So You Want To Be Natural Pt. 3 – Bedtime Protection

You’re now either sporting your beautiful TWA or you’re  ready to start rocking gorgeous transitional styles (or protective style). Next you’ve got to keep that hair of yours protected when you go to sleep your first night and each and every night for the rest of your natural journey. Our natural tresses are easily damaged by our cotton bed sheets. The cotton robs our hair of moisture causing it to break and it also snags our hair again causing it to break. The tool to stop this…satin! Satin is a type of threading which is smooth without loose threads. It can either be silk, polyester, or nylon  satin or other types if satin. These mentioned are the popular ones. The silk type is more expensive and it feels very sleek on your skin and hair.  You can either invest in satin sheets,  satin pillow case(s), or satin hair bonnet, or all of these products. Either of these satin products are needed to protect your hair from the elements of sleep. I don’t sleep with pillows at all, I just cant…lol so I utilize satin bonnets and silk and polyester scarves.

Previous: Pt 2 Big Chop Or Not
Next: Pt. 4

Disclaimer: Everything listed here is basic and is meant to be a starting point. The links I’ve including will take you to some of the products I use for the various steps of maintaining my natural hair. I am no expert on hair care, I do not have my cosmetology license, nor am I a chemist, biologist, or scientist. I am a natural women who’s been researching natural hair care since 2012. I am however an expert in my own hair story and that’s what being natural is all about…developing a relationship with the hairs on your own head. I share what has worked for me in hopes that it may work for you as well. 

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Trimming – If It Ain’t Broke…

As with everything in your natural journey you have to figure out what works for you. Not to be excluded from that is trimming your tresses. I’ had my first MINOR trimming since being natural when I flat ironed my hair the second time in january (first time was in December). I wasn’t going to do it at all until I noticed my hair looking crazy while it was flat ironed. I mean my ends looked like Edward scissor hands on drugs had given me a hair cut. Okay maybe not that bad but you get the idea. So I simply took a little not even a half an inch and trimmed my ends. I did not layer cut it…I ONLY trimmed the absolute ends of my hair.

I would never have trimmed my ends because my hair is fine without chopping my hair off. I dont experince breakage or none growth because of not trrimming. My hair is very easy to grown even under what some would call bad conditions. And since I am a length girl you know I don’t want to do anything to make my hair shorter…lol. when I wasn’t natural I would trim my hair maybe once every 5 years against me stylist wishes who wanted to trim it at the first sign of a single split end. My having split ends never damaged my hair nor did it hinder growth. Now that I’m natural same is true…not trimming my ends has not hurt my hair health or overall growth. So my motto is if it ain’t broke don’t fix it!

Now will this approach work for you or someone else? I don’t know and neither will you unless thru trial and error you develop a relationship with you hair and figure things out. I’m not just going to trim my hair on a routine just because…there has to be a reason for me to do this. My reason this time was because my hair was visibly uneven. I’m not sure when I will trim it again.

My advice, as always, is to do what works for you. If you hair is breaking and not retaining length and you’re doing everything else to prevent breakage then by all means trimming make sense. Make this hair journey YOUR  hair
journey! What works for the masses may not work for you. What works for me may not work for you. But experimenting will tell you what your hair requires to be your idea of healthy.

No More Hair Loss

I have a testimony to correctly caring for your hair. If you are good to it, It WILL be good to you. Here’s the pure truth! I did not take as good of care as I should have to my hair. I was going through a family crisis (death of a close relative) and I lost it…I just stopped caring for my hair. I just had too much going on to pay attention to it. I was stressed and my hair was a mess! During this time, when I washed my hair – that was almost the only thing I did periodically and daily moisturizing – I noticed I lost so much hair. I mean it was A LOT of hair. When I started maintaining my regimen again and deep conditioning I began to notice that my hair didn’t come out as much!

There are so many things that are the cause of losing our hair. First there are two types of hair loss: breakage and shedding. Shedding is a natural process that we all go through. Normal shedding is anywhere between 30-50 strands per day…however you may not notice this daily unless you manipulate your hair daily. Otherwise you will see it on wash day. If you start to go above this there may be underlying factors to your hair loss. Things such as heredity, mental and physical health play a part in hair shedding.

The word to be afraid of is BREAKAGE. When our hair breaks it is more than likely something that we can control. If you do not see a small white bulb on the end of your hair strand once it falls from your head, then this is breakage…not shedding. What can you do to prevent this? Several things can cause breakage such as dry hair so keep it moisturized all the time. If your hair feels crunchy and hard it’s probably dry and needs TLC = moisture. Another culprit is continual manipulation of your hair, so stop styling it every day or even every other day. Many people resort to protective styles to avoid over manipulating their hair. While others use style that require little touchup, such as Twist out (which is what yours’ truly does :)). Drop the curling irons, flat irons and blow dryers sisters cause they are the most damaging to our already dry hair. Primarily because they strip the hair of its natural oils.

Others things include heredity…girls if your mom lost hair then more than likely so will you. This is increased if your dad lost his hair early as well. Physical health also plays a major role in the health of your strands. Thyroid disease is one of those ailments that can cause you to lose your hair…hypo or hyper. If you are worrying or stressed or suffer from anxiety then you are a greater risk of losing some strands, so keep your mental health in mind when caring for your hair. Exercising and taking vitamins can help with both physical and mental problems. However seek professional advise from your PCP prior to starting either

The below picture shows the amount of hair I lost during my last wash day. This is a normal amount of shedding. I captured it beside a hair clip so you can visualize the amount.