Earlier this week I talked about Ayurvedic health care and I mentioned I purchase some Amla Oil from my local Indian grocer. Now, I have tried Amla powder before in the past (thanks to my wonderful friend Fleurzty of www.textureplayground.com who is a pro at amla lol) so when I was at my local Indian market, I saw amla oil and thought, hey, the benefits of amla in a bottle! So since I can be impulsive lol, I went ahead and bought it…it was only about $4.
As I read the ingredients, I kind of did a *side eye* because lots of naturals have given a bad rap to mineral oil and here it is the first ingredient. But reading the box and knowing how well Ayurvedic products work, I figured it couldn’t be that bad. Check out what’s inside below..
Ingredients
Mineral oil, Veg oil (Sesame oil, Canola oil, Peanut oil, Cotton seed oil, Palmolein oil), Oil ext of Goodeberry (Amla), Colours Yellow (12700), Green (61565), Red (12150), Perfume, Anti-oxidant-Tert butyl hydroquinone (TNHQ).
I know, I know….in addition to the mineral oil it has canola oil and peanut oil and dyes…I was like wtf too but the oil is supposed to strengthen the hair’s roots, soften hair, make hair shinier and darker, I mean this stuff has been used for years by Indian women and is the most popular oil used in India. So knowing all that made me feel a bit better about putting something you could fry chicken and fries (re: canola) with in my hair lol
So I followed the recommended use by applying the oil to my scalp, massaging it in and letting it sit overnight. I slept with a plastic cap on my hair and then a bonnet over it. I wore the plastic cap to help warm up the oil and help it penetrate (and to avoid any oil stains on my pillow lol). I took the cap off in the morning….omg…my hair was soooooooo soft! I was truly shocked! It even gets better…I virtually had NO shed. Like, this stuff must have glued the roots of my hair into my head or something lol it was amazing! Normally I could gently stroke my hair and still have shed hair come out but this time, I literally had no loose strands. I’m calling this super glue oil lol
The product recommends that you wash your hair the next morning after so this is another reason I feel that the oils in this product are harmless, you aren’t letting them sit on your hair for long. To me, this is definitely not an oil you’d use to seal your hair or anything like that but rather as a treatment before you know you’re going to wash.
I used the oil a couple times a week when I wore a wash-n-go (because I knew I was going to get my hair wet). I also put a few drops in part of my hair that is thinning just because. I didn’t wash this out because I used just a teeny bit. I wouldn’t use this during the weeks that I do twist-outs because I do not wash my hair.
Overall, I have seen a HUGE improvement in the amount of hair shed so I will continue to use this bottle of the oil as a treatment on my scalp. Since I plan to incorporate more Ayurvedic products to my regimen that yield the same results as the amla oil, I may not buy this regularly…but we’ll see…
— Have you tried alma? What do you think about the mineral oil content?
