Tag Archives: 4C Afro Natural Hair

Tips for caring for your natural 4C hair

August 11, 2020 By in Beauty Tags: , , , , , 3 Comments

The journey to loving and embracing my natural 4c hair has been long but I can finally say I have gotten there. I love all aspects of my hair; the coarseness, dryness, and all. It is growing like a weed these days as I mentioned in my last hair related post and I am happy with the look. My 4c hair needs a lot of tender loving care and lots of oils. I mix my hair oils and I really like how they leave my hair so moisturised and healthy. Caring for your natural 4c hair is not easy. I almost gave up because I didn’t know what to do right and what I was doing wrong.

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Tips for caring for your natural 4C hair

Here are ways to care for your natural 4c hair –

Wash your hair every 2 weeks

For 4c hair, it is best to wash it every 2 weeks. Washing the hair too frequently will make it even drier. The hair products massaged into the hair need time to work their magic. Washing the hair every 2 weeks will keep the hair clean without stripping off the moisture.

Moisturise the hair every day

I moisturise my hair at least twice a day with hair oils, morning, and last thing before I go to bed. My hair gets really dry and I find that it needs more moisture than normal. Moisturising your hair every day will keep the hair long and healthy. Skipping the moisturising bit is not an option for me and it shouldn’t be.

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Keep your hair tools clean

I wash all my hair tools regularly to ensure they are clean for when I need them. The last thing your hair needs is s dirty comb. Dirty tools cause hair breakage, dandruff, and an itchy scalp.

No heat

I can’t remember the last time I have used a hairdryer or any form of heat on my hair. I air dry my hair when I wash and it dries quickly. Excessive heat can damage the hair, which is why I rather stay clear from any form of heat except there is no other way around it.

Careful with the protective styles

I have not had my hair in cornrows for over 3 months now. My hair stays in loose plaits and twists most of the time. I believe this has helped my hair grow even more. Some of the protective styles can damage our hairline. It is also not easy to moisture the hair properly when it is cornrows. You can only moisturise the scalp but not the actual hair. It is also very tricky to give the hair a proper wash when it is in a protective style. These are some of the reasons why I decided to not visit my hairdresser for some time and manage my hair on my own, so I can properly care for it. The rate at which my hair is now growing tells me I made the right decision.

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What do you think of these tips for caring for your natural 4c hair? How do you care for your hair? Do you have any tried and tested tips to share?

 

 

 

 

 

 

The Natural Hair Movement – Why more women are returning to their roots

February 4, 2018 By in Beauty Tags: , , , , , , , , , 29 Comments

For a lot of women, especially African women, curling, perming, relaxing and heat styling are slowly going out as we are starting to embrace more natural hairstyles. This has started a kind of natural hair movement.

I also joined the bandwagon when I decided to go all natural and stay away from harsh chemicals. Such harsh chemicals damage the hair although they help women achieve styles associated to Western hairstyles.

 

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More women are returning to their roots

One day, I followed a friend to the hairdressers and noticed how the place was not as busy as I remembered it to be. Turns out, I wasn’t the only one who went all out with being natural. There were so many other women!

It was not difficult to deduce that the swift shift to go all natural with twists, braids and locks was killing business. Women have caught on to the advantages of keeping their natural hair. For most women staying natural keeps their hair healthy.

Chemicals can lead to irreparable damage often taking years before the hair can go back to its healthy self. Staying natural gives women the opportunity to let their hair grow longer and fuller. Even though one of the downsides is the difficulty in maintaining the hair, especially if you have kinky hair like mine.

 

 

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Personally I find maintaining my natural hair a lot much cheaper than spending money on products that will only damage my hair, not to talk about paying the hairdresser who will apply the products that will do the damage.

The convenience of taking care of my hair right from the comfort of my home is priceless. The same goes for several other women. Thanks to the numerous tutorials on YouTube on managing and styling the natural hair, there is information everywhere.

This is a revolution threatening hundreds of hairdressers and those in the beauty industry right now. What is the future of the beauty hair industry if more and more women decide to transition to natural hairstyles? From what I see, that future is seriously threatened.

YouTube videos showing women just how to maintain natural hair and hair blogs recommending the exact products to help provide the needed treatment for your hair are pushing hairdressers to the sidelines. As more people are picking up on the trend, all the focus is on natural hair products and natural hairstyles.

 

The way forward

I believe the beauty hair industry needs to catch up on the natural hair trend and invest more of their time and expertise on promoting natural hair and how to make the most of it. Our hair is our crown and should be treated as such, not buried under weaves permanently.

The natural hair movement is here to stay. So hairdressers better catch up.

 

What are your thoughts on this article?

Why Chemicals are Bad for the Hair

December 18, 2016 By in Beauty Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , 50 Comments

It all starts with a dissatisfaction of our natural hair. Every time you look in the mirror, you wish that your natural hair was better. And in the pursuit of having the perfect hair, we apply all sorts of products to get our hair looking the way we think we want it to.

 

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Relaxers, texturizers, hair sprays and even some hair creams could be extremely harmful to your hair. On the surface, those products seem to give the results that you have been looking for but at the expense of the health of your hair. They contain several harsh chemicals like sodium hydroxide (lye), calcium hydroxide or guanidine hydroxide (no-lye), and hydrogen peroxide to get your hair to behave in the nature and style that you desire. But leaves the health of your hair in a very bad state.

These chemicals can be so harsh for our delicate hair because they negatively affect the pH level of the hair. The continuous application of these harmful hair products would continue to destroy the hair.

Here are some of the reasons why chemicals are bad for your hair.

 

  1. Chemicals will stunt hair growth

Our hair needs the right environment, pH level and moisture to grow. Using these harsh chemical in your hair products, especially relaxers and texturizers, go deep into the scalp. It strips the hair of its moisture.

The worse part about chemicals most especially the ones in hair relaxers is that the chemicals used to relax the hair also inhibit its growth.

 

  1. Chemicals will thin your hair

The continuous application of perms, relaxers, texturizers and other chemical-based hair products will wear our hair out. At each application, the chemicals start to weaken the hair strands and most times it leads to having split ends. When you apply a relaxer, the part that suffers the most is your natural hairline. The front of your hair gets so thin that it could start to break which could damage the hair-line severally.

 

  1. Chemicals will lead to breakage and hair loss

These chemicals can also lead to overall hair breakage and loss. The chemicals in hair products can make your hair lose its elasticity which will make your hair fragile and cause it to break.

 

  1. Chemicals can burn your scalp

Ladies believe that when they leave a relaxer or texturizer longer in their hair, they’ll get better results. Especially if they have very coarse hair like me (I have a 4c type hair). The truth is that the longer you leave those products in your hair, the more your scalp burns. This will cause serious pain from the burn or irritation. The pain gets worse when hair products that contain alcohol are applied to your hair.

With all these problems, the best decision you could ever make is to go natural and stay natural. I have not applied any form of chemical on my hair for over a year now and I can’t remember the last time my hair was this healthy.

 

 

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My hair is full, strong and growing quickly and beautifully. I must confess, the journey to falling in love with my natural afro hair has been long and hard. It took seeing how lovely my daughter’s natural hair is, to get me to transition to natural hair. But I am happy I have finally embraced it. It is very difficult to maintain my natural hair. It is quite dry and does not retain moisture easily, so I like to have it in a protective style for as long as possible, and rock my fancy wigs. But as soon as my hair grows to the desired length I am after, I would start to style it a bit more.

What do you think of these harsh chemicals in hair products?

 

 

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