Do You Have Hand In Hair Syndrome? Here’s What To Do About it

3. The oil from your hands are touching everything else: your face, your clothes, your drink, your kids. This is so important to remember because when you touch your hair constantly, everything else around you can get infected as well. Pimples on your face, break outs, and greasy stains on your Mocha Latte are not effects you want to deal with.

Black hair is already fragile and vulnerable to the weather, your clothes, and other accessories. When you touch your hair constantly, your tresses will become weaker and break off as well.

HIHS is what we call the silent killer, which slowly damages the health and thickness of your hair strands which can be very detrimental to retaining length.

7 ways to stop HIHS

If you are truly serious about getting rid of HIHS, there are many things that you can do until you have really eliminated the need to play in your hair. The key is to be proactive and not to do mindless tasks :

1. Preoccupy your hands by cooking, drawing, typing that paper due in an hour, or do some cleaning.

2. Do some full body tasks: Exercise, shop, visit a friend, go to a music show, go dancing, or babysit your niece and nephew.

3. Try guilt tripping yourself: Remind yourself of your hair goals or look at past pictures of your journey.

4. Know your triggers: Are you bored? Are you stressed? Are you nervous? Are you depressed? Surfing the Internet? Watching TV?

5. Try protective styling: 2 strand twists, Senegalese twists, box braids, sew-in, crochet braids, or buns.

6. Give yourself a challenge: If you catch yourself playing in you hair, then do…50 sit ups or 20 jumping jacks, something you don’t enjoy.

7. Do active touching: massage your scalp with oil, re-moisturize and seal your hair, or refresh you hair with a moisturizing spritz.

Now some of you might find my suggestions a tad bit ridiculous because maybe it isn’t that serious for you, but I am sure there is someone out there that needs to find a way to break this habit and these suggestions can really help them. So before you knock it try a few of these tasks and see which one cures you from HIHS.

On the flip side of the coin we totally get it, coils and curls are foreign to some of us especially when are curls are just starting to grow in. Our hair often feels so soft and springy and we just cannot help ourselves.

The point is just give yourself some time to ease away from the syndrome, do it in moderation so that you can enjoy your hair but not cause any breakage of hindrances to retaining length.

Do you have HIHS?