by Viola Levy - It’s been received wisdom throughout my hair-washing life that you do not let any scrap of conditioner near your scalp. None at all. And as a greasy-haired teenager this was something I took as gospel. “Shampoo the roots, condition the ends” was the motto we all received from teenage magazines. However rules are made to be broken. And as the years passed and my haircare routine got more sophisticated, having long since left conditioners in the past and upgraded to masks that provided my frizz-prone strands with a much more of an intense moisture hit.
Hence I’d seen the humble conditioner as hitherto redundant, despite the fact my dry scalp was still a burning issue, yet one that I was happy to sweep under the carpet. (As we tend to do where our scalp issues are concerned – putting up to 10 products on our face, yet beyond The Wall of our hairline it’s a desolate wasteland of neglect).
Yet that was before I discovered the wonders of ‘Essence-Conditioner’ (which I like to think of ‘diet conditioner’ or ‘conditioner-lite’). Case in point is MONPURE’s Strengthening Essence-Conditioner whose texture is ultra fine, a world away from gloopy, pancake batter-like consistency I was used to. This stuff is so fine and featherlight that it can be massaged into the scalp without leaving my roots a greasy mess, finally solving the issue of the dry scalp-oily hair conundrum that has puzzled scholars since the dawn of civilisation.
Like an ‘essence’ for the skin, this quenches thirsty scalp-skin without being too heavy-handed, locking in moisture thanks to conditioning vegan silk peptides. But once I’ve dried my hair, it still retains the ‘just washed’ bounce without being weighted down by product. Plus, it’s nourishing enough to be worked through the hair itself down to the ends.
Among its nourishing cocktail of scalp-loving ingredients are aloe vera and argan oil; a suave double-act, that work to moisturise and condition with aplomb. Since using it, I’ve noticed a marked reduction in itchiness, eczema and flaky skin on my scalp (which would normally flare up with stress and hormonal fluctuations throughout the month – not so, since using this).
Very few of us would wash our face and not replenish the skin with some sort of moisturiser afterwards, so why after shampooing our scalp, do we tend to leave it at that? A rookie error I hope the creation of this clever conditioner can correct…
