In a previous blog post we discussed how Afro hair is so fragile by nature.
So if you are one of those people who take good care of your hair and even the act of laying your head on a pillowcase (not our Silk Sleep Companion of course!) causes your hair to break off...then this is a post just for you.
“Acquired Proximal Trichorrhexis Nodosa” or “APTN”- I know this sounds like an intergalactic star in another universe. To make things simple this is a disease that is associated with a family history of “hair that does not grow”.
This looks like even the act of gentle finger detangling causes hair breakage in unforgiving amounts.
APTN is commonly acquired from some form of physical or chemical trauma. It's important to understand that its onset can occur many years after the use of chemicals or heat devices for straightening the hair.
Chemical Trauma:
The continuous use and uninterrupted use of chemical relaxers that contain harmful chemicals weakens the hair shaft by causing loss of protein material and serious damage to the cuticle. Even a change in the choice of chemical relaxer may result in mixing of chemicals that are incompatible and lead to total breakage of the hair shaft.
Physical Trauma:
In other cases APTN can be caused by excessive combing or brushing of Afro hair with a very stiff brush and narrow tooth plastic combs.
APTN can be an early indicator of Alopecia (hair loss) so to save your hair, early diagnosis is imperative.
If this is you, then my recommendations are:
Do you suffer from breakage? Comment below your haircare issues and we will answer!
Never miss a blog post, sign up to our waiting list. Make sure you add us as an email contact to ensure you are up to date.
References:
Black women's hair: the main scalp dermatoses and aesthetic practices in women of African ethnicity
]]>Is your hair falling out? You’ll want to read this!
What to do when your hair line suddenly starts to recede…
Did you know that women can experience "male” pattern baldness”.
Women tend to see progressive thinning whereas men have much more dramatic loss of hair.
Let’s get into the root cause of male (+ female!) pattern baldness as it is definitely not gender specific.
It all starts with your hormones.
Hormones are chemical messengers that travel in your bloodstream to target cells to provide information.
In the case of pattern baldness, an enzyme called 5a reductase converts testosterone to its more potent form DHT.
DHT causes the hair follicles around the hairline and crown areas to shrink and eventually die.
Excess DHT can be caused by:
Is there any way to reverse this?
Early diagnosis and treatment is important because hair loss is much more easily reversible in the early stages. Left too late it may be harder to treat.
If you inhibit DHT you can however reverse it altogether…
This is one of the many many methods of actions Our Brand New Hair Growth Potion - Extra Strength works through. Our Hair Growth Potion - Extra Strength is our strongest formula, fuelled by Ayurvedic herbs and tackles all known causes of hair loss (we will dive into other causes in future weeks.)
One of the key ingredients of our Hair Growth Potion - Extra Strength oil is Amla:
I'm sure you have questions, comment below and we will answer!
Remember we don’t just sell you products, we teach you how to use them!
Yours truly,
JD xo
References
]]>Dry hair breaks. It’s as simple as that.
There’s no other way around it, if someone tells you otherwise it’s a lie!
But be very careful, how you tackle this problem depends entirely on your hair porosity.
Porosity is sort of like the personality of your hair. It determines how well your hair absorbs moisture and product. This is such an important factor when it comes to growing healthier, longer, stronger hair as without this knowledge you could be doing more harm than good your precious ‘Fro.
As mentioned in Episode 1, your cuticles (remember those overlapping scales over your hair shaft?) determine your porosity.
Depending on how “low” or “highly” raised your cuticles are that will dictate your “porosity”.
The Float Test
What It Means:
If the strand sinks quickly to the bottom – your hair has a high level of porosity.
If the strand sinks slowly to the bottom – your hair has a medium level of porosity.
If the strand floats – your hair has a low level of porosity.
LOPO hair is extremely resistant to accepting moisture. The hair cuticles are “low” and prevent moisture from entering therefore before we even get to what kind of products you should be using, we need to be strategic when applying these products to ensure it gets into the hair strand (and stays there!). Anything that raises that cuticle enables your hair to accept moisture!
Think of cuticles like the pores on your skin, they are most open with steam!
Techniques such as:
You also want to look for ingredients that are humectants. Humectants are a super ingredient - they literally grab water from the air and into your hair allowing you to retain moisture. Examples are Honey & Glycerin, both of which are in our Leave-in & Deep Conditioner.
HIPO hair has cuticles that are very highly raised and therefore easily broken. This hair type accepts moisture fine but as the cuticles are so raised this hair type looses it just as easily.
