Back in the day I used to be a stickler for schedules, I must do this treatment at this time of the month every month or else!
Until one day I asked the question, or else what? Am I doing this for the sake of sticking to a schedule or am I really learning about what my hair needs and doing what it takes to help it at the time that it needs it?
New naturals will often get confused about when to do what because of the amount of information being thrown at them at any one time.
While this is new information too, I really want to break it down from the perspective of focusing on your own hair and what it is doing rather than what you should be doing according to what so and so said.
How do you know that it is time to do an intense protein treatment?
1. Your hair is mushy and lifeless
Your hair strands should have a presence about them, they should appear shiny and strong when they are in a healthy state.
The curls should clump and have some bounce to them rather than lifeless with no curl pattern. Additionally hair strands should have a reasonable amount of elasticity which means an individual strand can stretch but not forever like an elastic band. If your hair is too elastic it is time to do an intense protein treatment to get the hair back in balance.
2. Breaking and clearly damaged hair
Breaking hair is one of the number one tell-tale signs you need a protein treatment and probably a trim if you have accompanying split ends.
Breakage happens when the surface area of the hair strand is eroded to the point of it not being able to hang on to parts of itself.
When that happens you need to add more surface area to the strand which is basically what a protein treatment does. Protein repairs the strand by patching up the strand keeping it strong.
Not that if your hair is dry, doing an intense protein treatment will ensure that your hair retains moisture better than it has before the treatment. Protein itself does dry out the hair sometimes so when you do an intense protein treatment like the Aphogee 2 step protein treatment, always follow up with a moisturizing deep condition.
When was the last time you did a protein treatment?
