Hey Guys!
I wanted to touch on this subject, being a natural with low porosity hair, I wanted you to have a understanding of low porosity hair and learning how to deal with your hair. So you may find that you have to inject moisture into your hair more often, than someone with high porosity hair, but that's OK, because it is something that we all need to do and learn to love and embrace what we have.
Low porosity hair should not be a choir or a hard task when handling your hair, it just needs gentle handling and personal tender loving care. Low porosity hair can feel for most of us dry, wiry, brittle but it just simply means that it is lacking hydration and flexibility. Low porosity hair needs a lot more care at the ends also.
To infuse hydration into low porosity hair, it always starts with water! Moisture is water and drinking plenty of water helps too. This is what our hair needs, you see, a well hydrated hair provides elasticity, flexibility and we get less frizz.
Low porosity hair is more resistant to losing moisture from the hair, and you will find it hard to keep moisture into your hair, but there are ways in getting moisture into your hair and keeping it in for as long as possible.
I have complied some useful tips for you, and I do hope that this helps you to understand how to input moisture into your hair.
Steam
I always use the steamer in my hair on a weekly basis, especially when deep conditioning or using protein into my hair or hot oil treatment. I sit under the dryer for 15-20 minutes, but of course you can sit under there for longer, it is up to you. If a steamer is something that you do not own, you can How just pop a wet towel in the microwave for a minute, squeeze the excess water out,and wrap the towel over your plastic cap and sit under a hooded dryer. This process will help to open your cuticles, allowing moisture to enter into your strands.
Remember heat is your friend here, you need to make sure you keep a great relationship with heat, especially for us that has low porosity hair. There are several ways to steam your hair, you can use the Q-Redew hand held hair steamer (if you are lucky to get hold of one living in the UK), of course your free standing hair steamer that you can purchase on Amazon or buy from your local hair shop, a free way to steaming your hair is in the shower.
Washing your hair
Shampooing is something that most of us like to do on a monthly basis, but it is important to conduct this into your routine as this will get rid of all the dirt in your hair and scalp. We aim to have a healthy clean scalp and help with hair growth. You can use whatever you want but make sure it is a sulfate free shampoo, many like to use Bentonite Clay, but use whatever you desire, just make sure you keep your scalp free from any buildup, as you do not want any products to sit even more on your hair, not a nice thing to see in someone's hair.
Products
With low porosity hair it is best to use lighter products such as Argan oil and Grapeseed oil which are lighter oils to use in your hair, use lighter hair cremes such as Creme Brulle from Curls and so on. This will help prevent product build up and will not weigh your hair down. Product build up makes it difficult for moisture to enter into the hair, so try to avoid this the best way you can.
Heat
Like I mentioned before about heat, most naturals prefer to heat up their deep conditioners, then apply this to their hair, the same goes for oils, I find it better to heat up my oils, then message this onto my scalp, the heat will open up your cuticles and allow products to be infused into your hair. Gentle heat helps to increase porosity slightly, so that the oils can move around and under the cuticles more readily!
When rinsing your hair, it is better to use warm water rather than cold, as you want your cuticles to remain open, so you can apply products to your damp, not wet hair and in turn allow moisture to remain in your hair by conducting the LOC or the LCO method.
Oil Pre-Shampoo
This method is great if you have frizzy and tangled hair or hair that needs weight or ends of the hair needs treating, this oil pre-wash method can help. Oil pre-wash adds flexibility, softness and weight to your hair, and this is what you want to achieve from this process, a well moisturized hair is hair that has both flexibility and softness and this method will help to aid that into your hair.
Penetrating oils provides a great waterproof covering for the inner part of our hair, we want to add that covering to keep in hairs proteins and moisture that has been added to our hair. The best penetrating oils are Coconut oil, Sunflower oil, Olive oil, Avocado oil. You apply oils onto dry hair, and allow the oil to penetrate throughout the hair, i would suggest leaving oils in for 4-8 hours before washing it out.
Film Forming Humectants
You need to look out for ingredients that has firm forming humectants, these are ingredients that has excellent moisturizing elements for your hair. These are great for those that has products sitting on top of their hair, or products that weighs their hair down, these babies will help you a lot.
What is "Film Forming Humectants?
This method forms a film over your hair that helps the hair to resist dehydration, when humectants form a film the water is slowed down by needing to pass through the film, therefore water loss from your hair to the air around is slowed. Brilliant isn't it!!
The film forming humectants can be found from plant gels that is extracted from plant tissues and they are Flax Seed Gel, Okra Gel, Aloe Vera, hydroxyethylcellulose, pectin, xanthan gum, guar gum, marsh mallow root, slippery elm, carrageenan, nettle leaf tea, panthenol. This is best used in conditioners, leave-in conditioners, hair styling products, shampoos.
I hope this has help you and all the best in your natural hair journey? What method do you use for your low porosity hair? What products do you use?
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