Curls with Cara

Hey curl friends!

Today I’m going to combine a review of the Eco Styler Krystal with a lesson about hair porosity and proteins in products. The reason for this will become clear very shortly.

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First up: My review!

Ecoco Eco Styler Krystal Gel: $3.99 for 12oz at CVS ($0.33/oz)

This brand, Ecoco, has a bunch of different gels. I had been planning to do a review on a few of them, but that isn’t going to happen and you’ll see why in a bit. This gel is the Krystal, or clear one, with a 10/10 for hold.

When I first used this gel, and for the first week or so, I LOVED it. It’s kind of a thick, gooey texture that was a little off-putting at first, but I got used to it quickly.

Positives: This gel dries with a cast, which for me is a positive because I know I’m getting lots of hold from it (click here for a run-down on what a gel cast is). I just scrunched out the cast once my hair dried and my curls were soft, defined, and frizz-free. I was SO EXCITED that I had found this amazing gel, and for so little money.

My hair on the second day with the gel:

Negatives: Now this is where things get interesting. The first and only negative I could see at first was that it made my hair take a while to dry. In fact, the back section of my hair up towards my head almost seemed to take the longest to dry, and remained kind of wet and sticky for a few hours every time. But this wasn’t a huge problem for me.

The real negative of this gel took me a while to figure out. After the first week or so of using the gel every day, my hair started to feel dry and sort of straw-like, and my curls were flat and weren’t curling normally. I was so confused and didn’t understand what was going on. Then it hit me. I looked at the ingredients for the gel, which are:

Water , Carbomer , Hydrolyzed Wheat Protein , PVP , Glycerin Triethanolamine , Sodium Hydroxymethylglycinate , Polysorbate 20 , Tetrasodium EDTA , Fragrance

The third ingredient is protein! Why is this an issue? Here comes the part about protein and hair porosity.

Protein and Hair Porosity: What you need to know

What’s wrong with protein?

In and of itself, nothing! Protein is not bad for your hair necessarily, but it can be depending on the porosity of your hair.

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What’s porosity?

I’m no scientist (in fact I actively avoided science in college, and filled my science general requirement by taking an anthropology class), so I’m not going to try to get into the science of what it is or how it works. Instead, I’m going to let one of my favorite curly hair YouTubers, Waterlily716, explain!

I know the video is long, but it’s really important! I didn’t realize just how important until I had this experience with the Eco Styler Gel. But what you really need to take from this is: if you have low porosity hair, protein=bad, and if you have high porosity hair, protein=good. It’s important to know your hair’s porosity because it affects the ingredients you want or don’t want in your products. To learn your hair’s porosity, try the techniques at the beginning of the video.

I always sort of knew that I had low porosity hair, but I never thought much about it. It never seemed to affect me much before. But once my hair started getting so dry and flat, I realized this could be a protein issue. When I saw wheat protein was the third ingredient in the gel, I knew that was the problem. Lo and behold, I stopped using the gel two days ago and my hair is still recovering, but almost back to its old self.

However, even if you have low porosity hair like me, a little protein is not the end of the world. The Shea Moisture Coconut and Hibiscus line has silk protein in it, but it’s much farther down on the ingredient list. I’ve been using products from this line for years and never had an issue. It’s all about the amount!

So, my conclusion about the Eco Styler Gel: If you have high or even medium porosity hair, this and all the other Eco Styler Gels could be really great for you! They’re cheap and they work really well. If you have low porosity hair like me, however, then stay away! And, stay tuned, because I’m going to be trying out some other protein-free gels and reviewing them in the next few weeks.

Let me know if you have suggestions for gels or other products for me to try and review!

I hope some of you found this helpful! Please comment here or on the Curls with Cara Facebook page and let me know if this was helpful for you!

-Cara

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