Friday, May 20, 2016

Analysing & Eliminating Causes of Breakage

 
This post is focused on how to combat breakage. One important thing for you to note is the difference between breakage and shedding. Shedding is increased during the spring and summer months. Shed hair has a white bulb and hair caused by breakage does not. Know the difference before you freak out. If your hair is just experiencing an increase in shedding, you can take garlic pills or do tea rinses (brew tea, let it sit, and then use it to rinse your hair with) to combat the excess shedding. However, if you are experiencing breakage (short strands, no white bulbs at the end of the hair), you must first determine its root cause(s).  
  There may be more than one root cause of your breakage. On a piece of paper, jot down reasons why you could be experiencing breakage (as pictured). Have you been lax in your hair care routine--are you deep conditioning (DC) weekly? Have you been keeping up with your protein treatments (PT)? When was the last time you dusted or trimmed your ends? Do you wear tight braids or buns? Do you rotate the position of your buns and ponytails to minimize breakage from pulling your hair in the same spot continuously? Have you been keeping up with moisturizing and sealing your hair (to combat dryness, many naturalistas use a cream or liquid leave-in to moisturize their hair. Then they "seal" in the moisture with a non-penetrating oil such as grapeseed oil). Have you been abusing heat? Have you forgotten your silk cap or pillowcase? Have you ripped at your hair with your fingers when you see single strand knots (ssk) or splits instead of using scissors (I am continuously guilty of this :( I try to keep hair scissors on me as much as possible for when I see ssk or split ends and am tempted to use my fingers to deal with it).  
  The picture above is what I wrote down after I recently experienced hair breakage. I first wrote down what I was guilty of doing or not doing (for example, I was cowashing my hair but forgot to shampoo it sometimes as well). Then I drew an arrow and wrote what I could improve on. For example, I was not being consistent with my deep conditioning treatments. Therefore, I wrote to make sure to religiously deep condition once a week. 
There will be more posts on hair breakage in the future but this post is basically just how you can quickly determine how you may be the cause of your hair breakage and what you can do to combat the breakage. 

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