It's beginning to look a lot like winter!

I might live in Canada, but snow in the south-western portion of B.C. is pretty uncommon. Okay, not as rare as snow in California, for instance, but we don't get a lot of it - maybe a few weeks a year, and it generally turns to slush when the rain starts again. Apparently we're in for a lot of snow this winter, thanks to the El Nina weather system thingie coming our way!

I love snow. I'm a winter baby, and I love this time of year with all the carolling and cheap excuses to wear jingle bells as jewellery, but I also love the lack of humidity! (We're normally around 70% and we're at 24% this morning). It means I can add some humectants to my conditioners and still enjoy fairly straight hair for a few weeks! Yay! So if you're a normally frizzy type, this is your time to add a little glycerin or honeyquat to your products without fear of looking like a fashion don't from the 1980s! And if you're suffering from the dreaded static cling - I get my hair caught in various doors, laptops, and other closing things - then remember to add a little extra conditioning agent like Incroquat CR or cetrimonium chloride to reduce the fly-aways!

And this is the time of year to ramp up the barrier ingredients or barrier repair ingredients in your products. Consider increasing the occlusives - cocoa butter, dimethicone, and allantoin - in your products Adding some oils high in linoleic or gamma-linoleic acid will repair the damage and dryness faster than oils high in oleic acid. So consider using some great oils like sunflower, soybean, wheat germ, or sesame oil in place of olive or macadamia nut oil this time of year!

And moisturize, moisturize, moisturize! Your hair, your hands, your face, your skin - all are vulnerable to the drying effects of wind chapping, heat in the house, cold in the outdoors, and all that sweating you do wearing your winter clothing in the mall while trying to find the perfect present!

Here's a previous post on modifying your products for winter!