All That is Wrong With my Hair: Where the Hell is my Length?

Lately, I've been taking a good look at my hair. Ever since the beginning of my hair journey 4 months ago, I've been washing and deep conditioning my hair weekly, moisturizing and sealing almost daily, protective styling (bunning), alternating moisture and protein and staying away from heat. So where the hell is my length? My progress? Some of you might think that 4 months is not long enough too see any real progress and that I'm being impatient. But I really don't think so. When I look at the amount of new growth I've gained in the past 12 weeks, I realize that my hair grows pretty fast. So why aren't I retaining  length? Well, I  examined my hair and here are some of the issues I believe I need to correct in order to obtain healthy relaxed hair and retain my length.  

Dryness. That has always been the main issue. Regardless of how much moisture I infuse into my strands, my hair just won't stay moisturized. It's unbelievable. No matter how soft my hair feels after a good deep conditioning session, it will go right back to being dry in the next two days, if not earlier. Sometimes I moisturize and seal twice a day and I still end up with dry hair the morning after.  This issue has lead me to conduct a few tests on my hair and the jury has reached a verdict: my hair is highly porous. 

Breakage. As you know, with dryness comes brittleness which results in breakage. My has been doing a lot of that lately. I swear, it just snaps whenever I touch it or pull it just a teeny bit. Especially my ends.

Split ends. Trichoptilosis. Whatever you call it, no one likes them. Especially me. They, however, seem to be very fond of me. It doesn't matter how often I trim them. They just keep coming back. I even get the ones that are way up on the hair shaft. As a result of this unrequited one-sided love,  my ends are breaking-off, thin, see-through and aren't retaining length.

Shedding. My shedding has been out of control lately. I've never been one to lose more than 10-20 hairs a day. I know studies say that the amount of hair we shed every day is between 100 and 150 strands, but not my hair. I just don't shed that much. I detangle once a week on wash days and even then, I have very few hairs on my comb. However, these past few days, I've noticed a lot of long strands with the white bulb still attached to it coming off. Maybe I'm a little paranoid. But I still plan on doing that garlic mask I bought the other day.

Sore, dry, itchy scalp. I don't know what's up with my scalp lately. It's always sore and itchy. I'm unusually tender-headed. I'm always careful  of not putting anything directly on my scalp for fear of blocking my pores and preventing hair growth. But maybe that's the problem. Maybe I neglected my scalp.

I should probably take some of the blame: I have been known to sometimes sleep without a scarf or a bonnet, although I haven't done that in awhile and I haven't always been very diligent in moisturizing and sealing my ends everyday (I would sometimes do it every 2 days). Not to mention that I have a severe case of hand-in-hair disease. I know, shame on me.

But really it all comes back to one thing: porosity. Hair that is reasonably porous will receive and retain moisture, thus preventing the dryness, brittleness and breakage I am currently experiencing.

Stay tuned because I'll be writing a couple of posts in the coming weeks to tell you guys how I plan on tackling these issues and also to keep myself in check.

So what are some of the issues you ladies are battling on your hair journey?

Hair Regimen Additions for 2012

Henna powder

As a newbie, it's really hard not to jump on every bandwagon. You see these ladies with gorgeous hair and you think ''Oh I'm gonna do whatever she does so my hair can look like hers!'' So you want to try it all : co-washing, pre-pooing, hot oil treatments, clear rinses, GHE, etc. But I realized pretty fast that it would get crazy if I tried to do it all at once so I decided to master the basics first and I think that was a wise choice. I started my hair journey on October 11, 2011 so  I've only been at this for a few months.

Here is what I've been doing religiously: washing and deep conditioning weekly, protein treatments, moisturizing and sealing, sleeping with a satin bonnet and keeping my ends away from my shoulders. Now that I feel like I know what I'm doing, here are a few things I would really like to incorporate into my regimen this year.

Texlaxing: Ever since I started my hair journey I realize just how thin my hair is. And I don't like it. So I've decided to transition to texlaxed hair and stop being relaxed bone straight. Texlaxing is basically  under-processing your hair on purpose by either leaving the relaxer on for a shorter period of time or diluting it with some ingredients like oils or conditioner. It leaves your hair healthier and thicker then if it were bone straight. My hair is currently shoulder length so I figured now is the right time to do it. The process of dealing with three textures (natural, texlaxed and relaxed) is only going to get more tedious as my hair gets longer.  I plan on adding some olive oil to my relaxer to achieve my wavy texlaxed look. For more information on texlaxing, click here and here.

The Baggy Method: Baggying your ends is basically putting some moisturizer or oil on your ends and wrapping it with either saran wrap, a shower cap or a grocery bag. By doing this you are locking in moisture on your ends and allowing yourself to retain more length by reducing dryness induced breakage.

Protective styling: Now don't get me wrong. I do protective style my hair: I mainly bun. Which is pretty boring, I know. But for some reason, I just don't feel like half-wigs, braid-outs, twist-outs and Bantu Knot-outs would look pretty on me. Specially because my hair is not long. I guess I'm just gonna have to find out.

Henna: Henna is plant that grows on dry climates. Some of the benefits of using henna on your hair include smoother, stronger and shinier hair. Also, henna contains an all-natural dye that can be used to color hair in a red-brownish taint without any damage to relaxed or natural hair because it doesn't contain any chemicals. I plan to do it in the summer so the highlights can show up better in the sun.

Black Tea Rinses:  Black Tea Rinses are great for stopping shedding, stimulating growth and strengthening the hair. It can also darken the hair over time.

Regular Hot Oil Treatments & Pre-pooing: My hair is as dry as as it gets. I could pour an entire bottle of moisturizer or oil on my hair and within the next hour my hair would have soaked it all up. And although I understand the argument for sulfate-free shampoos I just haven't found any that work for me. Right now I'm using Joico Moisture Recovery, which does have sulfates in it and I absolutely love it. But I feel like pre-pooing on a regular basis with conditioner or oil could only give me an extra boost of moisture and softness.

Vitamin Supplements: To be honest I probably don't eat as healthy as I should so my hair is probably not getting all the nutrients it needs. Supplements are a great way to make sure my body and hair are getting all they need in order to maximize growth.

What are some of the things you ladies want to try?