This ingredient saved my hair

this ingredient completely transformed my hair and it might transform yours too it was a damaged rough mess this got it back to looking shiny and feeling healthy or as healthy as dead cells can

feel I guess I cannot go without it it is amod dimethicone I'm Michelle I'm a chemist and a massive nerd so I'm going to talk about what amod dimethicone is how it works and then talk about some

products with it that are really good and a few that don't have it that also work really well see I can make videos when I'm not just mad about something I can what is amod dimethicone it is a

silicone but wait it is not like the other silicones silicons have a reputation for building up and weighing hair down it is not a very fair reputation it depends so much on the

formula and your hair but Amo methicone gets around a lot of the problems anyway a lot of people who usually avoid silicons like people with curly hair they've told me that it's worked really

well for them so don't just assume it won't work for you yet here's what special about amod dimethicone like other silicon it has silicon and oxygen bonded together this is what gives

silicons a silky feel and that really nice spread and this is amazing for so many products it's in liquid foundations Hair Care obviously skin care sunscreens silicones are really one of the

ingredients that completely changed the beauty industry when they were first introduced they were like the smartphone of beauty ingredients I don't know I couldn't think of a better analogy for

that there are two parts to the name the dimeth Ione part refers to dimethicone which is the most common type of silicone in Beauty it's kind of misunderstood because it's not a single

ingredient it is a family of ingredients that all have these units stuck together into a chain so long chains in chemistry are called polymers how many of these are stuck together can change it's like

different length necklaces and depending on the length these have different properties so longer chains will feel heavier shorter ones feel lighter but they are all still called dimethicone there are quite a few things like this

where different ingredients are under the same name it's one of the big reasons why you can't just rely on the ingredient list to work out which products to buy which is probably going to be a topic for a future video let me

know if you want to see that so for the Amo part of the name there are two little things in the structure of Amo dimethicone that make a massive difference first there's the nitrogens here which is the NS those are called

amines and I'm guessing it's the M part of the name at a low enough pH when it is more acidic there's going to be more H+ around and H+ can stick to these ends

and give the a means a positive charge that's going to be happening in your hair products and this is Handy for two big reasons one it helps stop it from weighing down your hair because once

there's enough amod dimethicone stuck on your hair will be slightly positively charged the second reason is that damaged hair is more negatively charged than undamaged hair there are a lot of different types of hair damage and these

are some of the more visible ones this by the way is one of my favorite diagrams from my new book the signs of beauty you can see that with a lot of these you are losing stuff from the hair and that's especially the cuticle on the

surface the dark bit and this is bad because the surface of fresh undamaged hair has this really thin layer of oily 18 methyl eicosenoic acid that is like

such a hard name for me to say it means there's 20 carbons the abbreviation is 18-mea these are chemically bonded to the surface and it's sort of like the hair's permanent natural condition it's

called the F layer the rest of the hair is mostly made of protein and it's almost all not oily it's hydrophilic which means water loving and when the pH

is above the hair's ISO El electric point which is about pH 3.7 these exposed proteins are negatively charged there's also microscopic chemical damage which is when the F layer breaks off and

that also leaves negatively charged groups so when it's damaged there is a lot of negative and opposite charges ATT tra the posit postive amod dimethicone is going to be more attracted to these

negative damaged areas you might have seen some products say that it targets hair damage and assumed it was just some marketing BS but there is actually this chemical difference with damaged hair

it's not quite as magical as it sounds but this can be pretty important if your hair is quite damaged uncharged conditioning ingredients just do not stick very well to damaged hair because

the hair is too hydrophilic uncharged ingredients need the F layer to stick to this is the whole oil doesn't mix with water thing your hair is basically water

if it's damaged I mean it isn't water hair is not water it is just more on like the watery side of things please no one quote me as saying hair is water

okay the other special thing on amod dimethicone is the Oh's these allowed to cross link which means that when the Amo dimethicone is on your hair these O's are like little hands that can start

holding each other as it dries this means that you get a more durable film that can last through several washes and the positive charge also helps with this now this might sound bad because it

