Dry Hair 101 – Everything You Need To Know About Combating Dry Hair

Contents

• Understand How Moisture Works
• Seal In The Moisture
• Replenish The Moisture As Needed
• Make A Refresher spritz
• Do The Green House Effect (GHE)
• Make An Ayurvedic Hair Mask
• Bonus: Hydration Recipe

As pleased as some of you may be with your progress so far, I can bet you still want to know what you can do about the chronic dryness you seem to have. You try the products, you do the layering, but regardless of what you try, you don’t get the lasting results you crave. Am I right?

Years ago, I was almost ready to revert to relaxers until I did a bit of research and realized that I wasn’t the only one who was having this issue and set out to find a solution.

No matter what your race or hair pattern is, if you have curly hair, it can be prone to dryness. Thankfully, I found that there are steps that you can take to combat the dryness, and get you between wash days without your hair looking dull and dry. All it takes is a bit of tweaking to your normal routine.

Understand How Moisture Works

Like I mentioned above, as soon as I would get done washing my hair – hair still soaked with water – it would quickly absorb the water and still look dry.

Washing your hair is important, but our hair naturally trades (or evaporates off) water into the air to keep a balance of wet and dry. Because of the evaporation that takes place while our hair is drying, our hair goes from soft, plump and supple to dry and crunchy.

When you wash your hair, water penetrates the hair shaft, going deep into the hair cuticle. With washing comes a sort of hair strand “expansion.” this “expansion” helps to keep your hair plump and supple.

Understanding exactly how water works on your hair is easier when comparing it to how it works on other parts of your body.

Think back to a moment when you had dry skin; after swimming in a chlorinated pool or a salty ocean on a hot day, for example.

Right after you get out of the water, your skin is fine, but as you sit out in the sun and the water evaporates you’re left with tight, dry skin.

When it’s in need of water, skin is dry and flaky or what we often call “ashy”, but when it’s introduced to water it’s soft and plump….. So back to getting out of the shower, if all you are doing is putting water on your hair, the water will dry up and absorb into your hair, and in turn your hair will become frizzy and puffy if you are not doing anything to seal in the moisture, which leads me to the second point …

Seal In The Moisture

When I think back to the times when my hair was relaxed, I notice that my hair would seemingly always get very oily quickly after a fresh blowout.

This is because our bodies naturally create oils* which coat the hair strand; however, with curly or kinky* hair, the oil has a difficult time rolling down the hair shaft and typically stays put at the root. This is unlike straight hair, where the oils can easily slide down the hair shaft.

Washing your hair with a moisturizing shampoo and conditioner is the first step before sealing. I like to use Shea Moisture’s Raw Shea butter shampoo and conditioner. It leaves my hair feeling extremely moisturized, and soft. So, after I get done washing and conditioning with those products, I seal in that moisture.

I like to seal with coconut oil* because it smells really yummy, and gets the job done. My go-to is Trader Joe’s coconut oil*, because it’s inexpensive, and lasts me a long time. Sealing is important because the oils* create a barrier around the hair cuticle by preventing the water from evaporating from your hair strand.

You can also look more into sealing techniques like the LOC or LCO method.