Phyto Phytolisse Finishing Serum (revised re-post)

phyto usa photo

I've had a lot of interest in this product review. It was one of my first posts so I went back to look it over. It was definitely too hard to read. What follows is a cleaned up version...

I got a small sample of this product from a salesperson somewhere and finally used it this afternoon after my shower. It felt clean and smelled good. I could actually see my hair relax... and what ever was going on with the scent definitely relaxed me.

Phyto photo

But I didn't even get the chance to see how well it would deliver on the promise of soft, silky, fly-away free tresses. Almost immediately after I finished working it through my hair my nose and eyes began to run, my ears and head started pounding... and that old familiar cloud of confusion settled over my brain. I recognized the symptoms and knew I'd be no good for the rest of the day. I knew that once the symptoms finally pass the next phase is total exhaustion.

I'm not saying the problems come from this product. As always the symptoms that sometimes overtake me may have nothing to do with a product I'm using, may be the product itself, may be the product in combination with other irritants, or they may or may not be who knows what from many other variables...

Someday I'd like to run a true scientific study. A hypothesis, control group, and controlled variables - the whole deal. But right now I just want my hair to look good with as little time, effort and product as possible. And in that effort part is included me NOT having these strange debilitating physical problems.

In researching this particular product I've learned that as a serum its mostly silicone and that often silicones contain alcohol- a drying agent that does its job and dries out your hair.

The Buckingham Post photo

 Serums are touted as a product that delivers shine.They deliver on this promise by sealing over the the cuticle; coating the hair shaft and sealing in the drying agent in the deal. 
Silicone can build up and give hair that, "I'm wearing lots of product" look. Adding insult to injury, to remove the silicone from your hair you need to shampoo with a very harsh sulfate containing shampoo that will dry your hair out even more. Sounds like a vicious cycle to me.

So armed with these bits and pieces of information I headed over to Skin Deep's database to do a little research. Because the Phyto product in the database is the listed as the old formula I entered the ingredients for the newer product to get the most recent information and score. This means that you won't be able to pull up the results for the exact product I researched.

You can still do your own research if you enter the ingredients into the database yourself. The link is in the first sentence in previous paragraph and here as well. Here's the link for the old formulation.

...read more after the jump...