Ten tips for growing longer, healthy natural hair
The year 2013 may be looked back upon as the year that naturals started to take over Africa! In the UK, it was 2012 and perhaps 2011 for the US. Yes, yes, there have always been natural- haired girls among us but they are in a silent minority.
Advertisement
We're still a minority but now we're making noise with all our blogs, vlogs and stylish photo shoots. I was forced to go natural in 2011 because my hair was very bad: thin, damaged and just outright ugly. At the time, I honestly thought that the natural thing would never catch on (on the Mother Continent). How wrong I was!
Indeed, while chatting with two sisters from Nigeria on a flight to London, I told them my hair was natural – they called me "brave." Brave, I am not. However, I will admit that there are problems unique to maintaining natural hair. These are four of my top 10 tips. I can give many more tips but I feel a new natural would want to know this.
Water is good for your hair!
Relaxed hair looks better the longer you leave it unwashed - within reasonable limits of course.
Relaxed hair is essentially damaged hair. This is because the relaxer goes into your hair cuticle and changes the bonds inside the hair so that they are straight. This permanent change makes the hair strand a little weaker; constant wetting would weaken the strand further.
Natural hair, on the other hand, craves moisture from water. The first thing you will notice about your natural hair is that it dries out very quickly, especially the hair ends. Don’t be afraid to wash it often, weekly at a minimum.
Protect your hair from the hot sun
The outer layer of hair is composed of a layer of protective fats. This layer can be irreversibly burnt off by the sun’s rays.
Even if your hair doesn’t get damaged, when it's very hot, if your hair is loose, you will find that by midday, it's so hard. If it's humid, your hair will cope better because of the extra moisture in the air.
Updos and other protective hairstyles such as braids, cornrows and tucked-in hair styles are the best protection against the heat. These styles hide most of your hair especially the ends so that they are not exposed to the sun.
Oil is NOT a moisturiser
Don't be surprised by this statement. Moisture is water; oils and water don't mix. To soften your hair, you need water or a water-based moisturiser – the oil should come on top of the water-based moisturiser to seal in that moisture. Oils have great benefits too, e.g. nutrients that can sink into hair, but don't put oil onto dry hair and expect it to soften - it will not.
If you do a hot oil treatment, you need to shampoo it out before applying conditioner because the part of the oil that doesn't sink into the strand will block the conditioner from being fully effective.
Sulfate shampoo will dry out your hair
You will find it very hard to find sulfate-free shampoos. Sulfates are the most common cleansing agents used in shampoos because they are inexpensive and they are the best ingredient for cleaning greasy Caucasian hair. Most shampoos are targeted at the greasy-haired consumer – but naturals have the opposite problem, dry hair.
That said, if all you find is sulfate shampoos, you can counteract their drying nature by doing a hot oil treatment before you shampoo (or using moisturising shampoos). Importantly, if most of your products have a high content of heavy ingredients such as mineral oils and petrolatums, you need a sulfate shampoo to wash them off.
You’ll get the next six tips in part two of this two-part series.
To be continued
Email: [email protected].