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.
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.
- 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.
- 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.
- 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.
- 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.
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?
