Beginners guide to: ‘A holistic healthy hair care regime and lifestyle’
What does a holistic approach to healthy hair care look like?
- A good nutritional diet, foods consisting of protein and essential foods, with vitamins and minerals that the body needs to help your hair grow and keep it strong and healthy.
- Positive mental and emotional well-being for a balance of happiness, laughter, and positive self-esteem. This will ensure you feel motivated to care for your body and hair, as stress also impacts healthy hair growth.
- Spiritual well-being: A readiness for enhanced spiritual well-being is defined as an “ability to experience and integrate meaning and purpose in life through a person’s connection with ‘self,’ others, art, music, literature, nature, or a power greater than oneself. This supports a positive sense of ‘self’ to promote self-confidence, self-love and self-belief.
Why does Afro-textured hair need regular cleansing and conditioning? And why do we need to ensure our hair is topped up with additional moisture products for it to grow long, be strong and prevent it from breaking off?
Your scalp is the birthplace of your hair and needs to be kept clean and healthy from dirt and build-up of products so hair can come through in the best of health. Like our face, it needs regular cleansing, not every day, but once a week, or 2 weekly with a healthy shampoo is required.
Once your hair grows from your scalp, it is essentially dead. This means that it needs to be maintained and cared for by adopting a healthy hair and consistent regime for your hair fibers to withstand the wear and tear of styling and handling to remain strong and healthy as it continues to grow.
- A weekly or two weekly regime consisting of: Wash, moisture conditioner (leave in for 30 min), deep conditioning is a good start.
Afro-hair is very curly, which means that the natural oils from our scalp is unable to lubricate the hair by traveling down the hair fiber. This is why your hair feels dry and you need to use products and adopt a healthy hair care regime so it has a sufficient level of daily moisture to prevent it from becoming dry and brittle, which results in the hair breaking off at the ends.
- This is why it appears as if Afro-textured hair is not growing. Your hair is growing an average of ½ inch per month, but without a sufficient level of moisture and protein balance, the hair is unable to maintain and keep the growth.
- So essentially, keeping your hair with a good level of moisture and hydration will result in longer and healthier hair. This is the same for relaxed hair and locs.
- De-tangle your hair with your hands or a wide tooth comb to prevent pulling through the tangles and breaking the hair and be very gentle with the ends of your hair
