Highlights of the Natural Hair meet up (1)

Hello world, how is your week going so far? I hope smooth? As I promised, while replying some comments, I am going to do a summary on what I learnt at the meet up. At least, this will be beneficial to the people that could not make it.

I went to the meet up with my pen and notepad, ready to grab as much as I can, just like we do when we go to church. The reality is that there was so much to write and learn at the same time that I could only write a summary. The presentation was just loaded with information! For this, I thank Natural Nigerian, Screwy Hair and Natmane. This here is just a scanty summary, consisting of few of the things that were said and few of the things on the slide. So, here goes it

To kick off the show Natural Nigerian asked the audience about how they saw their hair. People made positive and negative remarks about this. Ranging from wild, elastic, stubborn, lovely to dark, natural, etc. the list went on.

She then went on to educate us about the scientific aspects of the hair. Mehn, you should see both lovely and gory pictures of magnified hair strands. It was at this point that I realized so much damage that we cause to our hair, due to sheer ignorance. The points I picked from her were

• Hair is made up of about 70% protein
• Wash your hair and scalp frequently, to prevent it from being clogged, thereby reducing the rate of hair growth
• Don’t use your fingernails to scrub your scalp, while washing, use the ball of your fingers
• You don’t need to oil your scalp. This is because the scalp secrets sebum, which is a natural oil that coats it
• Each hair strand has three layers: the cuticle, cortex and medulla
• The oils evidently known to pass through the cuticle and get to the cortex are coconut oil and olive oil
• When you wet your hair, the cuticles lift and allow the water into the cortex. The ability to do more or less of this is called hair porousity
• High PH products increases porousity
• Low PH products reduces porousity
• Low and high porousity is bad for the hair. One’s goal should be to find a balanced porousity
• We should be careful to use products on a PH scale of 4.5-5.5 for our hair and skin
• Once the cuticle of a hair strand is removed, that hair is permanently damaged
• Try to avoid using rubber bands or hair bands with metallic snags on your hair. They damage the cuticles

After NN finished, I couldn’t help but remember my biology class, back in high school. Thank God I loved biology. Please, remember this is just a summary, she said way more than this

Then next was a nutritionist in the house. A nurse a nutrition presenter on Classic FM, Sherese Ijewere

She said

• Symptoms of a damaged hair are split ends, balding, thinning, dandruff, dry scalp
• Foods you can take to have healthy hair
• Water, salmon, dark green leafy vegetables, beans, nuts, poultry, eggs, fish, whole grains
• A balance healthy meal should have Fruits + Grains + Vegetables + Proteins + Dairy (Optional)
• Fad diets can rob your hair
• Crash diets can cause hair loss
• Medication can affect the hair, as well as the body
• Avoid stress as much as possible

Next came screwy hair.

This post is getting long, yet it is just a summary. I will continue in my next post. You don’t want to miss how screwy hair took us back to our kitchen and natmane made sure we all ended up rolling on the floor. Watch out for it