I am here to tell you about a well kept secret called flax seed hair gel. It does wonders for your hair and is super easy to make. I’ll get to why it is awesome in a few mins but first let me tell you why and how I learned about it……
About 2 years ago, we watched a documentary on Netflix called “Chemerical.” The family began ditching their toxic household products for health friendly products. In the beginning, the mother seemed like she was lethargic. After she ditched the toxins, she was brighter, more alert, more energetic and even her skin looked so much better. I thought it was just me, but even my husband noticed the change. She even tells you of how much better she feels. I already knew that our environment exposes us to many toxins but this women was enough proof begin evaluating our cabinets. One of the products they decided to ditch was their hair gel. I think they were using a different recipe but it made me curious to look into alternatives to my own hair gel.
At first, I decided to purchase gel from the health stores but they are always crazy expensive on everything! I then found Vitacost. Vitacost is typically about half the price for their products when compared to my local health stores but the hair gel I prefered was still $6 for a 7 oz bottle. (I order a lot of my products from Vitacost and love it. I’ll leave a link below for $10 off your first order) I have lots of thick long hair and it requires a lot of product to cover all of my hair. I just couldn’t afford or see myself forking over this much for hair gel of all things. I actually went all natural for a while but my waves needed some life. And then I found flax seed hair gel.
The Benefits of Flax seed hair gel
- It’s cheap. I buy my Bob Mills brown flax seeds at Big Lots for $2.00 for a bag. For a 24 oz bag, it will make at least 12 batches of hair gel. I say at least because many people use the flax seeds more than once. You can buy distilled water or use water from the faucet. You only use 1/4 c of flax seeds per batch so that’s a whopping $0.16 for the flax seeds if you choice to use them once and discard. Even if you buy distilled water at $1 a gal, your total cost for the first batch would be $0.28!!
- It’s super easy to make. If you know how to boil water, you can handle this. It takes maybe 15-20 minutes of your time, depending on how fast water comes to a boil on the stove.
- It’s toxin free. Have you looked at the ingredients in your hair gel recently??? PEG, alcohol, propylene glycol, PVP, hydrogenated castor oil, synthetic fragrance and probably a lot of things you can’t even read. Flax seed hair gel has 2 ingredients (3 if you add essential oils) and all of them you can pronounce!
- It doesn’t damage your hair. A lot of the ingredients in the normal hair care products contain a nice chemical smoothie for your hair that causes split ends, breakage, thinning, and it can dry out your hair. Flax seed hair gel does exactly opposite.
- It improves the health of your hair. It helps promote hair growth, adds shines, nourishes your hair with omega 3s, repairs split ends, and improves your overall health of your hair.
- It doesn’t dry out your hair. Like I said above, I have wavy hair. The worst thing you can do for curly/wavy hair is to use something that dries out your hair. Almost all of the hair gels I have looked at contain alcohol. Alcohol dries out the hair which leads to split ends, breakage, and dull hair. It also does nothing for your curls.
- It doesn’t leave your hair crunchy. Every hair gel I have ever used has left my hair crunchy. It might look good but then you would touch it, and it would be hard. Flax seed hair gel, once dried, leaves your hair soft. After having it in my hair for a day, it is still soft to the touch. It’s almost as if I didn’t have anything in my hair.
- It works with my hair and not against it. I used to blow dry, straighten, and curl my hair because on day 2 of scrunching my hair, there was no way to spritz my hair with water and re-scrunch it because it would make one big tangled mess. After going to bed, it would be so tangled and it would hurt to try to run a comb through it. It would be frizzy, and just horrible. Now, I can work with the beautiful waves God has given me without rewashing or using heat. And it looks just as good as day 1.
- Long lasting hold. Many days on day 2, I will just run a comb through my hair since a lot of my wave has held after sleeping on it. It gives it almost like a soft beachy waves look. If it has some frizz, I will take a small amount of the gel and use it as a frizz serum. Coconut oil also works well for a frizz serum. Just remember a little goes a long way!
- It’s all natural. It’s so natural you can eat it, although I don’t recommend it. It probably wouldn’t taste great and you definitely don’t want to go eating it if you add essential oils to it. You don’t have to read the long list of ingredients making sure they don’t have toxins added. Nor, do you need to spend tons of time researching each ingredient to see if it is harmful to yourself.
- You can customize the recipe to your specific needs. If your familiar with essential oils, different ones have different benefits. If your not, a quick Google search can help you out. Or you can simply pick a scent that you like. I have seen that many people will add other things such as aloe-vera gel, avocado oil, Vitamin E, and whatever else fits their needs. I personally used the gel with nothing extra added until recently. I have started adding essential oils just for a nice smell and it also helps preserve the gel a little longer.
What you need
Spoon Pot Fine Mesh strainer (or some use panty hose. if you use panty hose, you will need tongs or something to squeeze the gel out of the panty hose) Container ( I use a chip dip glass jar) Bowl to strain flax seeds into if your not using a glass jar that withstand the heat.
Ingredients
2 cups of water from the faucet or distilled water (I have used both and I prefer distilled water or drinking water better but the water from the faucet works fine) 1/4 cup Brown whole flax seeds 2-3 drops of Essential Oils of Choice (OPTIONAL)
Recipe
- Add water and flax seeds to your pot. Bring to a boil. Stir from time to time to keep flax seeds from sticking to bottom.
- I usually pull mine off as soon as it begins rapidly boiling and has foam on the top. Remove from heat and strain into bowl or container. Use a spoon to squish the gel out. You can use panty hose instead of a strainer but I prefer using the strainer. If you go with the panty hose method, use tongs to squish out the gel into your container.
- Discard the flax seeds or store in freezer to reuse for another batch. Allow the gel to cool and add essential oils.
- Store in fridge for about 2-3 weeks. Mine usually lasts about 2 weeks but there is safe natural preservatives you can add to extend the life of your gel.
Here is a Youtube video that shows how to make the gel. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aWaH8GIbLrM Vitacost coupon- $10 for you and $10 for me. (https://www.vitacostrewards.com/LGaL3XL) I hope you guys like it as much as I do, please comment and let me know what you think, have any questions, or any suggestions!
Our Blessed Nest Blog 