CO experience thread

I'll give it a try

Great info, Anais and Karen! Wow, that castor oil experience sounds horrid....  I think I am definitely more of a shea butter person than an oil person. I also think the ACV rinses help with my itchy scalp, though I notice my hair seems dry the day or two after an ACV rinse. Does this happen to you Anais? Thanks again.

Sasumi wrote: Ehhh, question about CO washing. Once I heavily oiled my hair with olive oil, and I tried just rinsing it out with water, and then applied conditioner and rinsed it out (without shampooing) and the next day my hair was terribly oily. So, do you use shampoo on days when you oil?

Hi,

Little tip about oiling...before you wash...apply a tiny bit of unconcentrated shampoo into the palms of your hands.  A tiny bit should work...just enough to cover your palms lightly.

Then pat the shampoo covered palms along the top of the oiled hair.

Get into the shower and turn on the lukewarm water.  Or you can use the clean bottle-of-water-over-the-head approach.  Drizzle water onto the shampoo and pat lightly to form a slight lather.  Keep drizzling water until you have a full lather and then let the suds gently float down over your strands to the ends.

Then rinse really really well with lukewarm water.

The shampoo applied to the dry oiled hair will cut the oil instantly and if you are careful, the undiluted shampoo doesn't undo all the great advantages of the oiling process.

I love oiling my hair but often worry that the effort at getting the oil out undoes all the benefits.  :-)

Try it and see if it works for you.

I do not advise that anyone use Castor oil on their hair.  I did that years ago and spend literally weeks trying to get it out.  YUCK.

Edited by Karen Shelton

I'm not oiling right now - it didn't work great for me. I use a very light spray with some oils in it (it is Burt's Bees carrotseed oil face spray) - the oils are carrotseed, sandalwood, patchouli, and rose oils. I mostly use it for the fragrance but I think the light oiling helps with dryness. I think if you use a heavy oil like olive that you would have to use shampoo or ACV to keep your hair from being greasy all the time...Anais? (by the way, Sasumi, your hair is beautiful and shiny!)

I finally broke down today and did an ACV rinse and DSO, then conditioned and used Giovanni Direct Leave-In as the final conditioner. The itchies finally came, and also much stringiness. I am going to try to go one week with only CO again and maybe just wear my hair up all the time. It sounds, from Karen's experience, that the more time and the longer the hair, the better CO works, so I'm going to stick with it for most washes. Thanks Anais and Karen for the abbreviations and making this a regular thread.

 

The CO is still kind of going. I washed my hair twice a week the first week and the next I left it five days. I was using somerfield own brand conditioner for fine/greasy hair as the cleaner and the own brand one for normal hair as the conditioner. My hair was clean enough at the roots and it wasn't greasy although it was kind of...coated. The thing is, the outer layer of my hair was all kind of separating and looking a little stringy. It looked fine when pulled back but nasty loose. So this morning I did a diluted shampoo. I think I'll stick to CO but maybe shampoo once in a while to get rid of residue. Wasn't there someone else who does that who said so on here?

I was thinking, like Anais's list of useful threads, maybe we should keep this thread up, posting about our own experiences of CO so that people wanting to try CO can read about it without starting a million threads on the same topic. What do you think?

Oh, and I almost forgot -- I'm SO glad you added the acronyms. I was just about to ask what they were or if you all could direct me to the place on the boards that they were previously defined. You read my mind!

AnaisSatin wrote: Hi Folks We have a lot of acronyms and abbreviations! CO= Conditioner Only CWC= Condition, Wash, Condition COW-C = ConditionerOnly + Wash + Conditioner (which is actually diluted shampoo with conditioner mixed in it, looks like a milkshake) WO= water only (I tend to call it WO for Water Only because OW tends to be associated with COW) Other abbreviations I've personally used, a few of which I better explain ..*sheepish. BSL= Bra strap length MBL= Mid back length TB= Tailbone ACV= apple cider vinegar BBB= boar bristle brush SM&H / Suave M&H= Suave Milk&Honey SCS / Suave CS = Suave Citrus Smoothie KLG= Kirkland Lemon Gingerroot SUE= socked-up end, referring to occasions where the end of a braid is sock-curled Karen, maybe we can start an FAQ thread of some kind...

Hi AS...yes, yes, yes.....would you like to start one that we can make a stickie?  Or even better, I can put it at the top in announcements for people to check out.

Any thoughts?

Thanks soooooooooooo much.

LadyFrog wrote: Karen- if I'm doing CO, then would I still need to occasionally shampoo to 'clean' the hair? WO-water only

Hi LF,

It depends on your hair and how you feel. The first year I "freaked" that I was not shampooing full strenght every day.  Eventually my hair "adjusted" and I found that if I did use full strength shampoo my hair felt like total hell.  Now I NEVER use full strength shampoo but it took me some years to get to this point.

For your hair...experiment.  Try different things.  I also..in the early years...diluted the conditioners I used so that my hair did not get greasy.  Sometimes I would use diluted shampoo on the bangs but no where else and then use only water (OW) :-) or CO on the middle to the bottoms.

Also, seasons require different treatments. 

So just take your time and experiment with different options and get to know the rhythm and moods of your strands.  Your hair will LOVE you for it.  :-)

And keep letting us know what you discover.  Since it helps everyone figure out their own path.  Right AS?  :-)

Hi Anais,

Can we list all the acronyms for anyone not familiar?

CO = Conditioning Only
DSO = Diluted Shampoo Only

Please add your acronmys.

Thanks.