It is necessary to use a conditioner after shampoo. You should use a conditioner that is designed for your hair type.
Why do we need conditioner?
Our hair carries a negative charge, so we need to use something with a positive charge, which we find in our conditioner.
Positively charged ingredients are absorbed into our hair. This means they will cling to the surface of our hair. They are largely water-resistant, so they will not wash out with water alone. They stick until the next wash. These positively charged ingredients are in the form of cationic quaternary compounds. They are the surfactants that make conditioner, well, conditioning. These are the chemicals people say you should avoid in your hair products. How can you avoid them in your conditioner? Without them, it’s a hair lotion, not a conditioner!
Conditioners are typically acidic to be compatible with hair. A shampoo balanced at pH 5.5 is also balanced for our skin, not our hair. It opens up our cuticle, so we need to close it with our acidic conditioner. Some people use an acidic rinse and claim it works as a conditioner substitute. It doesn’t. It does one thing that your conditioner does. Just one.
Some people claim that you can use oil instead of conditioner. You can’t. Oil does not condition our hair. The chemicals that condition our hair help in making and keeping them strong. They make our hair less static, easier to comb, and more flexible to reduce the risk of breaking.
Conditioners contain fatty alcohols which help make conditioning chemicals more effective. Hydrolyzed proteins fill in the gaps in our hair and silicones or oils provide a coating that seals in all the good stuff to prevent it from escaping and protects our hair from damage.
Before I truly understood what a conditioner does, I tried making my own for several months. I didn’t know that a conditioner needs positively charged ingredients to actually condition. I made many unsuccessful attempts that resulted in a nice lotion with a lot of oil in it. My hair was terrible and greasy. So when I learned the true meaning of conditioner and how it works, it was a lightbulb moment for me.
I dropped the oil and added BTMS-50, which is an excellent conditioning ingredient. Voilà! I had the best conditioner I had ever used. When you read somewhere that you can use oil instead of conditioner or eggs or onion juice or any other recipe, ignore it. They are wrong. Those things are not conditioners.
You can’t buy the ingredients to make a real conditioner in a local store, so instead, buy a conditioner from the store. It doesn’t have to be expensive or fancy, but it needs to be a real conditioner. Your hair needs it.
FAQs
Q1: Why should I use conditioner and not just oil?
Answer: Conditioner makes your hair soft and easy to comb, but oil doesn’t do that.
Q2: Can I use things like eggs or onions instead of conditioner?
Answer: Eggs or onions might not work as well as a conditioner to make your hair smooth.
Q3: Should I make conditioner at home or buy it?
Answer: It’s hard to make a good conditioner at home. It’s easier to just buy one from the store.