So you’re faced with a double conundrum, hair that is naturally more brittle and because of its nature does not retain moisture which makes it even more likely to break!
You will of course need to ensure your hair is moisturised by using a Deep Conditioner and Leave-In, but because of this hair type a little bit more love needs to be shown.
Techniques such as:
1. Protein treatments help to repair this broken hair shaft, allowing moisture to be maintained better. Our It’s important to still carry out your moisturising Deep Conditioning, and applying a Leave-in conditioner. Our Ultimate Strength Deep Conditioner is packed with silk amino acids that are small enough to penetrate the hair shaft and strengthen it.
2. Hot Oil Treatments - HiPo hair is "water loving" in nature making it prone to damage, but ideally hair should be "Oil loving", to combat this pre-shampoo or hot oil treatments can be utilised. Both Ominira's Hair Strengthening Oil & Extra Strength version are perfect for this
3. Strengthening Herbs - Amla, Aritha, Fenugreek, Neem, Shikakai (found in our Shampoo, Ultimate Strength Deep Conditioner & Extra Strength Hair Growth Potion. These are packed with nutrients and antioxidants that strengthen the hair.
4."Cationic" (Positively charged) ingredients - Attract to damaged parts of the hair and make it more manageable (Behentrimonium Methosulfate or Behentrimonium Chloride) found in all of our conditioners.
5. It’s important to still carry out your moisturising Deep Conditioning, and applying a Leave-in conditioner. Also LOPO hair still requires protein treatments but not as often as HIPO hair.
Finally both hair types need great oils to seal in the moisture to ensure it doesn’t go anywhere, (emollients do this) and also strengthen the strand. Only oils that can penetrate the hair strand (cortex) can do this. Oils such as Olive oil and Avocado oil are super oils as they both work as an emollient (seals the moisture in) and a strengthener (penetrates the hair strand). Our Hair Strengthening Oil does just this with added vitamin E which is an antioxidant that nourishes the hair and prevents hair loss.
So now you know and understand your porosity, next week we’ll look at how to create the Ultimate Hair Growth Routine for you!
I'm sure you have questions, comment below and we will answer!
Remember we don’t just sell you products, we teach you how to use them!
Yours truly,
JD xo
]]>We’ve all been there…We see an amazing braided hairstyle on Instagram and think “I need this!” *takes screenshot*
Only to find ourselves at the hair dressers who have somehow pulled our edges so tight to achieve this look, leaving us with a bald spot. This is scientifically defined as “Traction Alopecia”.
]]>We’ve all been there…We see an amazing braided hairstyle on Instagram and think “I need this!” *takes screenshot*
Only to find ourselves at the hair dressers who have somehow pulled our edges so tight to achieve this look, leaving us with a bald spot. This is scientifically defined as “Traction Alopecia”. [1]
Remember how we covered why afro hair is so fragile in Episode 1? Well, it’s no surprise that excessive, repeated pulling and tugging of this oh-so fragile hair texture can only lead to one thing - balding! It's also not only limited to tight hairstyles but, excessively "laying of edgesl" can have the same effect!
If this is you, early diagnosis and treatment is important because hair loss is much more easily reversible in the early stages. Left too late, we may need other interventions which we will discuss in a future post.
So if you find yourself in this situation what do you do?
Our Best Selling Hair Growth Potion is packed with a very potent level of Peppermint Essential Oil which contains organic compounds called “Terpenes”. These terpenes are one of the very few compounds that are actually able to penetrate the hair follicle to stimulate it as well as blood flow to the scalp to enable you to grow back any damage sooner rather than later.
Just look at some of our customer’s results:
I'm sure you have questions. Comment below and we will answer!
Remember we don’t just sell you product, we teach you how to use them!
Never miss a blog post, sign up to our waiting list. Make sure you add us as an email contact to ensure you are up to date.
References [1] - Hair and scalp disorders in women of African descent: an overview
]]>Did you know that poor detangling is one of THE leading causes of breakage?
No matter what hair growth products you use (yes even our Best Selling Hair Growth Potion!) without a good detangling routine your hair will never grow to that waistlength goal or more.
This is something alot of haircare business may never address and just sell you product; which is like trying to put a bandage on an internal bleeding wound. It just won’t work. We need to address the root cause to actually see results
Contrary to popular belief your hair is growing every single second of the day, if you are not seeing results it is because it is simply because it is breaking off.
]]>Did you know that poor detangling is one of THE leading causes of breakage?
