 Trini girl natural. Hi everyone. Welcome to my channel today. We're talking about ingredients A lot of you subbies have been seeing me talk about ingredients when doing product reviews And I've had quite a few requests to share some of my knowledge about ingredients with you guys So here I am to try to do that. Of course, there's so many ingredients It'll be really pretty much impossible to kind of cover every single thing so what I'm gonna do is try to group them into the basic classes and Hopefully that will help you spot my dad if I what they are how to find out what they are and Which types of products need which type of ingredients get yourself certification? I guess in natural hair products ingredients So it's kind of a complicated topic just because there's so many types of ingredients So many types of products and just so many ways to class them So I kind of combine class in the type of ingredient the thing the ingredient does and also the type of product that uses our ingredients So hopefully it all comes together and makes sense in terms of how I learned about ingredients I learned about it the long hand way which is reading every label of every product that I'm interested in and going to Google I'm looking up every single ingredient. At first I would have to do it for every single product and then less and less And now I have to do it because I kind of remember or know what each type of ingredient does So let's get started. But before we do subscribe, click the notification bell You know support your girl Yeah All right, so on to the topic this almost feels like it doesn't need to be said but it needs to be said water is an ingredient It's the main ingredient. We need water in our natural hair We cannot have natural hair without water the main function of water of course is to hydrate our hair But as we know it also helps to mix ingredients and it's also useful for diluting for example diluting strong shampoos and so on The main type of cleansing ingredient we use in natural hair is the factims the famous cell face which are kind of harsh Then we have some middle-type surfactants like that can look aside which still too harsh for me And then cocoa betaine which is a mild but effective surfactant, and that's my favorite That's the one that I use regularly to cleanse my hair doesn't synthetic surfactants We have also some natural surfactants like soap nuts and yucca root So the way the surfactant works basically is that it helps the water to Bind to dirt in your hair and then when you rinse you rinse off that water Surfactant the triplet, you know, you just rinse that off. Blackout side of vinegar is not a surfactant and cannot do that In terms of getting off the silicone's getting off your mineral oil and so on Get you a surfactant Not apple cider vinegar for those sorts of things. The other popular cleansing agents that naturals use are clays It's not as strong as a surfactant clays to similar to surfactants in the sense that the claim Tramps dirt and oils and so on in the clay itself, and then you rinse it off Everything else in the sense is one big category because everything else should be moisturizing Of course, you want your cleansing products to also have moisturizers But you definitely want your conditioners to be moisturizing. So the first category in moisturizers are humectants Which is a must for me in my low porosity here Humectants a chaff water from the air or from while you're rinsing and your hair is wet And they have keep water in your hair longer, which of course keeps your hair hydrated longer We have the aggressive humectants like glycerin and sobotol Which will very quickly pull the moisture from your hair if the air is drier than your hair And then we have the film for the humectants which are slower to evaporate So they form sort of a protective barrier on the strand so that even if the air is drier There is somewhat of a barrier between the moisture in your strand and the air. Those are my year-round Rhyodies honey, aloe vera Okra, slippery elm, Irish moss. Most of the ingredients you can think of in the moisturizing But also sort of thick or mucous forming, etc. Those tend to be film forming humectants And those are my favorite. I find them to be more moisturizing than glycerin The sugars are also humectants So for example, honey and fruit extracts are humectants So when I see fruit extracts, it could be any fruit, guava, pineapple Any kind of fruit extract just bring them come Because they contain sugars and sugars are humectants And my hair needs humectants because it's low porosity And humectants are tiny enough to penetrate the strand and bring and trap the moisture in there So yeah, for humectants, my loving are humectants My favorite ingredient after water is humectants The mucous type humectants are also good for slip So you're just completely winning So if you use something like sae okra or mashed malarout or even flasty You're getting your moisture, you're getting your slip, you're getting your humectant It's film forming so it kind of traps the moisture in longer So to me, those are like super ingredients But let me stop briefing about humectants. I love humectants. You all know that Ok, let's move on to another category Then you have your emollients which help to trap that water physically in By forming a thin surface on the strand And some even slightly penetrate the strand Like oils and butters and so on Of course you don't want to have too much of that, especially to your low porosity Basically you want to use the minimum of it that you can use And still have your hair be moisturized So basically, you shouldn't have emollients on your hair if the water has escaped That means you have too