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Care for natural hair? What are you using to care for yours?
If there's one thing that gets your attention, other than caring for your skin, it's going to be caring for your hair. A lot of myths and misinformation exist when it comes to natural hair and black women.
Everything will boil down to what you're using and the ingredients within a given product that you're using. Just as in skin care, where you have a routine, you should have a hair care routine as well.
Your hair care routine would consist of a shampoo, conditioner, hair serum and hair oil.
When you think about shampoo, you're looking for a product that will cleanse your hair, remove dirt build-up and any excess oil. And, you want to find all of these functions in a natural shampoo.
One of the main ingredients in shampoo is what's known as a surfactant. We hear the word surfactant over and over again when we’re talking about shampoos. What is a surfactant?
Surfactant is a shorter term for “surface active agent”. It's in the category of ingredients that has many functions when it comes to formulating a shampoo. Surfactants are also what will produce foam within a given product and how much of it cleans your hair. Some surfactants will foam up a lot but have very little detergent.
Now it's not that you want to go deep into the science of formulation, but understanding the job of the surfactant might help when you're looking for a good product. The bottom line, the surfactant found in your shampoos is going to be the number one ingredient that helps you to accomplish your main goal of cleaning your hair.
Your afro textured hair makes it easy to break, with its curls, kink and coils. It can also be prone to dryness as well. The natural oils from your scalp don't always travel down to the tips of your hair. Why? Because of the nature of kinky, curly, curling of your hair. This often leads a lot of oil build up on your scalp, leaving your hair to become very dry.
Do You Skip the Shampoo and Go Straight to the Conditioner?
A lot of you like to use what's called co-wash methods. This is where you typically just use a conditioner and skip the shampoo phase of cleaning your hair. That doesn't work for everyone. You’ve still got to get the dirt and oil build-up off your scalp.
Your shampoo and conditioner will benefit you greatly when you don't overuse either. We have a tendency to want to make sure that we get the scalp and the hair really clean. So you might wash your hair two to three times in the process before we even get to the conditioner. Depending on the shampoo you've chosen, each wash could be stripping the natural oils from your scalp. This makes your hair and scalp even more dry.
When you get through the shampoo and conditioner phase, a lot of you will then oil your scalp. Most of the time it's to add moisture to the hair in order to ward off the dryness.
We've heard time and time again that oil and water don't mix. Yet there are times when you can create a moisturizer with oil and water and use it to mist your hair every two to three days this keeps the hair from being brittle. It’s the synergy of the oil and water that helps that to occur.
Oftentimes, a lot of you will add essential oils. Rosemary, lavender, and peppermint are common choices. You use them for their known benefits to hair and to enhance the aroma of the mist that you created.
Serums for Natural Hair That Nurture Hair Challenges
Serums are like a specialized product that's used to take care of a specific condition or challenge.
In hair care, you'll see serums more often than not used for hair growth, thinning edges, and alopecia. Hair serums, nine out of ten times, will definitely have an essential oil component as part of its formulation. Simply because essential oils have been known too and said to help with hair growth, thinning edges and alopecia. Let’s be clear. This does not hold true for everyone using essential oils for hair care.
When it comes to essential oils in any formulation, especially when it comes to Hair Care , the results will be the same for individual experiencing a hair or scalp issue.
I began this piece asking the question: what are you using in your natural hair? You know that you're going to shampoo. The key is to have a shampoo that's not going to strip your hair of its natural oils. You also don’t want your shampoo to be too alkaline. You want one that is going to give you the best benefits and results.
Your conditioner is going to enhance the acidic level of your scalp as well as your hair and make sure that the pH balance is there.
Your hair oil is going to act, often times, as your moisturizer. The moisturizer, will often be a combination of oils such as grape seed, jojoba or olive oil.
These oils are often added to your scalp and then massaged in, working the oil all the way to the tips of your hair. For natural hair this is crucial. Your massage allows the oils to soften your hair and ready it for styling.
Your hair serums are going to help to nurture, replenish and for some of you, grow your hair.
With all of these products you cannot neglect, that you are what you eat. Just as your food nourishes your body, it is also nourishing your cells, your organs and the largest component of your body, your skin.
We often have a tendency to forget that our scalp is skin. It is nourished, nurtured and replenished based on what you eat.
So the condition of your hair is something that begins internally. All of the products that you use to keep it clean, to condition it, and moisturize it, they're all enhancements when it comes to your hair.
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That’s it for this week. As always …
Dedicated to your beauty,
Juliette Samuel,
Esthetician/Author/Publisher,