Could it be that it is not the products that are bad for our hair but the fact that most people do (did) not wash there hair enough.
In my journey to grow my hair I find that it is the increase in washing my hair that makes the most difference in keeping my hair on my head. I used to be a once every two week washer...even once a month sometimes (YUCK)....but can you imagine...all that stuff staying on your hair for that much time...not to mention the fact that i'd pile more stuff on it during the month...yet not wash out the stuff that was on it before. I don't care if it's cones, mineral oil, petrolatum, or the most natural healthy products...nothing should be piled on your hair day after day after day for two weeks or one month without being washed out.
My white friends (some with curly hair, some with straight) use tons of products on their hair...however, they wash every couple of days. I have found that the ones who wash everyday have problems with dryness, the ones who wash maybe every three or four days had the better looking hair. When I came to this board and found out that black girls can wash hair more frequently I was skeptical but the more i washed, the more i loved it and the more I found my hair reacted very well to the products that I was using. The same old products but now it does not feel coated or is not breaking.
I went through a phase of using natural products like aubreys but being from Canada..that gets expensive ordering stuff from the US. Due to school and no extra funds for hair, I went back to hair grease, baby oil and the good old vaseline...also started using conditioners and styling products from the drugstore (thank you LHCF for that one...i never thought i could use THOSE conditioners and hair products)now I could share with my friends no matter what color they were. Sure saved my pocket book because at school I lived in the girls dorm and we would all buy different things and when one thing didn't work for you, you could trade with someone else and experimentation was lots of fun on hair night. At one time I would have never thought I could participate in something like that. Anyways I digress from the original post...No I do not think that certain ingredients are really bad for our hair..if it makes your hair feel nice, then use it...just remember to wash.
