- You know how I said people were gonna get mad at me
for my last video?
Well, it's true, but I never would have guessed
that those people would be me.
You explained that horribly!
You messed it up!
You made that way too complicated!
You're confusing people!
You went way too fast!
If people don't get it, it's because you didn't explain it right.
The last video on dry and moisturized hair
actually went over way better than I expected.
You guys were super supportive and asked amazing questions.
Today, we're gonna go through the top 12 questions
you guys asked.
First, quick little recap.
We do not need to try and add more water to our hair
or seal water in.
Hair that feels dry isn't actually dry,
it needs conditioning.
Also needing to balance protein and moisture is a myth.
They're not opposites. They're both buildup.
So now let's answer your questions.
Number one and your most frequently asked question,
what is conditioner?
The main goal of conditioner is to make it easier
to comb through your hair.
One of the main ways it does it
is by making hair more slippery by lubricating it.
If I were to just use the word lubricating
instead of conditioning,
it would have cleared up a lot of your questions.
I just didn't use that word because
it's sometimes associated with other things.
It also closes the cuticle which protects
the inside of the hair
and it keeps the cuticles from catching on each other.
A lot of you also wanted to know
not just what conditioner does, but what is it?
Dr. Robbins actually talked about
the six main groups of things that go into
making a conditioner.
First, oily and waxy ingredients.
These are your slippery slidey ingredients.
They might be actual literal oils or waxes.
They might be silicones, maybe fatty acids.
Number two is ingredients with positively charged ions.
Basically, because of the pH of hair,
positively charged ingredients are attracted to it.
That's as far into it as we really need to go.
Number three, this goes right along with
everything we've been talking about
are substances that make ingredients that repel water
stick to the hair.
Number four, just ingredients to make
the conditioner thicker.
Five, ingredients that adjust the pH.
And then six, colors and preservatives.
So that's generally what you're gonna find
in most conditioners.
Number two, if my hair isn't dry,
then what is it? What's causing the problems?
This short quiz will help you figure it out.
Have you bleached your hair?
Have you chemically straightened or curled your hair?
Do you frequently use heat to style your hair?
Have you used permanent dye on your hair?
Has your hair been exposed to a lot of sunlight
without UV protection?
Does your shampoo have a high pH level?
If you don't know, I have a video on that.
Have you used your DIY hair treatments
without checking the pH?
Do you often tease your hair?
Do you brush or comb your hair roughly
or yank through knots?
Do you rough up your hair with a towel while it's wet?
Do you have a puppy who thinks your hair is a chew toy?
Let go. No Ma'am, No.
Do you live in humid climate?
Does the weather in your area change frequently?
Do you style your hair with heat?
Is the air in your home a lot drier than the air outside?
If your hair is curly, do you straighten it often?
And if it's straight, do you curl it often?
Do you use a loose shower cap or one made from a material
that lets moisture easily get to your hair?
If you said yes to questions in purple,
you probably have hair damage.
Everyone has some amount of damage just from grooming,
a normal wear and tear of just living life.
Side note, if you've used DIY hair treatments
and didn't check the pH,
that doesn't necessarily mean you for sure
have hair damage from it, it's just an increased risk.
So if damaged hair is your problem, hair cannot heal itself.
But there are three things here that you can do.
First, try to avoid future damage.
For way more details on how to do that,
check out the split ends and hair breakage video.
Number two, you can try treatments like Olaplex
or different bond builders that seek to
at least temporarily repair some of those bonds
that hold your hair together.
And number three, you can look for products that
attempt to hide the damage.
This can be the conditioners, split end treatments,
masks, even oils can at least temporarily
give your hair that smooth, glossy look.
If you said yes to questions in blue,
you're probably getting frizz from humidity.
People love to call frizzy hair dry,
even though a lot of times frizz is caused by
too much moisture.
If you want to avoid frizz, I've got some solutions for you.
First, if you blow dry, try using a blow dryer
that has anti-freeze technology.
Number two, use antifreeze products.
They're not perfect, but they can help slow water
from getting into your hair,
which helps your hairstyle hold longer.
Number three, if you answered that it's considerably drier
inside of your house than it is outside,
you might wanna try getting a humidifier.
