Maintaining Your Natural Hair Growth

How To Maintain Your Natural Hair Growth

Ok so if you are reading this it means that you are interested in finding out how to maintain your natural hair growth.

It’s a topic many people struggle with a lot. “why isn’t my hair growing?”, “how do I get my hair to grow faster?”.

These are common questions that everyone has asked at some point in their natural hair journey.

The truth be told there is no magic scientific remedy behind it.

Everyone’s hair grows but what you are NOT seeing is the retention of your natural hair growth.

In simple terms your hair is probably breaking just as fast as it is growing hence giving the impression that your hair is not growing at all.

How can we fix this?  Firstly we need to look at the reasons as to why your hair is breaking in the first place.

Common Causes of Natural Hair Breakage

Over-manipulation of your natural hair

Everyone likes their hair to look good, I mean who doesn’t?

The problem can often be that in order to achieve some of these creative hairstyles you need to do a lot of manipulating of your hair.

There’s a lot of twisting, rolling, pinning and tucking going on.

This can be even worse if you are the type who likes to do a different hairstyle every day.

Misuse of Hair Tools

I’ve seen people do this time and time again, dragging a comb through their hair in order to get out tangles.

Girl!  Your hair is kinky, it’s going to tangle because the coils will naturally wrap around each other.

There is nothing you can do to prevent this from happening.

If you use a comb and drag it through your hair in order to prevent tangling the likelihood will be that you cause unnecessary breakage.

Dry Hair

in the same way that you keep your skin nicely moisturized you need to do the same thing with your hair if you want to keep that natural hair growth.

Dry hair can ONLY lead to breakage.

If the above are some of the reasons that natural hair breaks then we need to talk about how to go about preventing such problems and keep that natural hair growth going.

Ways to Prevent Breakage

Use Low Maintenance Hairstyles As Much As Possible

Try to break the habit of restyling your hair every day.  I know this can be a bit difficult at first.

If you are a serial stylist then perhaps start by trying to find ways to maintain your hairstyle for the next day.

Only restyle every other day, believe me, your hair will reward you with growth!

Step Away From The COMB!

This is really difficult to do in the beginning but as time goes on I promise it will get easier.

Combing and brushing your hair regularly will cause your hair to break there are no two ways about it.

I know a lot of naturals still like to use combs and I’m not saying that you have to completely stop.

But you do have to minimise the use of these tools.

If you can learn how to finger detangle that would be a huge benefit to you.

It takes little getting used to at first but once you’ve done it a few times you will get better and know how to manage your hair.

Everyone Needs A Trim

A lot of people fail to use this step because they feel it will be like going backward because they are cutting off some of the length.

Whilst this is true to some degree it is also true that regularly trimming your hair gets rid of split ends and keeps your hair healthy.

This is not to say that you have to trim your hair every month.

Personally I like to trim mine once every 8-12 months.

I haven’t found the need to trim more often than this because my hairstyles are usually very low maintenance.

MOISTURE! MOISTURE! MOISTURISE!!!

I can’t stress to you how important this step is.

We’ve all felt and seen dry hair before and it’s usually very dull in color and lifeless.

No one wants that including your hair.

If your hair is not regularly moisturized then you will not see your full natural hair growth potential.

Personally speaking, moisturizing my hair has been the single biggest game changer for me.

Back in the day, I thought that if I put a little grease on my scalp then it meant that my hair would be moisturized.

No wonder my hair never got past my shoulders!

You have to work out what works best for your hair moisture-wise.

For me, I tend to find remoisturising my hair mid-week helps to keep my hair fresh and full of moisture.  

Moisturising your hair doesn’t have to be a tooth pulling exercise.

It certainly doesn’t mean that you have to fully rewash your hair either.

Simply spritzing your hair with a spray bottle of water, then applying a leave-in conditioner and some type of sealant should be sufficient.

When I remoisturise I tend to part my hair into 8 large sections, spritz with water, add a leave-in conditioner and some shea butter, plait and allow to air dry, that’s it.

Whilst this may not suit everyone it works for me but you have to find out what works for you.

Some people prefer to dry their hair with a blow dryer on cool air or sit under a hooded dryer.

That’s great for them but not for me.

It’s important to also take pictures of your hair along the way too.

Sometimes we can get so hung up on thinking that our hair is not growing that we fail to see how far we have already come.

Taking pictures will give you the motivation to keep going.

Remember your hair is always growing it’s just for you to maximize the length retention.

Remember although growing long hair is nice and it looks nice, it is more important to have healthy hair.

If you strive for healthy hair, alongside it will come the natural hair growth too.

One last thing to remember is…drink water!

If your body is hydrated on the inside it will show on the outside, even in your hair.

So what are you waiting for?

Go get some water!!!