7 Tips To Growing & Maintaining Natural Hair

Hey y’all. I’d  love to share 5 tips with you that I always consider when I’m handling my hair. These are tips that I’ve learnt from other naturals through out my journey and it has worked for me. Hopefully, it will work for you too.

Deep Condition regularly

This is the most important step during the wash day routine. Basically this step helps natural hair to be moisturized and strengthened. This step applies to all hair types. Personally, I deep condition my hair after every two weeks. You could do it every week if you like. Two weeks woks perfect for my day-to-day schedule.

Moisturizing regularly

The way you view the rest of your body is the same way you should your hair. Your body needs water daily. So is your hair. Just because you’ve deep conditioned your hair doesn’t mean you forget about it till the next wash day. Regular moisturizing in between wash days will prevent your hair from drying up. This helps prevent hair breakage because dryness equals breakage. I use the L.O.C. method of which the ‘L’ is usually water.

Leave your hair Alone

This means avoiding a lot of hair manipulation. I know sometimes getting inspiration from others naturals who style their hair in different ways can be exciting. Once in a while it’s not bad to try them out but remember is good to have styles that have little or no manipulation. Our hair grows all the time, the catch comes when trying to maintain the length especially the ends. I always try to have protective styles that have no manipulation at all like my previous No corn-row crochet braids or two strand flat twist.

Use of little or no heat

A lot of heat on natural hair leads to heat damage. Heat damage means that your hair will lose it’s natural curl pattern. Once you experience this, the only way to do away with it is to chop of the strands that are damaged if you still want to have a healthy hair journey. Once in a while is not bad, just be moderate with it. Personally, I haven’t used heat on my hair at all since 18th of December 2015. LOL…I know…I know, Am that good with dates.

Silk or Satin fabric for your head scarfs/ hair bonnet.

Ensure that whatever you use to tie on your hair when going to sleep is silk or satin. This also applies to head wraps. If you want to tie a head wrap, just ensure you use this type of fabric underneath before your actual head wrap. This is what I did when tied my Ankara Fabric on my previous post. Cotton fabrics tend to suck all the moisture from your hair leaving it dry. This increases chances of hair breakage with time.

Washing your hair in twists

Natural hair tends to shrink a lot when exposed to moisture. This happens a lot during wash days. The hair strands end up tangling a lot  and if not dealt with care and caution the strands will end up breaking . To avoid this, dividing the hair and twisting them in sections before washing will make life easier.

Trimming split ends

I only do this when needed. I felt like my ends where a little bit ragged just when I removed my crochet braids. I automatically knew that it was time to trim my ends because they were split. I know it can be a little bit of pain doing this but it’s for the good of your hair journey. Avoiding trimming will make the splitting travel up your hair shaft causing your strands to be weak.

 

I know the title says 7 tips but I want to give you guys a bonus tip.

Finger detangling

This is one thing that will save you a lot of pain if your hair goal is length… that is accompanied by health of cause. The thing with using combs to detangle hair is that combs are less ‘merciful’ for lack of a better word. Combs don’t know where  your strands are tangled. All they do is force the strands to leave each other and in the process cause them to break at the point where tangles are. Imagine doing this continuously every time you want to detangle. In the long run your hair seems like it’s not growing but really the technique that you use is what works against you length retention. When you use your fingers you tend to be more gentle just because you don’t want to lose the length.

   This are the basic tips that I have learnt so far. It  may not always be easyand smooth but it’s all for the love of what comes out of our scalp. What tips do you consider when handling your hair that I haven’t mentioned above? I’d love to learn from you.

Lots of Love

Akinyi Fiona

 

 

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