No matter what hair growth products you use (yes even our Best Selling Hair Growth Potion!) without a good detangling routine your hair will never grow to that waistlength goal or more.
This is something alot of haircare business may never address and just sell you product; which is like trying to put a bandage on an internal bleeding wound. It just won’t work. We need to address the root cause to actually see results
Contrary to popular belief your hair is growing every single second of the day, if you are not seeing results it is simply because it is breaking off.
Afro hair is the most fragile hair texture in the world, we covered this in our previous episode here.
But it doesn’t just stop there, not only is our hair type incredibly fragile, it is also more prone to knots due to the kinks, coils and curls our hair type forms. This makes it incredibly difficult to comb and predisposes it to breakage when compared to our Caucasian and Asian counterparts. [1]
So it is no surprise that because of this fragile nature, extra care must be taken when handling our precious strands. Failure to do this will result in the challenges we often see including “thinning ends” and hair “not growing past a certain point”.
So what is breakage?
Breakage is not normal. Shed hair can be normal so long as it is not excessive (we will tackle this in a future post). You can distinguish between broken hair and shed hair when you cannot see the hair root (looks like a white bulb at the top of the hair shaft) because the hair has broken mid way.
Can you see any of the below ends in your hair?
So how do we avoid this and get the hair growth results we all want to see?
The Solution: A great detangling routine that takes into consideration the fragile nature of our hair! Here’s one we made already 😊, see below:
🌟Bonus Tip - When taking down protective styles like braids/twists there will be alot of build up, so gently finger detangle each and every braided/twisted section BEFORE you wet your hair. If you apply water on hair like this it will matte up and cause further breakage.
There are many other reasons for hair loss and breakage which we will cover over the next series of posts, make sure you sign up to our waiting list and add us as a contact so you never miss an update.
Try this in your next wash day and let us know how much less hair broke off.
I'm sure you have questions. Comment below and we will answer!
Remember we don’t just sell you product, we teach you how to use them!
]]>"I've been natural for years and my hair has been the same length!"
“My hair is always breaking off at the ends!”
“My hair just won’t grow no matter what I do!”
Have you ever said any of these before? You are definitely not the only one.
]]>Breakage is a cycle that if not dealt with, will never allow you to see any results.
"I've been natural for years and my hair has been the same length!"
“My hair is always breaking off at the ends!”
“My hair just won’t grow no matter what I do!”
Have you ever said any of these before? You are definitely not the only one.
Breakage is a cycle that if not dealt with, will never allow you to see any results.
So let’s tackle the root cause! Why is it then that afro-textured hair suffers the most breakage when compared to other textures?
The hair cuticle can be described as overlapping scales of keratinocytes (Keratin!) think of it like tiles on a roof which are mainly made from proteins and fats. [1]
Afro textured hair has a thinner cuticle than others; Asians tends to have the thickest cuticles, Caucasians have slightly thinner and Africans have the thinnest.
It is then not a surprise that our texture of hair does not typically achieve long length and breaks very easily.
It is this hair cuticle that is one of the contributing factors to the fragile nature of Afro hair. Even within Afro-textured hair types, not all cuticles are made the same and this is where porosity comes in (we will tackle this later!).
Hair can “break” off for many reasons including:
But it's not all bad news, there are ways of preventing and avoiding these causes.Let’s tackle these causes one by one to cover all bases and enable you to see results!
We will tackle each reason per email communication/blog post so stay tuned for the rest.
Do you suffer from breakage? Comment below your haircare issues and we will answer!
Never miss a blog post, sign up to our waiting list. Make sure you add us as an email contact to ensure you are up to date.
References
]]>Yes, we sell product.
But do you know what the problem is?
Products do not grow your hair!
I know you’re probably thinking erm excuse me why did you sell this to me then!?? 😤
Yes our products are amazing, but the secret to hair growth is understanding that how you use products is equally, if not more important!
Method > Product
By being a part of this community we aim to equip you with the right knowledge and tools (product) to grow your natural hair to the best of your ability!
This is why we are starting a hair growth challenge which will allow you to do just that.
So how does this challenge work?
This is Day 1, so take a picture of your starting point. We will do the work for you by sending you weekly blog posts with the Ultimate Methods for growing out healthy long natural hair!
To make sure you do not miss out sign up to the waitlist and mark the email as important (gmail) and add of course add us as a contact.
Remember we don’t just sell you product, we teach you how to use them!
Got questions?
Comment below and we will answer!
]]>