The change in humidity from when you're inside
to when you go outside is gonna cause lots of water
to come rushing into your hair.
So if you can keep the humidity level inside your house
about the same level that is outside your house,
you're not gonna have that instant poof
when you walk outside.
Four, if you're an avid shower cap user,
make sure you've got one that fits well
and try one made from materials that are designed to
keep the moisture away from your hair.
And finally number five,
in areas with extreme humidity or extreme weather changes,
try not to fight your natural hair shape.
In the most humid places,
you are not going to win that battle.
On your tropical vacation,
don't flat iron your hair pin straight
unless you have naturally very straight hair.
And if it's naturally straight,
it's not gonna hold a curl in that humidity.
So just embrace what grows out of your head.
If damage and humidity aren't your problems,
your hair probably just needs more conditioner,
things to make it a little bit more slippery slidey
and also close those cuticles.
If your cuticles are blown up
it can definitely give you that feeling
that people describe as dry.
A lot of people think of conditioner just as a thing
that you use in the shower after shampoo,
but that rinse out conditioner probably isn't enough.
You may also wanna use a leave-in product
because they actually stay in your hair.
You're more likely to get more noticeable results.
Question number three.
So what? People are just using the wrong words, who cares?
Yes, people use the words dry and moisturized wrong,
but that's not the problem.
The problem is that people completely misunderstand
what their hair needs and how it works.
So if Janice over here doesn't understand why
her hair is doing something, but then she tries to fix it,
she's just throwing darts blindfolded.
It might work. It might not.
In the case of dry hair, her entire idea of
what is causing the problem is completely backwards.
So there's a good chance she's gonna keep going
further and further in the wrong direction
until she does serious damage to her hair.
I can't even imagine the stress of trying
harder and harder to fix something
and then every day just watching it get worse and worse.
That's why I make these videos.
If I can help you or somebody else avoid that pain,
it's all worth it.
Number four, does drinking more water
get more water in my hair?
And will eating healthy foods like proteins or fats
make my hair healthier?
Making sure that you're properly nourished
is important for forming your hair initially.
You need nutrients for the cells
that are going to become your hair.
But once those cells turn into hair, they die.
Literally the process of turning into hair kills them.
So any hair that you see outside of your body,
it's too late, it's formed.
Nothing that you eat or drink is going to change it.
People sometimes think that hair is like a plant
because it grows, but it only gets longer
because your body keeps pushing out more dead cells.
Number five, are my moisturizing hair products bad
and I've been wasting my money?
No, just because your hair doesn't need moisture
doesn't mean you shouldn't be using any of those products
that are labeled as moisturizing.
A lot of these things that these products do
are still super important.
Now that you know what's going on, you have a better idea of
maybe which products you wanna be using more or less,
but I just don't want you guys to think
that it means to throw all your products out the window
and that you don't need hair products.
Number six, I already knew that moisturizer
doesn't add water.
Two or three people seem to think that
the entire point of the video was that I was mind blown
that moisture means water or that moisturizing products
are just conditioners and don't actually add water.
Just so we are super clear,
the main point of the video is that
your hair doesn't need more water.
Hi, I know this is really weird
and about a dog really attached to me in the hood.
I didn't wanna get into this because
I didn't wanna upset any more people than I had to,
but there's enough misinformation in the comments
that we have to address this.
A few people tried to tell me
that I didn't understand the definition of moisturizing
or that moisture refers to oil.
No, that is a myth that comes from skincare.
Moisture is water.
It is a scientific term and it can be measured.
Moisturization is not a real word.
It's a word made up to sell people things.
The first use of the word was in 1915
to sell chicken egg incubators that would keep
the chicken eggs warm without cooking
all of the water out of them.
Because your skin needs oil to hold in water,
most moisturizers in skincare both add water and add oil.
But hydrating just refers to adding water.
In either case, the goal of both moisturizing
and hydrating is to keep the water concentration
at a certain level in your skin.
Your hair is not skin.
You do not need it to have a certain concentration of water.
90% of YouTube videos will tell you something else
and I do not want you to take my word for it.
Just because I or anybody says something convincingly
that sounds logical, doesn't make it true.
So I wanna share for you guys word for word
what the experts say.
