Part 9: Cleansing your natural hair

I hope you found my prepooing post informative. If you haven’t checked it out yet, please click here and have a read. In this post, we’ll be focusing on cleansing your natural hair.

When we think about cleansing our hair, we immediately think about shampoo. While the traditional product to use for cleansing your hair is shampoo, there are also other methods/products we can use to achieve the same results which is, clean hair.

For the last 9 years, I used store bought shampoos, homemade cleansers as well as conditioner to cleanse my hair. I’ve learned that shampoos have a very drying effect on my hair and using conditioner to wash my hair with, leaves it super moisturized.

If you’re a bit confused about what I just told you, or you think that I’m probably crazy, let me explain.

Why do we clean our hair?
 To get rid of product build up
 To wash away any dirt that might have gotten stuck on your hair
 To maintain the health of our hair
 To clean our scalp

I have a few friends with silky straight hair and all of them complains about the same thing. Their hair turns super greasy after only one day of washing it. They could never find a solution to this problem but recently I read something which make total sense.

Our hair secretes its own natural oils, right? This oils travels down the hair strands to feed the hair. When your hair is straight (like my straight haired friends), the oils find it easier to flow down the hair. With the curlier, coilier and kinkier textures, the oils have to go through an obstacle course to get to the ends which is probably why we hardly hear of our non-straight haired counterparts complain about oily hair. This can also explain why we (the kinkier, coilier, curlier girls), suffer from dry hair because the natural oils never reach the ends.

So, the goal of shampoo is to lift dirt from the cuticle so that moisture can penetrate the hair cuticle and we can then manually feed it with all the good stuff.

Traditional shampoos

Sulfate free shampoos

These shampoos can be applied to your scalp only, working your way down to the ends.

My recommendations

• My Natural Hair Hydrating Shampoo
• Tresemme Botanique Shampoo

Diy natural products

Diy natural products is almost always readily available in your own kitchen
It’s usually cheap and affordable with no added ingredients that might harm your hair.

My recommendations

Bicarbonate of Soda and water

Clarifies and cleanses your hair and scalp.

Apple Cider Vinegar
It gets rid of product build up

Co-washes

A co-wash can be a conditioner that you use as a shampoo or ones that are specifically made for cleansing without it being harsh on your scalp. This is a good way to protect your hair from loosing moisture. These days co-washes are readily available at retailers.

My recommendations

Dark & Lovely 3 in 1 Cleansing conditioner

Carols’s Daughter Hair Milk Cleansing Conditioner

Aunt Jackies Flaxseed Purify Me Moisturusing Co-Wash Cleanser

Tresseme Botanicals Conditioner

TIP

If your hair tends to be on the drier side, try co-washing it instead of using a regular sulfate free shampoo. If you feel that your hair needs a good clean, regular shampoo should do the trick.

How do you cleanse your hair? Let me know in the comment section below.

Till later.