Ghana Hair Chick's Letters: Fixing Shedding and Breakage

Hello!I trust everyone is doing well.In my last post on this subject, I promised to do another article on solutions to shedding and breakage.If you will recall, shedding is completely normal and a part of healthy hair cycling and growth, whereas breakage is not.That being said, we can still minimise how much hair we shed and we can stop or prevent breakage with a few good tips.

How to prevent excessive shedding
Since shedding is more of an internal occurrence, external treatments like creams or oils will not do very much to fix it.Seasonal shedding, which is a time period in which shedding is higher than normal, is also a normal part of the hair cycle and cannot be stopped.However, excessive shedding is abnormal, so you should be concerned if you shed more than 100 hairs a day or continually shed a lot of hair over an extended period of time.Please note that an exception to this is if you're pregnant or had a baby since you may shed a lot for months after having a baby due to
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hormonal changes.Certain other things to look at if you're having excessive shedding is your menstrual cycle, birth control medication,menopause,a poor diet,illnesses,anemia,thyroid disease and some medicines and treatments like chemotherapy.Aside from these heredity may also make you more prone to shedding than others.That being said, any abnormal shedding for an extended period that is inexplicable should be reported to a doctor.

Fixing Breakage
Breakage is abnormal, and at the first signs that your hair is breaking, you should check your hair care regimen.Please note that some breakage will occur normally due to handling, but excessive breakage should be fixed.In order to minimise breakage
-try to keep a balance between deep conditioning and protein treatments.Too much of either one can result in breakage.
-be gentle with your hair.No rough handling,no yanking,no pulling and that includes during detangling. Try to make sure your nails are smooth and your hands don't have any rough surfaces that can pull hair strands out.
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-minimise the rubbing of your hair against rough clothes and bed sheets by tying it up and wearing a satin scarf or bonnet to bed.
-do a hot oil treatment or an oil rinse on your hair.
-Caffeine in tea has been shown to help stop breakage.Tea rising or soaking is a popular way to utilise this.However, do not use more than 2 teabags in a cup at once!Too much caffeine will break your hair.
-check your diet and water intake.A bad diet or bodily dehydration will begin to manifest as breakage.Good health usually means good hair.
-Treat any illness you may have.

Finally, this is a  personal tip and may not work for you.I realized that with extremely coiled kinky hair like mine, the best way to minimise breakage is to wash my hair in twists.My hair gets tangled and knotted when I wash it while its loose, and so when I detangle I loose a lot of hair. Washing my hair in twists usually helps a lot!
This concludes our discussion on shedding vs breakage.I hope this has been helpful to you.Please post your comments or hair related concerns below and I will do my best to handle them in the subsequent posts.
Till then,stay blessed!
Ghana Hair Chick

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