the same porosity, who has the most absorbent hair? Image by Andrea Piacquadio.

Hair with a high ‘Moisture Debt’ like this, will need to take in more moisture over time, gradually balancing its levels before its true porosity is revealed.

Which brings us to Reason #2.

Reason #2: Low porosity hair sometimes acts ‘just like’ high porosity hair

Low porosity hair can do the whole, “I just moisturised it and look now it’s dry again!” thing very well. Contrary to popular belief, if your hair’s porosity is low enough, it runs a pretty high risk of getting extremely dry — often way drier than high porosity hair.

This happens very often on 4c hair, which tends to have extremely low porosity but is often mistaken for high porosity hair, because it too struggles to retain moisture.But they’re not dry for the same reasons.On super low porosity hair, you’re starting off with hair that has a naturally low capacity to take in moisture.

Low porosity hair has a limited capacity to absorb moisture. Image by Agatha Ezepue.

If you then use products that aren’t favourable to moisture absorption, like most people with low porosity hair do, you effectively bring your strands’ chances of getting moisture down to nil.And once your hair is that dry, it can start to act thirsty, the way high porosity hair does. Whenever it gets the chance — like when you’re applying leave in — it absorbs more moisture than you would expect.

But if your low porosity hair doesn’t get enough time to take enough moisture in — which is very likely to happen since it’s so slow at absorbing stuff — guess what happens?

It’ll feel dry again soon after, just like high porosity hair does.

Moisture (aka water) isn’t going to stick around and wait forever for your strands to absorb it. If your hair doesn’t take it in in time, it’s just going to evaporate from the surface, especially if you’re in a dry environment.

Water droplets evaporate easily from the surface, but the process is slower in high humidity. Image by Jernej Graj.

This is why your hair might seem like it’s ‘flash drying’, which something high porosity hair does pretty often.

The difference is that on low porosity hair, most of that moisture is leaving the surface. It’s not leaving from the inside of the strand, which is what happens in high porosity hair.

Reason #3: The Drying Oils Scandal – Another Way Hair Can Fake High Porosity

Ever heard of a drying oil?

If you’re the type of natural that uses oils to “moisturise” your hair, this might come as a surprise.

But oils can dry out your hair. Some of the most cherished natural oils are classed as drying oils; because of their natural chemistry, these oils are actually added to paint to help it dry faster.

If you use them on your hair, don’t be shocked if you get dried out strands that seem to soak up moisture and spit it back out; strands that behave just like high porosity hair. But it’s not your hair’s fault. It’s just the oil that did it.

Oils can often block out hydration on low porosity hair. Image by Silviarita.

Other oils which aren’t classified as drying oils can still build up on the surface of your hair and act as a barrier to hydration.

If you’ve ever felt like the more oil you apply, the drier your hair gets, it probably isn’t because you have high porosity hair; it’s more likely because the oil’s blocking all the moisture out.

What if I have the type of hair that just drinks up everything?

Your hair doesn’t really absorb everything. Nobody’s hair does. Most of the stuff we apply to our hair never even makes it inside; that’s because only ingredients with the right size and chemical structure can actually penetrate the hair’s surface.

Water can make it in (with varying degrees of difficulty) but the size and shape restrictions rule out most oils and butters aside from coconut oil.

Some deep conditioning ingredients can penetrate the hair if you give them enough time; cetrimonium bromide is one. But most won’t.

So if you’re putting product on your hair and it’s just disappearing, it’s not all going inside your hair. Some of the water is, but the rest is just evaporating, rubbing off on your clothes, drying and flaking off, or just sitting on the surface of your hair. Even if you can’t necessarily feel it on your strands. That’s because many products are designed to leave you feeling like there’s nothing on your hair, when there’s actually a good bit of residue.

That same residue could be tricking you into thinking your hair’s high porosity when it’s not.

High porosity hair vs hair that’s just dry: How to tell the difference

If you don’t have high porosity hair and your hair is just dry for one of these three reasons, how would you know?

You might have to repeat the process a few times to know for sure, but it’s super simple. The first step is to clarify your hair: Use a laureth sulfate shampoo, use atrActiva Anti-Stress Shampoo to remove the buildup that is stealing all your moisture at the strand level. Sulfate-free options won’t work for this.

Deep-cleansing like this will take care of dryness due to buildup from drying oils or other residue.

