Photo: Jupiterimages/Pixland/Getty Images
Most women love to play with their hair, experimenting with new styles, tools and products. But all that creative expression, trial and error can really do a number on your hair. Between blow dryers, curling irons, coloring and chemical straightening treatments, hair can easily become brittle, damaged and visibly unhealthy. Hair needs moisture to keep looking brilliantly shiny, bouncy and beautiful. No chemical-based, lab creations could ever work as well as some of nature's best moisturizers: jojoba oil, shea butter and olive oil.
An Everyday Treatment
If you're looking for products you can use every time you lather up, you probably want conditioners that moisturize well without weighing hair down. And if you're going to use a product nearly every day, you want something that doesn't cost an arm and a leg, either. Believe it or not, there are fabulous products you can pick up at your local drug store that will give you the results you want. Garnier Fructis Triple Nutrition Fortifying Cream Conditioner's formula, with both olive oil and shea butter (as well as avocado), repairs dry, heat-damaged and processed hair while you shower. Bonus? It costs about 5 bucks!
Green Products
John Masters Organics -- a brand that recently won acclaim from The DailyGreen website for its line of Bare hair care products -- makes a certified organic serum to moisturize hair and prevent frizz. Their Dry Hair Nourishment & Defrizzer is a leave-in treatment that the company recommends for use on split ends, as well as to protect and restore dry, damaged hair. This serum contains lavender, rosemary and cedarwood as well as moisturizing jojoba oil. For curly hair, which tends to be dry, Beautiful Curls produces Shea Butter Curl Activating Creme that's so natural, it's safe for use on even the youngest, most sensitive members of your family -- its label says it's a product for "Babies & Up." You can't get any gentler than that.
Salon Products
Frederic Fekkai, a well-known line of salon products, sells a Brilliant Glossing Conditioner enriched with olive oil purported to add shine and luster to dull, lackluster locks.
Leave-in/Intensive Treatments
Desert Essence sells pure jojoba oil, which can be massaged into hair, scalp and skin and left on to cleanse and deeply moisturize. Phyto, a French company that is known for the local botanicals it uses in its hair care products, makes a nourishing hair mask for extremely dry hair that packs the moisturizing power of shea butter (as well as keratin, vitamin E and cashew oil), to strengthen weak hair and repair damage from excessive styling and processing.