sounds like buildup but you don't actually need to always wash conditioner off your F layer that natural thing that your conditioners are trying to replicate is permanent so if it's a thin

film it isn't really a big problem also when I say film I don't mean like a continuous film conditioners deposit in blobs they're never going to just block everything from getting in and out of your hair anyway having a longer-lasting

conditioner is Handy for really damaged hair it helps helps prevent damage when you're washing when your hair is wet it's more fragile plus it's getting moved around a whole bunch it's bashing there's a lot of like physical trauma

going on and the whole point of conditioner is really protecting against a lot of this like physical mechanical trauma I see a lot of people say that silicones are just covering up damage

like that's a really bad thing but it's not hair is dead it is like a piece of wood if it's Jagged and rough it's going to snag bits will break off but if you smooth it down and then and paint it

that paint is shielding it against further damage so what all of this science background translates to when I first bleached my hair about 6 years ago I was just not prepared at all for what

to expect I was like an absolute Sweet Summer child my hair was originally resistant with low paracity it's just like standard straight Asian hair which is pretty much what I have up here

almost any conditioner would just be fine it was actually really difficult for me to review different products because my hair was just fine with anything that was actually one of the reasons I bleached it but afterwards the

learning curve was just massive when my hair was wet it just went really like stretchy and elastic it felt like wet instant noodles and it felt like it would snap like wet instant noodles and

then when it was dry it was usually just really rough and stiff and like crunchy and felt like straw most of the time it was like this because I had no idea what I was doing but sometimes it was like

really nice and soft and smooth and I couldn't work out why until I started seeing a pattern with Amo Di Con in my products plus it would be a lot less stretchy and nudely when it was wet and

I got a lot less split ends it looked so much shinier it just looked and behaved a lot more like undamaged hair I used to think that the secret was just not to wash my hair as often but these days I

wash my hair almost every day and am methicone just saves it my hair is actually belly button length when I let it out and this was bleached all the way from black to white and then I put

purple on it some days I can't find any split ends with which I think is just a massive achievement on to the products part of the video now obviously I haven't tried all the products out there

if you have something that's really good please let me know in the comments here are some of my favorite ways to use amod dimethicone wash off conditioners are my favorite way to use Amo dimethicone because washing my hair properly with

water just resets it into shape sometimes that spiky straw feeling is just when the hair is dry in a bent configuration instead of like smooth and aligned wetting my hair helps but not

quite as much as just really soaking it with warm water it's also a lot harder to apply too much of the conditioning ingredients because you are rinsing off the excess that didn't stick plus having water just makes it so much easier to

distribute the product the really annoying thing about all of these products is that performance depends so much on the formula so just seeing Amo dimethicone on the list isn't any sort of guarantee it has given me a much

better success rate though so hopefully it does for you as well this is one of my favorites the Tony and Guy volume addiction conditioner there are a couple of different versions the one that works well for me is the one with Amma dimethicone as the third ingredient

there is another version where it's the 10th ingredient but it doesn't work so well for me I really didn't expect this to work well because I mean it says volume but I took a gamble based on

where athome was in the list and that paid off I picked this up with my groceries it's on sale a lot just really nice product but not easily available outside of Australia the laa s 100

collagen ceramite coating protein treatment obviously it's a protein treatment but I feel like the Amo dimethicone is doing quite a lot of the heavy lifting here it is really nice but it is a bit small the Redken acidic

bonding concentrate conditioner the L'Oreal everpure Bond strengthening conditioner plus the L'Oreal LV Bond repair conditioner I chucked out the tube of that but those two L'Oreal

products are like the cheaper Mass Market version of this they have really similar ingredients and formulas but the cheaper ones are almost definitely designed to not work quite as well these

have a dimethicone but they also have a variation of amodimethicone which is bis cural amodimethicone that means that amodimethicone has these long fatty acid chains at the end and that will give you

more of that traditional conditioner feel the reckon seems to work better than the other ones on my hair the conditioning is just more intense it lasts longer I don't need to use quite as much product but if your hair is less

bleach damaged then maybe the other ones will have a similar effect L'Oreal lvve conditioners a lot of these have amod dimethicone but it's been a bit of a mixed bag for me and again it is

