Ghana Hair Chick's Letters: Heat Training Natural Hair?

Hello lovely naturalistas! I hope we're all doing well.
Today I wanted to share something I found pretty interesting. Some natural haired ladies use heat to 'train' their hair and loosen the kinks so its more manageable. It helps to reduce knots and tangles according to them.
Here's a video for more details. Just in case you can't view the video, here is the link: http://youtu.be/sdAFhKuvPvE

What do you think? Would you heat train your hair? Leave a comment about the post below, and if you're the first to drop your email and network of choice along with your comment, the recharge card of N500 is yours.

Have a great weekend!

Ghana Hair Chick's Letters: Undercover Natural Hair Nazis

Happy Friday Natural beauties! I believe our weeks have been very productive and good to us. Today's post isn't answering a question. Instead, I want to ask a question.

Are you an undercover natural hair 'nazi'?

Let me try and explain what I mean. We all know some natural hair ladies who are always making it seem like everyone should have natural hair, putting down other ladies because they have processed hair and generally making everyone else feel like they are terrible for not being natural. I'm sure we have either met or seen one in a video somewhere or on some social media website. And I am also sure we all said that was extreme and we would never treat other people that way.On the flip side are what I personally call 'beauty nazis'. These people usually criticize you for wearing natural hair and say it looks unkempt or ugly. Either way, both these groups of people are 'nazis'.
However, I just realized that a lot of us could be that way without knowing it.
Recently, one of the well-known natural hair vloggers in the US decided to relax her hair for both personal and medical reasons, and the outcry was serious. People who condemned natural hair nazis before suddenly began telling off this vlogger, calling her a fraud and saying they were disappointed in her. They were highly unsupportive of her and generally made her feel like a failure. Here is a video of an interview with her talking about the response.

Now, that makes me think. What if one of African Naturalista's bloggers, say me, decided to relax or heat treat their hair? Would all you great readers treat us the same way? Would you all suddenly reveal that you've been undercover natural hair nazis all along? I think its something worth thinking about.

Please comment below with your thoughts on this issue. The first person to comment and leave their email address wins N500 of airtime. Thanks for stopping by and do enjoy your weekend.
The Ghana Hair Chick

Ghana Hair Chick's Letters: The Gist on HairFinity, Biotin and others

Hello all! I hope we're all doing very well and our hair is also healthy. Today's post is going to look at Multivitamin supplements like Hairfinity that people take for hair growth. If you have questions or a personal experience with these supplements, please post a comment below. Thanks!

Question: Do we need to take supplements like Biotin for our hair? If we do, is it necessary to buy expensive brands like HairFinity?

Answer
This is a very good question, especially considering how much people testify about how supplements are helping them. Just to provide a little background, Biotin is a vitamin in the B family of vitamins. It helps break down food and helps with absorptions of fatty acids and such. It also helps promote cellular growth, and so people use it to help increase the rate of growth of hair, nails and other cells. Biotin is usually obtained in sufficient quantities for our daily needs from the food we eat and from microorganisms in our guts that make it. The recommended daily intake for Biotin is currently set between 30-35 mcg depending on age and whether you're breast-feeding. According to a recent study most adults consume between 40-60 mcg of biotin daily through food. Foods that are abundant in biotin are listed below in the table. It is therefore rare to find people who are deficient in biotin.

That brings us to the question. Since we get all the biotin we need and even more from food, do we need to take extra supplements? I tried to address this question a while back in this post, but ultimately the decision to use such supplements is a personal one. There has been no reported maximum dose, and no reported negative effects of exceeding the daily recommended value. A study found that taking 5000 mcg a day for two years had no serious side effects.  However, a lot of women who take extra biotin supplements report side effects like increased acne and other break outs on the skin and scalp, along with increased hair shedding. Whether to brave these potential side effects is a personal choice you will have to make all on your own. There has been no study to prove biotin's effects on hair growth, but there are a lot of testimonies to its efficacy.

If you do decide to take such a supplement, do you need to take special supplements like HairFinity or Hair, Skin and Nails vitamins? I can be quite honest here and say yes and no. Even though there's no research, alternative practitioners recommend between 2000-10000 mcg a day for treating hair loss. The added expense may be completely unnecessary IF you don't mind a lower dose, because most of the common multivitamins we already take contain added amounts of biotin. Here is a label listing ingredients of HairFinity.com:

Here's a label for hair skin and nails multivitamins:

 And here are labels from a few common generic Multivitamins:

As you can see, the hair vitamins contain MUCH higher amounts of biotin. The choice of which multivitamins to use are yours depending on the dose you'd prefer. Some specific brands of generic multivitamins contain really high amounts of biotin as well, so its worth it to check your bottle of vitamins to see what it contains.
So that's it then. Will you or are you currently taking supplements to grow your hair? Be the first to comment and win N500 of airtime!
Thanks for reading,
The Ghana Hair Chick

Ghana Hair Chick's Letters: Why Valentine's Day and your hair may not be best friends

Hello lovely naturalistas and Happy Valentine's Day! I hope that we are all doing very well and the dryness isn't affecting our hair too adversely. If it is, the team here at African Naturalistas is here to help with tips and of course the awesome product line! If you haven't tried the products yet, please do and you won't regret it.
Since we've been pretty scientific in the past, I thought I'd try a fun post today. It is Valentine's day so I'm writing on why I think Valentine's Day and your hair may not be best friends. Ready? Let's Go!

