My experience with Castor Oil on my Natural Hair

Picture from Thirsty Roots

So, after hearing left, right and centre about the many wonders of castor oil, I decided to try it out. Needless to say, I could hardly believe what I experienced.

Firstly, my dry scalp issues were solved instantly. I had been battling with dry, itchy and flaky scalp for over a month and the disgrace this put me through, whenever I was at work, wasn’t funny at all. I tried to stop it by using tea tree oil on my scalp every morning, but it dint make any difference. Seriously, when I started using castor oil, this problem disappeared immediately.

Secondly, there was a noticeable growth rate in my hair, the hair just looked like it had grown longer. Whether I retained the acquired length is a story for another day, but I felt castor oil did some work to boost my growth rate.

Thirdly, my hair felt more bouncy. I have been wearing protective twists for over two months now because I want my short hair to grow longer and then later, I can explore more styles. Even though my hair is full, it always looked thin and ordinary after twisting. When I started using castor oil, it immediately gave my hair a bouncy feel. The hair looked more interesting and it felt more ‘full of life’.

I love what castor oil did to my hair and I have decided to keep it as a permanent hair regimen. It is also cheap, so this even encourages me more.

I have decided to downplay the use of coconut oil and tea tree oil for now. The reason is that coconut oil and olive oil can be used interchangeably. They both penetrate hair strands, make the hair softer and easier to manage and they can both ne used to deep conditioning treatments. So for me and my hair, I think they do the same thing. Here in Nigeria, coconut oil is about 10 times the price of olive oil, so I have chosen to stick with olive oil since it does everything coconut oil does for me.

I chose to do away with tea tree oil for now because I really didn’t get my desired results. I wanted it to help me with dry itchy scalp and hair growth but it did not. Maybe it’s the oil or the particular product I used, I can’t really tell. What I know is that castor oil gave me the desired results. Also, just like coconut oil is here, tea tree oil is also expensive.

Next time I really need to use coconut oil, I'll just pluck coconut from my back yard and extract the oil, just like the directions I gave in this post.

All what I typed in this post and the decisions I made stemmed from my personal experience with using these oils. Your experience might be different and might be the other way round. The key is to be attentive and know what your hair and scalp responds well to. In the mean time, know that castor oil is very very good for your hair.

N.B: When using the castor oil, note that is very heavy and direct application can weigh your hair down. It is therefore recommended that you dilute it with a base oil such as olive oil and coconut oil, which is what I did and still got the desired result.