probably more of that like formulation complexity thing out of these the one that's worked the best has been the high lurum plump but am methicone is actually quite low on the list these two didn't

work quite as well but it's like ingredient three and four so yeah conditioners are annoying it is so much about the formula rather than just having the right ingredients I think

these two are discontinued now I really hate how hair care products get discontinued all the time I get that they are trying to improve the formulas but as a reviewer who likes to try

things out for longer it is just extremely annoying for me I also use leave on conditioners these are really great for conditioning my hair when my wash off conditioner didn't work very well I try a lot of new products out and

sometimes they do not work as well so these are just really handy to get my hair back to like nice these two work really nicely for me the garia fructus Sleek and Shine and the L'Oreal L viive

dream length no haircut cream both of these are pretty similar and I use Maybe like a Mentos siiz blob I mostly focus it on like my hair from the chin downwards my hair also just really loves

the Redken acidic perfecting concentrate leave-in treatment my hair loves this range it's great for me it is pricier I tend to use like a much smaller blob

maybe like two Tic Tacs in size this one just seems to spread a bit better as well I personally find that if I use these ones on dry hair it kind of feels like I'm spreading it like all around

the outside of my hair and it's not like in the middle I'm sure if you're more patient than me you probably are you can probably apply these like a bit more systematically section out your hair and

it'll work better but I'm a bit lazy this one o just spreads really really nicely there are also some sprays that I like and a lot of the time the ones that I see with Amo dimethicone have like the

word detangling on them I really like sprays because you don't have to wash your hands afterwards they seem to spread a bit more nicely especially if you like brush them out rather than the cream where you have to do a lot more effort and working these two were the

first two I tried and unfortunately I think both of them are discontinued this one has been reformulated but I haven't tried it both of these have amod dimethicone as the second ingredient they worked great stop discontinuing

things it's really annoying this one is not discontinued is the Johnson's No More Tangles detangling spray I got this off iherb it's a US product it smells pretty strongly which seems to be a

trend with us products and yeah I know it says it's for like Toddlers and kids and it says that it's G than adult products and it's got like a li on the front but it works really well there's

been a lot of research into silicone Alternatives mostly so that products that are siliconefree can still work nicely and people are happy with them and will Reby them over the years I have tried a lot of these and it's only

within like the last year where products have actually worked on my hair and it feels like they are as good as maybe the amod dimethicone products that didn't work quite as well first there are

Lamela Waters these have pretty standard conditioning ingredients so fatty alcohols and Quon ammoniums the difference is that they're formulated so they distribute and stick onto your hair

better they work much better on my hair than regular conditioners but I found that the effect doesn't last quite as long as Amo dimethicone and they are like a little bit annoying and fussy to use when I'm in the shower it just kind

of feels like I'm losing a whole bunch of product through my fingers the jvn undamaged strengthening conditioner I hate the whole clean thing associated with him it is like really cringe for me

but I have to admit this conditioner works really well on my hair it I think is discontinued as well I think it is an overall formulation thing the ingredient

that I think is working really nicely is the bras cido propile dimethyl Amin this is an Amin ingredients so it forms a charge when it's acidic and I've tried this ingredient in other products as

well as very similar ingredients and this just works a lot better the type B conditioner I tried this for a sponsored post although this video is not sponsored I was really surprised by this it feels kind of oily when I'm putting

it on but then it doesn't make my hair feel oily afterwards it feels really soft and smooth after it's dried I think it's the polyglycerol 3 banate acetate it is another Quon ammonium and it's

relatively rare in products the L'Oreal elvive Huron plump spray also works really nicely for me no silicon in it I found this really good for resetting crunchy ends and it is better than the

Johnson spray to be honest it feels a lot softer it's just like really nice for refreshing my hair but it doesn't give as shiny a look as the Johnson spray let me know what athome products

worked really well for you if you like this video you might also like my book the science of beauty it answers a whole bunch of questions on Hair Care skincare Nail Care makeup and just beauty

products in general my best hair care hacks are in this video all my hair videos are here