1.You may wear your hair out for a date
 If you are interested in length retention, then you probably know that wearing your hair out (especially hair with texture like mine (4C,4Z,4K etc lol) is not helpful at all. Unfortunately, since that fine looking brother is taking you (I mean us) out for dinner, some of us will wear our hair out. This will result in tangles, knots, shrinkage and exposure to the very dry weather. This is definitely not what we want. To avoid this, let's try more up-dos, fake up-dos if your hair isn't long enough and buns if possible. If your hair cannot do any of these styles, then please do not go out without moisturizing your hair and sealing with oil today ! Of course, if you don't want to wear your hair out, you can still wear your protective style really nicely or wear a wig. I'm sharing pictures of various styles in this post for inspiration.

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2.You may heat style your hair
Again, another no-no for those of us wanting length and health. Heat styling without appropriate protection will be disastrous, so please avoid heat damage if you plan to use heat. Here is a useful article with tips on heat-protecting your hair:
http://www.africanaturalistas.com/2014/01/how-to-protect-natural-hair-when-using.html

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3.You may be impatient and yank out your hair
This is a very legitimate one oo! Knowing how long some of us take to dress, if we're trying to style the hair and its being stubborn, we may cause a lot of damage. Please try and start preparing your hair far in advance of your outing. That will really save you the pain of breaking your hair due to rough handling.

4.The satins scarf/bonnet may go out the window tonight
In an effort to look romantic in bed, satin bonnets and scarfs may not be worn tonight. Please remember the damage rubbing your hair against your pillow or bed sheet does and to to wear a bonnet. To be honest though, I'm not sure just one night of not wearing a bonnet would be so bad. However, I have to be honest and tell you the risk of breakage will increase if you do it so be ready.

5.Hand in Hair Overload!
Whether you're alone tonight or not, it is very likely hands will be touching and pulling on your hair strands if you're wearing your hair out. That may result in a lot of breakage, but once again, unless you're really concerned, one night will not destroy all your hard work of protecting your hair so far.

These are the reasons why I think Valentine's Day and your hair may not like each other much. This is one of the days you're likely to over-manipulate and forget about protective styling. Let's try our best to make sure our hair stays protected still, despite all the fun..:D. What other ways can you think of that your hair will not happy this Val's day? Be the first to post a comment and get N500 in recharge credit! Happy commenting!

The Ghana Hair Chick

Ghana Hair Chick's letters: Dealing with dry itchy scalp and Dandruff

Hello beautiful naturalistas! I hope we're all doing well and this harmattan is not affecting our hair negatively at all. Today I wanted to share a video that I found very useful on the subject of dry scalp. If you are having issues with a dry itchy scalp as well as dandruff this will be a very useful video for you. I hope its helpful to you even if you don't have a dry scalp so enjoy!

The free credit promotion is still ongoing. Be the first to comment on this post with a question or suggestion and you will receive N500 of airtime. That sounds like a good deal to me so please comment! Till next week, may your scalp not get dry..:D.
The Ghana Hair Chick

Ghana Hair Chick's Letters:The ACV Rinse on Natural Hair Part 1

Hello gorgeous naturalistas! Many greetings and well-wishes for your health and happiness. I hope you've all been enjoying the new year and everything it comes with.I also hope my previous posts on shedding and breakage were very helpful to you.If you still have questions, you can leave a comment and I will try my best to deal with it!
Today's letter deals with a very common question that has been asked over and over by almost every new natural haired lady.

Question
What is an ACV rinse ? Is there any scientific backing to the claims being made about its benefits on natural hair?

I will begin to answer this question this week, but in order to keep it short I will leave the concluding part till next week.

 What is an ACV rinse? 

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ACV is an abbreviation for 'Apple Cider Vinegar'. This is a type of  vinegar produced by fermenting the must or cider of apples. The must of a fruit is the juice of that fruit in addition to its seeds,skin and flesh as well. Even though cider usually refers to an alcoholic or fermented beverage, apple cider is used to refer to the unfiltered juice of apples and  contains particles from the flesh of the fruit. When this  cider is left out or specific yeasts and bacteria are added to it, a fermentation process converts glucose to alcohols and then acetic-acid forming bacteria convert this alcohol to acetic and malic acids. These acids generally give the vinegar its sour taste and reduces the pH that makes vinegar acidic. I hope we all remember some of our Chemistry, but just in case you forgot, a pH of 0-6.9 is considered acidic,7 is basic and 7.1-14 is alkaline. ACV  has a pH of 4.25-5, well within the acidic range. Natural hair usually has a pH of around 5, depending on what products you're using and so on.

