I have heard of a few different concerns expressed from people about leaving in the conditioner, ranging from fair concerns to stuff that's just plain made up. Now, not every technique will be for everybody. Some people feel it's dirty to not wash your hair every single day. While other people wash their hair once a month (not that I recommend that. I wash once a week or more often). There is nothing wrong with leaving conditioner in your hair (so long as it has no harmful ingredients in it). For more information about my reasoning for leaving in conditioner, you can check out Is it really okay to leave in a conditioner meant to be rinsed out?

One of the more outrageous concerns is that leaving conditioner in your hair can cause ringworm. Perhaps the person with this extreme concern was that she believes the conditioner stays wet all the time. That would be gross, and very unhealthy, and your hair would go sour after a while, I'm sure. Ringworm, however, is caused by a fungus you get from contact with another infected individual, and it lives in warm, wet places like the groin or armpits. Only if you were sweating all the time so your hair is always wet, and had contact with another infected person would this be a problem. And this would have nothing to do with the conditioner. If your scalp and hair are constantly wet, you'd have those problems with or without the conditioner. Since your hair dries, conditioner will not and can not cause this.

But the conditioner does in fact dry (and within a few hours), and all it does is weigh down the curls to keep them moisturized and calm. The thing is, conditioners have nearly the same ingredients in them as the products you buy as "leave-in" products, and even in lotions for your skin have them. They are just packaged differently, but have lots in common. So by the person's logic, it's dirty, and you would get ringworm from leaving any product in your hair? Or leaving lotion on your skin?

Maybe the concern is that you shouldn't heap all that conditioner on your scalp and then never wash it off. In that case, that's true--you should never glop lots of anything on your scalp. It would damage your follicles to glop lots of conditioner on your scalp, and not wash it off. But I don't recommend that. I recommend washing it off every four days to once a week. And I don't ever recommend glopping any on your scalp.

In all my research, my years of leaving in conditioner, and nearly all lotions sold to put on your skin show that this is incredibly safe. If this technique caused breakage, and all the other issues she mentions, how is it my hair (which is naturally fragile) has gotten down to my hips, when all my life I wasn't able to grow it past my shoulders? I used to leave in all kinds of products in those relaxer days, and nothing kept my damaged hair from breaking off. Now I've been using this technique for over 8 years now with no problems. It's funny, I have people come up to me with short, damaged, fuzzy hair that looks like peach fuzz so that they wear wigs to cover it up, and they want to tell me what I should use on my hair instead. It's their right to use what they want. But I say the proof is in the pudding.