Operation long hair: the coconut oil treatment.

It's been a couple of weeks of project long hair and it's, well, puttering along. I've been working on eating hair-healthy snacks and foods (as best I can with a hectic work travel schedule this last month), and have been using coconut oil as a scalp massage and leave in conditioning treatment.

The coconut oil treatment is nice, for a start. I've been rubbing it into my hair, starting with my scalp and massaging it in, hoping to stimulate growth. Then I rub a little along the ends of my hair to help prevent split ends. Hair wash night is usually Sunday for me, so if I'm home early enough in the afternoon, I've been  putting the oil in sometime between lunch and five pm, pinning my hair up and going about my business before washing out at bed time.

Washing out is actually nice too. Because I want to make sure I get all the oil out, I've been shampooing with a regular, colour lock shampoo first, then doing a second shampoo with De Lorenzo's Nova Fusion colour depositing shampoo before conditioning. The whole process leaves my scalp tingling (in a good way) and my hair is super, super shiny and soft. It feels like spun silk for days after.

But therein lies the problem. It's so soft that it becomes really fly away. It doesn't want to stay under a clip or a bobby pin and all my scarves slide off. Two day old hair is no longer optimal hair styling time; and I end up wearing it in seven different variations of out and straight all week long.

I think I've worked out that the coconut oil treatment isn't one that's going to help if I'm doing it hand-in-hand with hair washing every week. So, as nice as it is, I'm going to drop this one back to once a fortnight.

So this is the picture I used in my previous post for the 'before' shot:

I don't have a recent picture of my hair out (mostly because having my teeth out last week has knocked out my desire to a. brush my hair and b. put makeup on and c. wear anything other than my pjs). But, I can tell you that there's very little difference in length at all. And the ends are quite badly split, so I'll be getting a trim at my hair appointment.. which means there will be no difference whatsoever! Grrrr, progress is not happening. Yet.

There's also not much difference in the overall condition. I still get waaaay too much hair coming out when I wash it (this has been amplified by about a million percent post-general anaesthetic. Yep, that stuff makes YOUR HAIR FALL OUT). I'm still finding it pretty lacklustre overall.