much emollients on your hair You should have just the right amount so that by the time the emollient evaporates or wears off Your hair is ready for moisture and then another top of emollients again Emollients help to soften the strand by again having that nice slippery layer on the strand The lighter emollients are like fractionated oils and triglycerides Then you have the oils which you know come in various lightness, heaviness, penetratedness and sealantness You know some oils are very light, some are very penetrating Some are more sealing, some are more softening Like form a nicer feeling or nicer texture to fill them on the strand So there's a whole range of oils After the oils, you have your fatty alcohols like the settle alcohol and so on Which are a little bit heavier than oils but not usually as heavy as butters And those are the ones that form the base of your conditioner Basically you have your fatty alcohol mixed with water at a high enough temperature And it cools down basic conditioner That type of conditioner is more of an emollient just to let your hair feel nice But in terms of natural hair and hydrating, you also want some bit of glycerin or some bit of humectant as well To actually penetrate, hydrate and keep that water in longer The natural ingredients you can look for for adding slip To the natural slip ingredients as I mentioned are the type of mucous ingredients Anything that forms a little bit of slime on it And again that would be like the okra, the flaxseed, marshmallow root, Irish moss, slippery elm Ingredients like that, those are natural and provide slip They are also synthetic ingredients that add slip For example, polyquads and silicones and so on I definitely look for slip ingredients as well when I'm reading through Hole for a natural is just holding your style longer, basically holding the hair in place So when you wet your hair and you shape your hair, you disrupt the hydrogen bonds in your hair Which kind of changes from its natural normal curl pattern into either a more defined or whatever shape you want it to give it And hole is that thing that keeps it in that disrupted state and doesn't let revert to its natural state Some great hole ingredients for natural hair would be pectin, would be various gums Zantum gum, guacam, would be flaxseed and chia seed, things like that Also okra and aloe also provide light hold The gels that I use tend to have a lot of pectin and gum, like zantum gum But I also do like DIY flaxseed and I'm experimenting with chia seed as well now as a natural hole ingredient They give you the hole but they also give you slip and moisture Like I said before, just win, win, win Then we have our chemical hole ingredients like cabbama, the various types of cellulose, copolymers and so on And those work but for me they don't add much moisture to my hair and they don't add much softness to my hair and anything like that And also they're kind of cheap so I feel like products that include those should be priced to suit So that's why I'm not buying like a $15 meal or TGIN gel Whether gel agation is cabbama or copolymers and so on Not because they don't work but because it's overpriced for me basically So that's another element of ingredients for me is what are the value of these ingredients and how does it compare to the value of the product that you're selling I don't get flakes a lot at all so I don't really think about that much But a lot of these whole ingredients work by leaving a slight cast on your hair in that particular form And when that cast gets old it can start to flake off So that's one way that you get flakes If you tend to get flakes with one type of ingredient and you've tried it in all different formulations Maybe try a different type of ingredient Of course the other way to get flakes is just kind of a bad mix of products that coagulate should be on their own Which is kind of like the immediate wet and dry day one type of flake Which is another ingredient is to I guess but for me since most of the products that I use are rather light and water soluble and so on I don't tend to get into that issue where they're not playing nicely together Since they're all supposed to be hyper soluble and easy to rinse and easy to mix They all tend to play well together so it's like using one big same product even though I'm using two or three different products But if your regimen is different and you use a lot of synthetic products and you use a lot of sealing products like silicones and mineral oils Then you'll have to be really careful about flakes as well We have a couple special mentions one is protein So I did like two huge long videos on protein so I'll definitely link them down below for you to take a look at But just really quickly you have moisturising proteins like silk and milk proteins that are just there for moisture They can provide slip and shine and they're not there to strengthen your hair in any way So even if you think you don't like protein, if you see those ingredients you should still be safe in trying it I know some diet has them so I mean I don't even like silk and milk but kind of side eye but You can generally at least try it Then you have the kind of medium protein which are carousel and collagen which are strengthening But they are also very tiny and tend to penetrate the strand and don't stay outside as much to make your hair hard Of course if you use a lot of it it's still gonna pile up and make your hair hard but those can be gentle in certain cases And then you have like the grain and vegetable proteins and those are more strengthening And I do believe in protein again if you look at my huge long videos but basically your hair is made of protein Protein