Growing your hair can be kinda tricky.
Throughout my hair journey, I made some mistakes trying to achieve my hair goal. Not really knowing about my hair and I was trying different techniques, which some of them were not even for my hair type. During my tries and errors, I had few steps back because I did not take the time to listen to my hair.
It was a learning process and I want to share with you the mistakes I made to help you avoid the same mistake and to achieve your hair goal. Here some mistakes I learned throughout my journey:
1. Stylings and Over manipulating your hair
A much as those styles hair look beautiful some of them can be a steps back for your hair, especially every day styling and combing. I used to change and comb my hair every day and trying new style. All these manipulation was one of the reason why I experience so much breakage as well as tight hair styles. LISTEN TO ME..... If you need to take tylenol after styling your hair or you CANNOT sleep due to the pain, know it will definitely harm your hair and break them. Also know with a protective styling like braid, weave, wig, we style need to take care of our hair underneath. As the word say protective hair styling are meant to protect your hair not to break them or neglect them.
DON'T DO THAT !!
2. Trimming your end
Trimming was my biggest fear, I remember how I hated to trim my hair because I was scared that my hair would not grow back. But what I did not understand was holding on all these dead hair and slip ends was harming my hair and slowing my growth more than anything. Trimming our hair help us to keep our hair healthy and healthy hair promotes hair growth.
3. Be consistent and patience
Know hair does not grow over night and there is no products that will get your tailbone length over night. Hair growth is a process. You need to trust the process and be patient with your hair. Do not stress them out, your hair can feel it. I heard a lot of people tell me that be constant and patient, it very true. I always say find a hair schedule that works for you and stick with it, if its washing your hair every week or every two week do what work for you but stick with it. Give time to your hair to reach its healthiest state especially if you had damage hair or alopecia, your hair need time to retrieve from it and start adopting the new regimen. It's not a race its a journey. Take pictures to help you see the growth
4. Your Health
Our health affects our hair. The fastest growing cells in our body is the cell that reproduce within the hair follicle.When our bodies are under stress from nutritional deficiencies, thyroid conditions, illness, medications, hormonal shift or simply day-to-day life, energy is redirected from growing hair to reinforcing more critical bodily processes. Hair follicles are very sensitive to these changes and are programmed to respond by slowing down growth rate, producing thinner hair, less vibrant coloured fibres and shedding hair. Know poor quality diets will resume to poor quality hair. To ensure that you receive the complete vitamins, minerals and antioxidant that your body needs to produce good quality of hair, you will need to eat health fruits, leafy vegetables, lean meats, nuts, seeds, grains. Also giving your body the proper amount of hydration by drinking water regularly will not only improve the moisture content of your hair but also will improve the look and the feel of your hair and scalp. The recommended water intake per day is 2.7 liters for women and 3.7 liters for men.
5. Good hair routine
Having a good hair routine will help achieve your hair goal. Healthy hair start with a healthy scalp, as our hair grow from our scalp, we have to make sure that we keep our scalp clean by shampooing once or every 2 weeks. Shampoo your hair will help you to get rid off all the dirt, oils and product buildup. Using a hair mask or deep conditionner is very crucial for the healthy of your hair as its bring back the moisture to your hair. Your hair routine does not stop on your wash day. Be on the top of the game between your wash day by MOISTURIZING, MOISTURIZING AND MOISTURIZING your hair.
6. Protect your hair at night
Moisture retention is very important for your hair journey, and a way to retain that moisture is to sleep with a satin bonnet, scarf or pillow case. Sleeping with a cotton fabric will absorb all the moisture in your hair which will lead to dry hair as a result causing breakage. Satin fabric reduce the level of friction and preserve the retention. So not matter how tired you are grab your satin scarf, bonnet et pillow case.
7. Heat styling tools
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The overuse of heat styling tools can take a perfectly beautiful head of hair and completely destroy it in one bad drying, strengthening or pressing. Heat can be a serious problem for delicate textured hair fibres. Heat damages your hair by decreasing the moisture levels. Heat disturbs the moisture balance in the hair by by quickly evaporating much of the internal moisture that the hair cortex desperately needs. Heat appliances also affects proteins structure. Without a strong protein backbone and structure, the hair cannot retain its own natural moisture. Try to eliminate excessive use of heat appliance.
In order to reach the healthiest state of your hair, it is very important to be mindful of how and what you putting or using on your hair. Changing these habits will help you to grow your hair healthy. Your hair is a glorious crown, take time to know them.