Great tip, Nonie. I'm going to have to try this because when I wear my hair curly it does dry out really fast unless I apply some heavy-duty moisturizer and oils every day.
My hair used to seem hard and dry. No matter what I'd do, it'd feel soft initially then be hard and dull looking later. I had that experience with Shea Butter and oils. So I'd slather on creams--whatever folks recommended--and my hair would be nice but later feel hard. When I decided to focus more on better conditioning and ACV rinses and using only S Curl (In other words, simplified my regimen and stopped trying 1967987 things at the same time), my hair responded beautifully.
I tried this on my mom. She's of the old school that believes in grease and what not. And yes, she's heat happy. Also she didn't know any better than to comb her dry hair not caring how much broke off. She'd just take off the broken hair from her comb and proceed to combing again (Brings memories of how I and everyone I knew treated natural hair before I learned from all you LHCF ladies :notworthy ). Made my eyes water to see her do this and my heart race coz I was sure any moment then she'd start a fire with all that friction noise. I couldn't get to her fast enough. I stopped her from combing her hair and begged her to hear me out. We shampooed her hair w/ Elucence Moisture Benefits and conditioned w/ Elucence Moisture Balance (hope I've got the names right). We didn't deep condition coz we didn't have a dryer handy at the time, but we did leave the conditioner in for a bit. Then I forbade her from combing her hair until it was well-covered w/ S Curl. And told her she could also comb in when wet and drenched in conditioner The difference in the look and feel of her hair was like night and day.
I'll try to see if I can enlarge the S Curled hair pic below w/o it becoming blurry. Otherwise I hope you can see the difference:
Old school regimen (Regular use of heat to straighten and curl, grease as hair balm, and combing hair when dry) regimen. Hair looked dull and felt dry and strands looked like they had no definite shape:
New school KISS regimen (Washing and conditioning with moisturizing products and using S Curl) results. Hair looked and felt very soft w/o being sticky and oh how beautifully her curls/coils popped!
My mom now sleeps in a baggy and uses S Curl. And when she wants to wear her hair straight-ish with curls, she uses Curlformers w/o heat. She recently had a trim so I know her hair's thriving. She doesn't care for long hair but she's thoroughly enjoying the simple regimen. I'm ecstatic about this coz we all know, it's not easy to convince older folk of stuff we know.
Oh, she also loves DCing under a dryer every once in a while. I'm so proud of her.
ETA: Enlarged pic of the S Curled hair: