Anti Aging with Sasha - Coconut oil and damaged hair.

Coconut oil - the best conditioner for hair?

Is your hair dry, damaged or bleached? Perhaps dyed to within an inch of its life? Is it so out of condition you have given up hope of having it ever look like hair again?

I thought, this being an anti-aging site, it would be useful to tell you what I know about coconut oil. Hair conditioner isn't usually thought of as an anti-aging resource, but I thought that seeing as we go grey as we age, and dye our hair, and hair dye damages the hair shaft - you might find coconut oil useful. In the US coconut oil can be hard to find. Its often mixed with mineral oil if you do find it for hair. You need unadulterated oil for reasons that will become clear later, and for that its easiest to just buy food grade coconut oil.

So, if its so great - why doesn't everybody use it? Read on!

How I found out about coconut oil

No hair conditioner could even make an impression.

No expensive hair serums, no protein conditioners. They would take one look at the job in hand then slink back into their expensive bottles, in disgrace..

So what to do? I knew a little about the structure of hair - that it was made of protein and had a central core that was easily damaged by bleach, even the bleaches in semi-permanent dyes, that I probably had hollow hair shafts by now, and that the outside layer of my hair - which is made up of scales that are supposed to lie flat, were most likely sticking up like porcupine spikes.

Protein conditioner, even when left in permanently, did little more than leave my hair stiff and straight. It kinda looked like hair, but didn't move like it. I thought I would try oil.

I tried Hot Oil conditioners, but my hair was so porous they washed out again. I had better results leaving them in, but still I thought there was room for improvement. I decided the usual commercial hair products were simply not designed with me in mind and I had to come up with my own solution.

Hot Oil conditioner had been a good start so I went to my corner shop. We have those in the UK. Given a sufficient number of houses anywhere, someone will come from abroad and think 'thats a good place for a shop' and we don't have the kinds of commercial / residential zoning laws designed to prevent it, thankfully.

These shops are generally a short walk away no matter where you live, and stock english produce plus a selection of things you never heard of (if you don't do much cooking). It was these things I never heard of I was interested in mostly. Like exotic oils.

Now I'm going along the shelves thinking do I wanna smell like corn? No. A sesame? No. Various different kind of nuts? No. Olives? No. Coconut? Hm..

Coconut I could live with, I'm thinking.

Coconut oil looks a bit odd. In cool temperatures its white and solid but given the slightest chance its liquid. You never know whether to get a bottle or a jar..

Anyway I took it home and tried it.

Putting it on dry hair was pretty good! My hair was nice and shiny again, if a bit wayward. It looked like hair though - and it moved like hair! One simple experiment and we'd out-performed every hair conditioner on the market?

That in itself gives a thinking person pause for thought.

With more experimentation I discovered the best way to use it was to put it onto the ends of your hair when it is wet - not soaking wet but more than just damp. Get a small amount on the fingertips of your right hand then pull at the ends of your hair with those fingers, then up to half way up your hair.

Don't overdo it. Thats the main difficulty. I got so fussy over the amount I went and bought a syringe form the local pharmacy to measure it with. Either that, or sheer experience will teach you what is the exact right amount. When it is on your hair, use your oily fingers to work it through then use a brush to gently brush it. If most of it was placed on the ends of your hair this should leave most coconut oil at the ends, a medium amount on the rest and none at the roots.

That should be about right for conditioning over processed, highlighted or bleached hair.

Remember to underdo rather than overdo it! You can always redampen missed hair and apply it again, but you can't get rid of excess without washing it. It will make even the most horribly abused hair look like hair again, and it costs very little indeed.


I left it at that. Why coconut oil was the best hair condition on Earth was just one of life's little mysteries. Then I saw a program on people from the Carribean. It said they used coconut oil. It said afro hair can be very dry and brittle so they used it for hair oil.

Ah. So I wasn't the only person? Hm. I looked into the matter. Indian ladies use it too - although the men use mustard oil, which is dangerous and full of toxins.

From Effect of mineral oil, sunflower oil, and coconut oil on prevention of hair damage.

"The findings clearly indicate the strong impact that coconut oil application has to hair as compared to application of both sunflower and mineral oils. Among three oils, coconut oil was the only oil found to reduce the protein loss remarkably for both undamaged and damaged hair when used as a pre-wash and post-wash grooming product. Both sunflower and mineral oils do not help at all in reducing the protein loss from hair. This difference in results could arise from the composition of each of these oils. Coconut oil, being a triglyceride of lauric acid (principal fatty acid), has a high affinity for hair proteins and, because of its low molecular weight and straight linear chain, is able to penetrate inside the hair shaft. Mineral oil, being a hydrocarbon, has no affinity for proteins and therefore is not able to penetrate and yield better results. In the case of sunflower oil, although it is a triglyceride of linoleic acid, because of its bulky structure due to the presence of double bonds, it does not penetrate the fiber, consequently resulting in no favorable impact on protein loss."

From Secondary ion mass spectrometric investigation of penetration of coconut and mineral oils into human hair fibers: relevance to hair damage.

"The results show that coconut oil penetrates the hair shaft while mineral oil does not. The difference may be due to the polarity of the coconut oil compared to the nonpolar nature of the mineral oil. The affinity of the penetrant to the protein seems to be the cause for this difference in their behavior. This study also indicates that the swelling of hair is limited by the presence oil. Since the process of swelling and deswelling of hair is one of the causes of hair damage by hygral fatigue, coconut oil, which is a better penetrant than mineral oil, may provide better protection from damage by hygral fatigue."

So there you have it. Coconut oil is the best conditioner for hair beause it feels a deep and abiding need to stick itself to hair protein and is small enough and straight enough to penetrate it like a needle, unlike the rubbish they keep selling us. Once on or in your hair it prevents it swelling and shrinking all the time which means less stress on the hair shaft.

Being natural, as usual it cannot be patented and sold for a small fortune, so once again there are no big bucks in buying expensive primetime advertising to tell you about it - although the science is there. Its not some big conspiracy against coconut oil - just a marketing drive for stuff you can trademark and brand.

[This page is dedicated to my gorgeous honey, Grant - whose endless pursuit of the perfect conditioner is second only to his desire for the perfect cup of tea.]

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