Then, you need to give your hair deep moisture. If you find you have to work in your conditioner to get it to penetrate, then you’ll know you actually have low porosity hair. High porosity hair will take any moisture in easily.If you don’t have high porosity hair, once you increase the moisture you give your hair and keep it steady for a while (basically, pay off your hair’s moisture debt) that thirsty behaviour should change.Deep conditioning with a hydrating treatment will make the biggest difference in your hair’s moisture level, so make sure you use the most concentrated formula you can find.On super dry low porosity hair especially you’ll need a deep conditioner like Baba de Caracol Hair Moisturizing Mask that can penetrate and bind well to a resistant strand. Steaming can also accelerate moisture penetration; here’s how to steam your low porosity hair even if you don’t have a steamer.

Follow that up with La Aplanadora Leave In designed for both instant and slow-release moisture before applying styling products.

Over time, the high porosity-like symptoms will disappear and you’ll notice your hair starting to retain moisture more easily than before.

But on hair that’s truly high porosity, whether by nature or by damage, you’re always going to have the advantage of hair that’s easy to moisturise — and the work of going that extra mile to lock moisture in.For dry high porosity hair, your focus isn’t getting moisture to penetrate your hair; it already does that easily. Instead, you need to focus on insulating your hair to reduce moisture loss.Insulating goes a little further than sealing; it means using different layers of water-loving and hydrophobic products to trap moisture inside your hair.

This process starts with your conditioning step: you can blend super hydrating treatments like Baba de Caracol with other powerful conditioners that act more at a surface level like Silicon Mix Treatment.

After that, every product you use, all the way down to your styler, should contribute to the insulating process.

Regularly insulating your hair is the best way to combat extreme dryness — whether you really have high porosity hair or not.

For more high porosity hair information, check out our full-length DHA High Porosity Guide.

What are the 5 problems with sulfate-free shampoo

by DHA's DIY | Mar 30, 2022 | Dry Hair, INCI: all about the ingredients, Low Porosity, Shampoo, Shampoo Alternatives, Uncategorized

Just because you’ve given up sulfates, doesn’t mean washday becomes a haircare utopia. Sulfate-free shampoos come with their own set of problems.

Here’s how to spot the biggest ones and how to choose the best sulfate-free shampoo for your hair.

What are the problems with sulfate-free shampoo?

Since the backlash against sulfate shampoo began, sulfate-free formulas have become more and more popular. At first, they seemed like the solution in the search for gentle but effective cleansing alternatives. But one major problem reared its head almost immediately: the grease.

Does sulfate free shampoo makes hair greasy?

If you could swear your new sulfate-free shampoo made your hair greasy, seconds after you washed it, you’re not alone. A lot of sulfate-free shampoos do leave hair greasy. Why, exactly? It depends on what is in that shampoo – and what’s on the hair.

Many sulfate-free shampoos are formulated with ultra mild cleansing agents like decyl glucoside or coco glucoside. These are great for not stripping delicate scalps and hair, but their mildness is also their weakness. Since they’re so gentle, these cleansers are simply not strong enough to remove the product buildup many people have on their tresses.

Ultra mild cleansers found in some sulfate-free shampoos are not enough to remove heavy product buildup. Image by Demorris Byrd.

They also require more work in terms of lathering to remove dirt, oil and grease. If you’re accustomed to the easy sulfate cleansing experience, you might not realise you now have to put in that work. That’s one more reason why going sulfate-free can leave hair greasy.

Another reason for the oiliness is that to make up for this lack of strength, a lot of manufacturers like to up the surfactant concentration. This can defeat the purposely of using mild cleansers since higher concentrations are harsher on your hair. The overcleansing causes your oil glands to overreact, spewing tons of sebum to remoisturise your panicking scalp – hence the greasiness.

One more thing you may have noticed: many sulfate-free shampoos also contain tons of conditioning ingredients. This is to create a shampooing experience that feels less like you’re shampooing and more like you’re conditioning your hair. All too often, this leads to crazy buildup. There’s a fourth, more sinister reason, too…

Sulfate-free shampoos can be harsher than sulfate shampoos

Most people think that sulfate-free automatically = gentler for your hair, but it isn’t that simple. Lots of sulfate-free shampoos are made from milder, gentler ingredients, but many aren’t. One of the most common ingredients in sulfate-free shampoos is a cleansing agent called olefin sulfonate. Olefin sulfonate’s role is to replace the cleaning function that sulfates play in conventional shampoos – and it does a very good job of it.

Some sulfate-free cleansers are just as harsh as the strongest sulfates. Image by Pimthida.

It’s so good at what it does that olefin sulfonate actually cleanses better than the sulfate most commonly used in shampoos today, sodium laureth sulfate (SLES). But that’s not a good thing.

Sodium laureth sulfate has all but replaced sodium lauryl sulfate in sulfate shampoos.

The ‘eth’ in its name is the clue; sodium laureth sulfate is chemically modified, ‘ethoxylated’ to be milder than the harsh sodium lauryl sulfate which sparked the whole sulfate backlash.

