Taking care of your natural hair

Hey you beautiful sistahs! Probably many of you have experienced that dry ‘scrunchy’ feeling in your natural hair, every now and then. Your hair feels dry to the touch and just looks so lifeless – no shine, no sheen or even moisture.

Well, you are not alone. This is one of the main issues for someone trying to maintain their natural hair. That brings us to the part of how to take care of your hair so that it’s manageable, feels soft and most importantly its healthy!

One main thing our hair craves for is moisture, and lots of it. With the right amount of moisture our hair comes to life and all those tight curls suddenly loosen up. There are many different types of moisturizers that are good for our hair, but the main one is nothing more than just plain H2O – water!

Yip, it’s that easy. We suggest having a spritz bottle filled with water and to ‘spray’ your hair once or twice a week (just spray little so that you hair is not drenching wet). You can find all different types of spritz bottles from Dischem. Some people even add a little bit of glycerine and/or coconut oil to the water to make a mixture. Remember how we all grew up with ‘glycerine’ being applied to our hair? Well, it seems our mothers were on the right track

Glycerine is a known humectant, which means it serves to draw moisture from the air into your hair. Oils are also good for moisture, but only those oils that our scalp and hair can absorb. The oils to best avoid are PETROLATUM and MINERAL OIL. If you see those two on the list of ingredients…ruuun! These are found in a lot of hair moisturisers meant for black hair. In fact, what these two oils end up doing is clogging up the pores in our scalp and coating our hair so that it’s not easy for moisture to penetrate to the hair shaft. Instead all that will happen is that our hair will look oily and shiny, but it will still feel very dry. However, the ‘good oils’ to look out for are the following: Olive oil, Coconut oil, Jojoba oil and Carrot oil. These oils can be found at your local stores, like Clicks or even at your local supermarket & hair product shops like RAF and Charlie Parker. Many of the Organic Root Stimulator (ORS) products contain a lot of these ‘good oils’. But a word of caution, everyone has different hair textures and what works for someone might not work for the next person. We want to encourage that you try out the different products, but stick to what works for YOUR hair.

Hair treatments like ORS’ Hair Mayonnaise are also good for conditioning your hair. But hair conditioning treatments are best done only once a week or once every two weeks depending on your hair type. Washing your hair too often can also dry it out!

NB: Don’t be lazy/ discouraged to read that list of ingredients at the shop before purchasing your products. Your hair will thank you for that….And last and most important, remember to drink lots of water!