Well...well...well! Okay, so I have been hearing about this protein vs. moisture thing for months now. For the most part, I thought my hair was equally balanced, but I am new to this so I wasn't completely sure. I've been using a lot of moisture rich products, so I thought...what the heck, maybe I should do a protein treatment. So a few months ago I tried Aphogee
2 minute protein treatment(which is a light treatment) and everything went fine! So a few days ago I got the "genius" idea to "kick it up a notch" and try an even harder protein treatment...the infamous Aphogee 2 Step protein treatment. This stuff has been known to make chemically treated and damaged hair bounce back to perfect health. It has also been known to make healthy hair fall out..yikes! Now, I don't have any damage. However,
I DO have relaxed ends left on my head, so I thought a nice protein treatment would help keep my ends strong. Especially since I am a long term transitioner, and I need to keep those bad boys around until I am ready to cut them off. But anywho, so I tried the treatment a few days ago, and it led to a major "Oh hello no!" moment! This is how it went down...
It was a pretty simple procedure. I washed my hair as normal with Aussie moist 2 in 1 shampoo, and then applied the Aphogee 2 step to my wet hair. The treatment was very runny and I had to use 2 packs on my hair. OMG, it was soooooooo funky too! It smelled like pickled pig's feet mixed with dog poop, vomit, and spoiled milk. Yes...it was that bad! But I pushed on through it for the sake of beauty. Once I applied the product, I got under the hooded hair dryer for about 45 minutes to an hour. The treatment dried VERYYYYY hard. It was LITERALLY as hard as cement, and you could probably knock on it. My hair definitely felt like something other than hair...it was weird. In fact, it was so hard, that touching it could cause the strands to break in two.
I then rinsed the product out in the shower only to find that it left my hair feeling horrible! I certainly had an "Oh hell no!" moment right then and there lol! My hair felt very hard, but I thought that doing a moisture treatment would bring it back to normal. So I immediately did the Aphogee moisture treatment that came with the protein treatment. The moisture treatment did
NOTHING for my hair. It still felt like crap! So I then tried a doing an extreme moisture treatment by Ion(which smelled like heaven btw). I left the Ion treatment on for a few hours, and only to rinse it out and discover that it also did
nothing for my hair. My hair was still just as hard as it was immediately after the protein treatment. I then decided to use my staple product, Aussie 3 minute miracle deep conditioner. This product has never failed me, and it leaves my hair feeling like silk
everyyyyy time. Well, that didn't work either! I decided to just detangle my hair the best I could and move on.
Detangling was HORRIBLE! My hair was so tangled and etc. It was never like this before! I can normally comb it with my fingers and be good to go in less than two minutes flat. This time it took like 5 minutes or more to comb through, and it
still wasn't fully detangled. I also lost a lot of hair trying to comb through it. I was going to just wear my hair in a wet bun, but my curls were not themselves. They were hard, shriveled and dry looking lol. I then decided that the best way to style it was to just flat iron it. Whew!
So, I flat ironed it and it has been okay since. It feels a bit more "textured" than normal, but looks nice in this state. I will NEVER do another Aphogee 2 step treatment again. I guess my hair just doesn't need hard core protein like that. I will probably have to do several deep conditioning moisture treatments in the future to get my hair balanced again...sigh! I will keep you all posted on how this goes on my next wash day!