Olefin sulfonate is every bit as harsh as the original sodium lauryl sulfate.

The level of clean delivered by both olefin sulfonate and sodium lauryl sulfate is unnecessary for cleansing hair, even if you use tons of greasy oils and butters or hard-to-remove silicones like cyclopentasiloxane.

Sodium laureth sulfate is enough to get these out without completely stripping your hair. Sodium lauryl sulfate and olefin sulfonate, on the other hand, are so eager to remove oil and grease they burrow into your strands after them, leaving holes in your hair shaft.

Sometimes, sulfate-free manufacturers load shampoos with emollients to cloak the harshness of this cleansing agent. For some hair, these emollients are enough to buffer the worst effects. But on more fragile hair types, olefin sulfonate can lead to dryness, brittleness and problems with length retention. These extra ingredients can also leave oily or waxy residue on the hair, storing up buildup problems for later.

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Many sulfate-free shampoos contain high levels conditioning ingredients. Image by Ian Dooley.

And while all the added oils and fatty alcohols can stop your hair from feeling frazzled when you’re using your olefin sulfonate-based shampoo, at a strand level, this ingredient can still do all the damage that sodium lauryl sulfate does, can since its molecules are around the same size.

Point blank: Just because a shampoo says sulfate-free doesn’t mean that it’s milder or gentler or better for your hair.

Are sulfate-free shampoos bad for your hair?

Don’t worry, it’s not all doom and gloom if you do decide to go sulfate-free. Choosing a milder cleanser makes sense if you have delicate hair and are not using products which require a strong cleanser every single time you wash your hair.

halka baba de caracol sulfate free shampoo

Baba de Caracol Sulphate Free Shampoo cleanses effectively yet gently.

There are sulfate-free shampoos out there which clean hair well without overloading it with grease or overcleansing it – Halka Baba de Caracol Sulphate Free Shampoo is one of them.

Keep this in mind: the only way to tell if a shampoo, sulfate-free or otherwise, is good for your hair is to look at the whole formulation. At the very least, that means a)making sure that key drying ingredients aren’t there, so no sodium lauryl sulfate, ammonium lauryl sulfate, olefin sulfonate, or salt (sodium chloride) on the ingredients list, and then b) trying it out and seeing what it does to your hair.

Formulations work as a whole, and the exact amount of each ingredient is not stated on the ingredients list. So don’t just rely on a lack of ‘bad ingredients’ on the back of the bottle. Trying it out will give you a feel for how concentrated or potent the shampoo actually is.

Sulfate-free shampoos are suited for which hair type?

Most sulfate-free shampoos aren’t designed for a particular hair type; they are offered as a gentler cleansing alternative to sulphate shampoos, suited for all hair types. That said, you can find specialist shampoos out there for particular needs; some sulfate-free shampoos are designed for curly hair, or damaged hair. You can even find a sulfate-free shampoo for hair loss or hair growth.

Sulfate-free shampoos work best if you do not use a lot of product on your hair. Image by Mike Fox.

Having said that, some hair types do tend to do better on sulfate-free shampoos than others. People with oily hair often find sulfate-free formulas less suited to their hair, as do many people who use a lot of styling products.

Since many sulfate-free shampoos are based on gentle cleansing agents, they might not be enough to remove buildup for some people – especially people who tend to use a lot of product, or whose product options include styling butters and creams, which tend to leave difficult residues. Few sulfate-free cleansers can remove non-water soluble silicones, either.

Additionally, the high levels of conditioning ingredients in some sulfate-free shampoos, and the kinds of conditioning ingredients used, can also be a problem for people with oily or low porosity hair. These ingredients can create a lot of residue for oily hair or low porosity hair both of which are more sensitive to buildup.

Are sulfate-free shampoos expensive?

Even when you look at sulfate vs sulfate-free shampoos in the same brand, the sulfate-free formula is often more costly. This is because the ingredients are often more expensive and the R&D required to make a sulfate-free shampoo that works, balancing effective cleansing and mildness could be very costly – all of that will show up in the price.

Sulfate-free shampoos can also work out to be expensive just for the fact that they are not as powerful. Often this means that people have to use a lot more shampoo to get the same results they would get with a sulfate shampoo.

But if you’ve found your ideal sulfate-free shampoo, and it takes your hair right to that equilibrium between cleansed and not stripped – it may well be worth it.

Just remember to make sure your washday routine is gentle enough overall; damage from rough handling can be as bad as any harsh shampoo; sulfate or sulfate-free.

Use this checklist to make sure your complete washday routine is kind to your delicate curls.