Coconut Oil

In the long haired community, there is a lot of talk about coconut oil - most of it concerning how great the stuff is for your hair.  A lot of people have really great results from using it on their hair, from moisturizing to conditioning.

However, I am one of those people who has had less luck.

This article does a good job of explaining the science, so I won't go into that too much here.  But essentially, the triglycerides in coconut oil have medium-length chains, which don't agree with all of our hair.

I've tried for a few years now to make coconut oil work for me.  In that time, I've learned two main things.  Firstly, for most of my length, it works pretty well to moisturize, and to decrease the velcro-like nature of my hair when it's being cranky.  Secondly, if I put it on the last eight inches or so, that part of my hair gets all crunchy and ornery and weird.

That stiff crunchiness is what happens (generally) when coconut oil doesn't agree with your hair.  And on mine, it lasts a really, really long time - if I over-oil my ends, they stay annoyed with me for several weeks.

Basically what I'm trying to say here is that everyone needs different things for their hair.  A lot of us might have really great luck with coconut oil.  Some of us might have terrible luck with it.  Some of us might have hair that can't decide what it thinks of it.  Trial and error is the only real way to figure out what works best for your hair.

Thus, I've been experimenting with how I use coconut oil in the last few weeks.  It hasn't been long enough for me to come to any conclusions, but I have realized that it isn't really the best oil for me - even though I really wanted it to work, because so many people say so many great things about it.

I may write about my hair routines at a future date, but as everything is in flux right now, what I end up settling on for the next few months is anyones guess.