For the past few years, the “natural hair movement” has dominated most conversations about Black hair-care. If you haven’t gone natural or haven’t even slightly considered it, I know it can be a little difficult to navigate through all the new content about natural hair and find pieces to read/watch that are meant specifically for relaxed hair.
It may seem like relaxed hair content is a little more limited, and in some cases, that’s true. However, it might actually benefit you to start looking at natural hair care videos and taking some of those tips. Because at the end of the day, healthy hair all requires the same things: moisture/hydration, regular trims, and protection.
What Can You Gain From Natural Hair Videos?
- How to form your own regimen
- Products that are great for all types of hair
- Healthy protective style ideas
- Growth tips
- Going natural as a future option
There are a ton of things you can learn about keeping your hair healthy and long, whether it is natural or relaxed. Pick any video, read any article, and you’ll be able to see for yourself.
The Big Myth About Being Relaxed
People think of chemically straightened hair and think that it can’t possibly grow healthy, long, and strong. And a lot of those ideas come from our own past struggles with relaxed hair. Thinning, breakage, lifelessness, dry scalp, etc are some of the things we commonly experienced.
However, this was most likely back when we had no clue what properly moisturizing and sealing was, and if we did, we probably used grease to do it! Or we had hot combs and flat irons upside our head more than we probably should have.
So the truth is, relaxed hair can be healthy if you keep up with the following:
- Moisturizing and sealing daily
- Regular trims
- Stretching time between relaxers
- Wrapping your hair at night
- Using protective styles
So What Is ‘Spot Relaxing’?
“Spot relaxing” is when your entire head of hair is natural but you decide to go over harder to manage areas like your edges or nape with a relaxer to smooth them out.
That right THERE is a big no-no. Spot relaxing may be a great help temporarily, making your edges slick a bit better and easier, but it can cause a lot of breakage and thinning.
When women transition from relaxed to natural, they have lines of demarcation–the very fragile area where your natural and relaxed hair meet. This point usually sees the most damage and breakage because of the two very different textures.
Now imagine having an area like that running across your edges and/or the nape of your neck? You’d experience devastating damage to your hair line if you didn’t pay extra attention to it for months on end.
Your best bet is to relax your whole head or remain/transition to natural all at once.
Important Tips To Keeping Your Hair Healthy
Protein Treatments– Strengthening your hair with a protein treatment like ApHogee products or a DIY protein mask like an eggs and honey mix, will help strengthen hair that is prone to breakage. It’ll also protect against future breakage and help hair grow in strong.
Added Moisture- Moisturizing and sealing daily is key to keeping our hair from becoming dry and brittle. Sometimes, however, we do need that added moisture so deep conditioning at the end of every week might do you some good if you have high porosity hair, or hair that gets really dry.
Trim!- Yes, cutting length off your hair sucks. You know what else really sucks? Your hair splitting from your ends to your scalp, thinning, breakage, and uneven hair. All of which will happen if you don’t get regular trims. Whenever you notice some extra frizz or splitting at the bottom, go get your ends cleaned up.
Stretching Relaxers- Give your hair some time to breathe, rest, and grow inbetween relaxers. Spending 8-9 weeks before getting your next relaxer will help it rest and grow tremendously. This is also a great period to get a long term protective style or start experimenting with wigs and different styles of extensions.