"Moisture in hair is a scientific or technical term
"determined by the amount or percentage of water in hair
"and it can be measured.
"On the other hand, moisturization is a consumer (ist)
"term not a scientific term."
Secondly, with the journal of Toiletries and Cosmetics,
hello, this was written by Dr. Trevor Evans
who's spent the last 25 years studying
the effects of water on hair.
"The comments and demands of hair care consumers
"appear puzzling.
"Consumers worry greatly about the drying out of hair
"and subsequently demand products that provide
"moisturization.
"However, many forms of damage actually lead to
"higher levels of water in hair.
"There's a definite disconnect between "consumer language"
"and "scientific language"
"where an individual's self prognosis
"and the technical root cause are indeed different.
"It is likely that this belief arises due to
"an analogy with skincare."
A quick warning for you before we head back,
the scientific sources that are in a lot of YouTube videos
are just ads that have some science-y words in them.
Sometimes the videos that actually
cite legitimate studies are even worse
because they either are just reading the abstract
or somebody does read the full article
a lot of times they don't fully understand it.
Number 7, what about humectants, occlusives and emollients?
Humectants are ingredients that attract moisture.
They're popular in skincare because they can draw water
from the air and keep your skin hydrated.
Occlusives are ingredients that either seal water in
or seal it out like silicones or certain oils.
People who think that their hair is like skin
and that it needs hydration, often make the mistake of
trying to use these to trap water in their hair
the same way that they would to trap water on their skin.
Emollients in the hair care world
are basically just conditioners.
And sometimes depending on the amount that's used,
the same exact ingredient can be either
an occlusive or an emollient.
The only one of these that adds water to
the hair are humectants.
You'll find humectant ingredients
in a lot of your styling products,
but it's not usually because they're humectants.
Many humectants also condition.
Super, super, super important.
How an ingredient acts alone is different
than how it acts in an entire formula.
For example, one of the most popular humectants is glycerin.
People who formulate products add glycerin
for a lot of reasons.
It can help keep the product intact
if you accidentally take it in freezing weather.
If you see glycerin in a rinse off product,
it's literally just going down the drain.
You don't have to worry about it sitting in your hair
and attracting moisture.
And leave in products,
a lot of times only add it for the feel
especially if you're just using a product
that has a humectant in it,
depending on the formula, it might not even be doing
what you think it does.
You're more likely to run into trouble when people
without an education in formulating haircare products
start making their own DIY.
They may go overboard with the humectants
and wind up causing their own bad hair days.
Eight, what is moisture overload?
Most of the time what people think is moisture overload
is just a buildup of conditioning products.
Number nine, if this is true,
why do some people get good results
using the protein moisture balance method?
Protein treatments can be a good thing for your hair.
Conditioning treatments might be mislabeled as moisturizing
but they're also still good for your hair.
Using too much of any product may cause buildup.
Buildup of proteins feels rough and hard.
Conditioning buildup is more soft and gummy.
If you remember the over lipstick lips example,
it'd be like, "Oh, that's too cakey.
"It's all hard and crusty
"so let me put some lip gloss over the top of it
"to make it feel smoother."
It may feel smoother, but it's not solving the problem.
We really need to remove the buildup.
A lot of people who follow this
also do use a clarifying shampoo.
So some people might still get good results.
And you might think,
well, if it works for some people, why does it matter
if the reasoning behind it is wrong?
If it always worked perfectly, then it wouldn't matter.
But it matters a lot when it doesn't work.
If something ever goes wrong and you try to fix the problem,
there's a good chance your solution will be wrong
if you're basing it on wrong assumptions.
It can also get really dangerous with DIY.
You can absolutely DIY things
that will draw moisture into your hair.
Combine that with how most people who make DIY
don't test the pH, they don't add the proper preservatives
and you can wind up with some extremely
damaging hair smoothies.
Number 10. What about such and such ingredient?
A lot of you guys asked about specific ingredients.
There's a really popular idea in both
skincare and haircare right now that ingredients don't lie.
They don't necessarily lie,
but they can be extremely misleading.
Ingredients lists started as a way to warn people
who have allergies and sensitivities.
It was never meant to give us the full picture.