As you may have guessed by my answer above, there are different types of vinegar and cider vinegar. Vinegar is usually the pure acetic acid obtained from the process above mixed with water.Therefore, it can come from any source, fruit or glucose containing solution. Even though cider vinegar is usually ACV, it can sometimes refer to the cider vinegar produced from other fruits such as grapes.

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There are also two main types of ACV: raw, organic and unfiltered or filtered apple cider vinegar. Raw ACV is unpasteurised  or 'un-sterilised' ACV. Hence, it still contains living bacteria and some yeast. Organic simply means that no chemicals or artificial preservatives were used in growing the apples or making the ACV. Finally unfiltered ACV is not filtered to remove any particulate matter. Therefore, it is quite usual to see a layer of solid material at the bottom of the bottle of raw organic ACV. Filtered ACV is usually clear with no particles in it.
One important claim about the benefits of ACV involves the particles and microbes left in it, or the 'mother' as it is commonly referred to. The mother of ACV is a cobweb-like layer of particles, bacteria and yeast found in raw unfiltered or organic ACV. The mother is believed to help with a lot of conditions in the human body, and by extension, natural hair. Because of this, most ACV rinses recommend organic ACV and not any other type of ACV. Does it matter what type of ACV used? We will get to that in the benefits section.

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An ACV rinse  involves rinsing hair with a solution of ACV and water. The proportions vary, but usually ranges between a few tablespoons of ACV in one cup of water, to one part ACV and one part water. When practicing an ACV rinse, most people wash their hair and use the ACV solution last before their final rinse and styling.
In order to decide if an ACV rinse is for you, please check back for the final part of this article to find out the beneficial claims of an ACV rinse on your hair and if these claims are supported by science. If you have any questions before then, please feel free to drop a comment below. Till then, stay blessed and beautiful!
The Ghana Hair Chick

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

Ghana Hair Chick's Letters: Hair Shedding vs Hair Breakage

Hello and Happy New year to you gorgeous naturalistas! Welcome to 2014 on the African Naturalistas' Blog. Its going to be a great year and we hope you enjoy the year with us and you attain all your hair goals by the end of the year.
Today's post will deal with one of the most common issues that most women face: shedding and breakage of hair. A lot of us usually confuse these two things to be the same, but they are not. Because they are different, the solutions to each of these problems is also quite different.Its important to know the difference so you know how to fix them.Let's look briefly at each and their common causes.
Shedding

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Shedding is a natural process. A hair strand usually reaches the point where it stops growing and falls from your scalp. These shed hairs will usually have a tiny white root, which is the part of the hair that was attached to the scalp. Shed hair is also usually long. A new hair will replace whatever hair is shed so long as the bulb of your hair is still attached to your scalp. Shedding is very normal and is a healthy part of the hair growth cycle (more on this later). Excessive shedding can occur due to hormonal changes, stress and illness. You may also shed more hair than usual at certain times of the year due to the hair growth cycle.If you suspect hair loss due to excessive shedding, it is advisable to see a doctor.


Breakage

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Breakage, on the other hand, occurs when your hair strand literally breaks off. Since broken hair doesn't break at the root, there is no white bulb attached and broken hair strands are shorter. There are many causes of breakage, but the most common ones are illness, hormonal changes,chemical manipulation, lack of moisture, bodily dehydration, lack of adequate nutrition, protein overload, weak hair strands and mechanical stress (over-manipulation). Breakage therefore is not natural, and is an indicator that something is off balance with either your hair, your handling technique or your body.

I suppose your next question is how to fix these? Well check back again soon and the answer will be waiting in the next Ghana Hair Chick Post. You can find us on Facebook at African Naturalistas or start a conversation with the Ghana Hair Chick by clicking on this link.
Till then, stay blessed and healthy!
Ghana Hair Chick.

Introducing: Letters to Ghana Hair Chick

Dear African Naturalistas,

Happy Holidays to everyone and belated Merry Christmas! This is a new contribution to this already amazing blog on natural hair. With the addition of Ghana Hair Chick to the African Natualistas team, we will begin a series on the scientific aspects of natural hair care. This segment is called Letters to the Ghana Hair Chick. You can email a specific question or hair related  issue you would like more information on, or just comment on this post or any other post, and that issue will be handled in due time. If you see a comment by someone else with your exact problem simply +1 that comment and the question with the most +1s gets handled first. Please be sure to address all your questions for this segment to Ghana Hair Chick to make sure they are seen and handled appropriately.

Ghana Hair Chick is a pseudonym for the newest member of our team. Yvonne is a Ghanaian who has had natural hair for a year and 3 months. She will be trying her best to handle all issues related to hair and also sharing information on the scientific parts of hair care. Apart from hair, she will be sharing information related to health in general, since a healthy body promotes healthy long hair. Every once in a while she will also blog on other socio political aspects of natural hair and products.She will be blogging here every Friday, and can be found on Facebook and on the Ghana Hair Chick blog as well.

Please feel free to post your questions and comments below and lets get to work on them! Till we read our first letter, Happy Friday and have a fabulous weekend!