Dinaaike,
Here are the answer to your questions...
Have you tried clarifiying yet? Nope.. I plan to wash my hair soon though!!
Did you do a porosity test? If so, are you in balance? How do you do this?
Do you have hard water? Probably.. I am in college. How can I be sure?
Do you only apply Infusium as a leave-in or do you use anything else?Yeah I only use it as a leave-in.
Okay so, clarifying is the easiest and quickest thing to do. Crunch can be indicative of many things. If your hair is showing signs of product build-up, it will be dull, not take things well, and be...generally disagreeable, for lack of a better term.
If the issue is porosity, you can get a corrective treatment for under five bucks at Sally's. It takes a couple of minutes at wash time, and you're done. Personally I like follow up
any type of treatment with a deep moisturizing conditioning. A porosity test can be conducted pretty easily. Take a strand of hair, everyone says from your head, but I'm here to grow it, not pull it out, so I use one from my comb. As long a you clean your comb after each use, this should do just fine. Put the hair in a bowl of water. Find out how long it takes to sink. If it drops in immediately or almost immediately, your hair is too porous. If it takes between 1 and 2.5 minutes (I think), it's about where it should be. If it takes upwards of four minutes to sink, your hair is not porous enough and would not be able to absorb any moisture you give to it because the cuticle layer is closed.
One of the easiest ways to tell if you have hard water is soap scum. Do you see a lot of it in a short amount of time? Do you see limescale buildup after you "just cleaned that!" in the bathroom? If you do have hard water (like I do, BOY do I!) then you need to use a chelating (mineral-removing) shampoo. Invest in a good swimmer's shampoo and you should do just fine.
Finally, Infusium 23 alone as a leave-in is not sufficient for moisture. It does have a fairly strong protein content for those of us sensitive to protein, and it has little to no oils or silicones to seal in the "wetness" that it DOES provide. So! you need something else as a leave-in, especially if you don't yet know how sensitive your hair is to protein.
1. Look for something with water!!
2. Look for something with lots of fatty alcohols; cetyl alcohol, stearyl alcohol, cetearyl alcohol, etc.,
3. Look for something that contains emollients and humectants; glycerin, sodium PCA, caprylic/capric triglycerides, glyceryl stearate, etc.
4. Look for something that has no mineral oil or parrafin or petrolatum or petroleum (or whatever else they feel like calling it), or that does not have more than one of these, and if it is present, it is
nowhere near the top of the ingredient list!! Petrochemicals coat. That's all they're good for. Kinkis usually need frequent moisture so coated hair can equal dry hair.
Also, what kind of shampoo and conditioner are you using and how frequently are you washing?
And what type of comb do you have? How far apart are it's teeth?
And do you own a brush, and are you good friends with it?
<inhales>
I know I said a mouthful, but I would've saved YEARS if someone had told me, ever, what I know now.
ETA: Oh, oh, oh! And can you tell if your ends are in otherwise good condition? And if not, when was your last trim?