Not only do ingredients come in dramatically
different qualities, but also like we said earlier,
how an ingredient acts by itself is different
than how it acts in an entire formula.
You could take the same ingredients
and make cake or cookies,
you get something very different depending on
how much of each ingredient you're using.
You could go in your pantry and grab some vinegar.
Now, you could also pull out your first aid kit
and pull out some peroxide.
It's found in nature,
it's water with an extra oxygen molecule.
But when you add vinegar and peroxide
you get something called peracetic acid.
So two previously harmless things are now a corrosive acid.
Without knowing the quantities and qualities,
people who are chemists and it's their entire job
to formulate products can't look at an ingredients list
and tell you everything about that product.
So for us normal people who don't have a PhD in chemistry,
it's kind of silly for us to be nitpicking,
acting like we know what a product is like
just because of the ingredients.
Does that mean you shouldn't look at an ingredients list?
No, you can still kind of get the gist
of what a product is about,
but you don't know how it's gonna work until you try it.
Just because you had a bad experience with an ingredient
by itself or even in another hair product,
doesn't mean that you should avoid that ingredient
unless you're allergic or have a sensitivity to it.
You might be missing out on so many products
that could be fantastic for your hair
if you refuse to use any product with a certain ingredient.
Number 11, does this work for 4A, B and C hair?
These hair types chemically are similar to
all the other hair types, so the same principles apply.
From a physics standpoint, there's a huge difference
because of the curls themselves
and because the hairs have an elliptical cross section.
We've talked in other videos about how
if you have curly hair,
you need to comb or detangle it while it's wet.
This is still true.
If you have very coily hair,
you already know that you have complexities
that you have to deal with the other hair types do not.
I do my best not to share too much of my own opinion
and stick to sharing the results of scientific studies.
All the literature that I read indicates that
all of this applies to coily hair as well.
But I also know that not enough studies
include your hair type.
It's not right that the hair that needs studying the most
has been studied the least.
I hope that changes.
And it does look like the beauty industry is finally
starting to acknowledge the existence
of people who don't have straight hair,
but either way, I'll continue to do my best to share things
that are valuable for you.
Finally, number 12, I think I see what I don't need to do,
but what should I be doing?
If it's not broken, don't fix it.
Continue to use conditioning products that work for you.
It doesn't matter if they're labeled moisturizing.
However, now that you understand what's happening,
you're better prepared to experiment with new things.
Number two, if you're using a humectant,
things like aloe vera, honey, glycerin,
it may be totally fine,
but if you keep using them because your hair is frizzy
and it's not getting better,
consider cutting them out or replacing them
with something else,
like something that doesn't draw water to it.
Number three, if you're getting build up either from
conditioning products or proteins sticking to
the outside of your hair, try a clarifying shampoo.
Just keep in mind, these aren't meant to be used
all the time and make sure you do follow it up
with the conditioner.
Four, if you used to think that your hair was dry
and needed more water,
you need to figure out what your actual problem is.
This is where you can use that quiz from earlier.
And finally, learn to love your hair and don't compare.
We tend to want what we don't have.
A lot of times our worst hair days will happen
when we're trying to style our hair in a way
that is very unnatural to us.
So if you ever wished that your stick straight hair
was curlier,
or that your curly hair was straighter,
remember there's someone with an opposite hair type of you
that wishes their hair was a little more like yours.
So those are the answers to the questions
that you guys asked.
If you have more questions,
please leave them in the comments.
I think I'm a weird YouTuber for replying to
as many of the comments as I do.
I literally spend most of the day
after I post a video replying to comments.
If you don't have a question, I still wanna hear from you.
So tell me, whatever YouTube channels are your favorites?
Not meaning the mine's one of your favorites,
I just mean out of other channels, what do you watch?
If you want more videos like this,
poke the subscribe button and ring the little bell
if you want those to come right to you.
Time for a shout out.
I'm glad you found my non-expert but nerdy
excessive answer seeking relatable.
Anyways, Thank you guys so much for watching
and I'll see you next time.
[Gasp]
You poo-pooed in the middle of the floor.
Punzie!
You're so cute.
Why are you so cute?
You're upset because you wanna go to bed,
but you don't like to go to bed if I'm awake.
I have Punzie pants on.
Those are little Punzie faces.