treatments are good, find the right one for you, find the right strength protein treatment for you Don't do it too often, have fun, help prevent breakage, check out my videos Besides protein there are other types of treatments, there are other ingredients that are there Not necessarily to add to that whole moisture chain I mentioned before on styling But to add various other benefits, so for example tea and coffee, have caffeine which helps reduce shedding And then there are various Ayurvedic herbs which also help to strengthen the hair and add shine and define your curl And various other things as well And also there are things like rice water and chibi and so on that have various properties that also help those other hair And also stimulating ingredients like peppermint and other essential oils and so on that stimulate the scalp Any kind of tingly feeling and so on Those are good for the hair as well and good for the scalp as well and can also stimulate growth So I give them little props when I see them as well The pH is definitely important to me, the hair has a pH of about 4.5 to 5.5 So generally you want to use products within that let's say you want to use products within that set as 4 to 7 range And of course you want your final product, your conditioning product to be even lower like into that 4 to 6 range To help keep your chemicals lower, which helps to protect them and keep them on your strand which helps to prevent breakage I tend to assume for the most part that the bigger brands are pH balanced But the smaller brands, especially if I see ingredients like soap, if I see ingredients like apple cider vinegar, if I see ingredients like clay I tend to just take notes and say ok maybe I would need pH shift so maybe I would need to email the owner and just ask them about the pH Just to make sure that they are within the pH range to maintain a healthy hair The final classes that we have are preservatives and stabilizers which I won't go into too much But I try to use something that's definitely broad spectrum, I'm going to protect myself from bacteria and germs and so on But something that isn't as harmful to humans or the least harmful as possible when looking at preservatives So things like DM, DM I don't go with, I try to avoid those So those aren't pretty much every single cheap conditioner in the US so it's really hard to avoid them But I try to avoid them when possible and just use them for themselves and not keep them in my hair So I do try to look for products that don't have DMDM or the Brombo or Urea and things like that Because they're not adding any benefit to my hair for sure and they also can be kind of risky I don't really need that in my life so I try to avoid it Besides silicones and mineral oil I wouldn't call them detrimental to the health But just for my low porosity regimen I try to avoid anything that's sealing or clogging So polyquad silicones and mineral oil I try to avoid just for my low porosity hair But it's something that you might be fine with I want to see certain ingredients in my product but I also want to not see certain ingredients in my product This video is already stupid long so I'm going to try to just wrap it up quickly and just tell you how to put it all together For example cleanse as I look for surfactants or clays Your leaving should definitely have water as the first ingredient If it has water then humectant even better like water then aloe vera juice A film calling humectant is better put that high up just because like I said glycerin is moody So if it does have glycerin I prefer if it's not in the top five in the ingredients list Of course the leaving is the first thing that you apply to your hair Water and humectant first, some emollients, definitely some slip After that you can apply your cream which could have water first or not And even more emollients like butters and oils definitely good to also have slip You can have whole ingredients in your leaving or your cream that's fine But you definitely want to have whole ingredients in your styler or gel If you're that kind of person that wants whole ingredients And some people don't care at all whether their products have whole or not For me I wouldn't say I care a lot but I want to know so that I can know how to move Because if it doesn't have whole it's probably not going to get me through the week If I'm doing let's say a wash and go So if I'm doing a wash and go I want to know how much whole my product has To know how to plan my week If I'm doing it with a styler or a braider it doesn't really have to have whole I'm okay with that I wanted to give you a demo of how I go true ingredients Although I guess you guys probably see me doing a lot See me don't even need this demo but let's say this is how I pick up a product I pick it up, I glance at the front I'm not looking at any of the promises I'm dancing at the front just to see basically what type of product it is Is it a conditioner? Is it a leave in a cream or a cold wash or what That's all I need to know before I just skip to the back So if you tell me you're a cleanser I'm looking for surfactants or clay Otherwise I'm looking for water, humectants, emollients and slip And whole is a nice perk as well So that's it, that's the summary of my process I hope it was helpful to you Let me know if you have any questions down below I also have a blog post on ingredients so I'll also link that down below I hope this video helps you to understand ingredients a bit better And know what to look for a bit more And just how various types of products should be formulated and so on I would help you to pick products that work better for you in the future Thanks for watching, see you in the next one Bye