Believe you me, I was a huge product junkie back in my relaxer days, and tried everything, and nothing worked. Oils made my crunchy hair oily and crunchy, but it did not help it one bit. Now that my hair is healthy, it needs none of that stuff (I mean occasionally I smooth a bit of olive oil or coconut oil on my ends, but I've also gone years without doing it). This isn't to say finding a good product isn't important. You can't properly take care of your hair without a decent conditioner to help comb it and keep curls happy. But once you find a few of those, I feel a person is done. Anything else is excess (in my opinion and experience and research).

I firmly believe that it's how you treat your hair that makes the difference, not a whole bunch of products. Those who are selling products of course push that you need lots and lots of them to "heal" or "repair" your hair. But hair can not be healed, no more than a sweater can be healed by throwing yarn on it. Oils may lubricate a bit, but if your hair is healthy, these are not needed. And if your hair is damaged, they will not help. I think people fall into several categories about feeling the need to use lots of products (or maybe all of these). I think I fell into all of these categories during my relaxer days:

*We may believe what the companies selling products tell them, that they have to buy lots of different products to do things for their hair (even though the manufactures often repackage the same ingredients and sell them as different items).

*Sometimes we can be hyper and impatient. We may believe that if we try lots of things, something will "cure" our hair faster, or it seems too easy (or too hard) to simply take care of our hair without damaging it. We'd rather look for a cure in a quick fix product, and go from product to product, looking for magic.

*Also, it's difficult for some of us to just let our hair be. We may feel we must always be doing something or buying something new for our hair instead of knuckling down and learning to care for it. And on top of that, we need to give it the time it needs to grow. Maybe it's a form of "rushing" health into our hair by dashing from product to product.

*Sometimes we don't like reality: We may have damaged our hair, and want to believe there is something out there that can repair it. There isn't. Once hair is hurt, it is hurt until it grows out again. And that's a pretty harsh pill to swallow if you've just damaged your hair.

*Often we just haven't found a product that works. Because there is so much misinformation that advertisers can legally put on their products, we may buy things believing they will do what they promise. This is often not true. The only place the truth appears on a product is in it's ingredients. So we go from product to product, hoping to find one that works.

*And since it's often difficult to get objective information about the ingredients used in products, we don't know what we are really buying.

*We may be expecting (hoping for) the products to do the work for us. We may buy gels and sprays and mousses and lotions to define our curls, when really all it takes is a bit of defining by hand with much better results (and no need for drying and crunchy gels or expensive products).