Most people get braids, or wigs in to let their hair rest and grow for a few weeks. However, a lot of people don't maintain their hair well in those protective styles. This post will feature 7 reasons why those protective styles aren't really helping your hair, and how you can fix it.
1. Your Braids Are Too Tight on Your Edges
When going to your hair stylist I know it can be nerve wrecking to let them know that they're braiding your hair too tight, but your silence is causing your hair to break.
Tight braids can cause your hair to fall out as well as give you a big headache. You're getting your hair in a protective style to help not harm your hair, so you should definitely be vocal about your hair needs.
I used to be too shy to tell my hair stylist that her braiding was too tight, and when I did she used to say she'll ease up but it would still be too tight. Letting her know to ease up is crucial in your hair's development, and will ensure that your hair will actually grow instead of break.
2. You aren't moisturizing your hair correctly
It's very easy to get your hair into a protective style and just forget about it. While it is true that protective styles are put in so that you can give your hair a break. Leaving it alone for too long can give your hair a lot of damage.
To moisturize my hair while it's in a protective style, I take the Cantu moisturizing conditioner, put about a quarter in the spray bottle, fill it up halfway with water, then spray some around my hair.
I don't put too much, but just enough to moisturize my hair until the next time. Doing this can prevent a lot of breakage when I take my hair out of the protective style.
3. You are manipulating your hair too much
Some people tend to forget that their real hair is under their protective styles so they start to manipulate their hair too much. This can be tying your hair too tight, doing your edges too often, and touching your hair too often.
Doing this defeats the purpose of having a protective style because your hair is meant to be on break. Avoid tying your hair too tight, and keep it in low manipulation styles to avoid breakage.
4. You're not correctly prepping your hair
All too often people just wash, condition, then leave their hair to their stylist. Unless your stylist is properly moisturizing your hair, and properly applying heat to your hair, you can leave the chair with more damage than you came in with.
You can properly prep your hair by:
~ Washing, and conditioning with moisturizing products.
~Detangling your hair and getting rid of all knots
~ Sectioning your hair to blow dry
~ Blow drying your hair from the bottom to the top
For a video on how to properly blow dry your hair to avoid heat damage and breakage you can watch this video by Zig Beswick.
5. You're not correctly taking down your protective style
After weeks of having your hair in a protective style, you just want to take it down as fast as possible to see your growth. I know I feel the same way, but doing this can cause your hair to break.
When I'm taking down my hair, I get a small bottle of oil and start taking each braid down one by one. There are usually knots of tangled hair at the top of my braid, so the oil is used to soften those parts and detangle my roots without any breakage.
This ensures that I get what I paid for, a protective style that allows me to retain length a
and grow my hair. The take-down process can be what makes or breaks your hair. That's why it's important to be very careful with this process.
I use the wild growth oil because it softens my hair, while also serving as a prepoo for hair. Here is a video that shows you how you can take down your protective style to retain your hair length and avoid breakage.
- A prepoo is a pre-shampoo. You can do this to get optimal moisture in your hair before you use shampoo to clean your hair.
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