True Story: I had a baby but no Postpartum Shedding.

Happy  new year to all the beautiful people who read and follow this blog. I pray 2018 is good to you, and grants you all your heart's desires.

We have always heard about how as women, we lose hair after delivering because of Postpartum shedding. Many of us (including me) have come to accept this as our reality.

For the first time in my life, I got pregnant very early this year, so just like many women testified of lion's mane kind of growth, I was expecting mine too, even though my hair was already long and full. It was very interesting for me to note that I saw absolutely no changes in my hair growth rate or fullness of hair when I was pregnant. The only thing I noticed was that my hair felt a bit different when touched. That was all. In fact, the hair on my legs didn't grow as fast as they usually did.

So it was no surprise to me when after delivery, my hair did not shed one bit, not even after taking down weaving that I had in for seven weeks. When it came to my hair, I might as well just have been like every other lady out there. Pregnancy hormones did absolutely nothing to alter my hair growth cycle, and I must say I am grateful for this because I have never experienced Telogen Effluvium, and I do not hope to have it anytime soon.

My temples seven weeks post partum

My temples 10 weeks postpartum

I guess from now, I can boldly say that not all women would have postpartum shedding after delivery, and one way we'll be able to tell is if we unusal hair growth while pregnant.

Washing My Natural Hair with Black Tea Rinse and Rice Water Rinse

Earlier this year, I share with African Naturalistas how I make my rice water rinse. Read here Today, I will show you how I incorporate it along with Black Tea Rinse in my weekly wash day routine.

Watch below or click here

Have you ever used Black Tea Rinses or Rice Water Rinses in your hair?

 

 

 

Stay beautiful! 💖

If you like this blog post written by Sola of DiscoveringNatural, you can find her on her Youtube channel, DiscoveringNatural,  for more natural hair tips. Click here to visit her channel.



Tea Rinse for Natural Hair - My experience

Tea rinses are commonly talked about in the natural hair world, and a lot of natural hair bloggers exclaim the benefits of tea rinses (Reduces shedding, Makes hair softer, Helps hair grow, and Adds shine). We even have a very popular post about them here. I had never done a tea rinse until 2 weeks ago on an impromptu wash day.

I was deep conditioning my hair with my African Naturalistas Deep Conditioner, when I decided to have a cup of tea. I like to use my DC time to relax and I find tea to be very calming. Usually, I would simply throw the tea bags away, but this time I decided to put them to good use by doing a tea rinse (another way to use your tea bags is to let them cool and place over your eyes for a few minutes).

Anyway, I used regular tea, and left the tea bags in hot water for about 30 minutes while my DC was on.

After I was done with the DC, I shampooed it off, and used the now cool tea water to rinse my hair. From what I read, you can either rinse and leave the tea in your hair, or you can rinse again with water after a little while. I decided to rinse and leave it in, because I'd noticed my hair had been shedding quite a bit. Well, I don't know if the results are supposed to be immediate, but I still had quite a bit of hair come off (I hadn't detangled in 3 weeks, or before washing).

The hair was soft though, so I liked that. Funny thing happened - my comb started to shed too while combing after the whole process!

I've had the comb for years though, so I think it's time to move on.

My hair's been cornrowed and placed under my clip-ins since then, so I don't know if it's still shedding as much or if the tea rinse worked.

I would suggest that before you do a tea rinse, research the topic first. If I had done that, I would have DC'd AFTER the tea, not before. Discovering Natural has a video on Black Tea Rinses which I'll leave below, and she says that consistency is key - she does hers twice a month.

Have a good weekend,
Berry Dakara.

¨Help! my hair is not growing¨ | Facts about Hair growth

Hello Naturalistas,

How are you doing? How are you protecting your hair? My hair is in a protective style now. Anyways on to the business of today. Alot of my new natural friends always complain that their hair is not growing and this is a very very common thing I hear alot. I decided to address it today.

1 Year 8 months

First to burst your bubble, Your hair is actually growing. On average a person grows about 1/2 inch or 1.25cm of hair each month. There are 3 phases to hair growth; 

Anagen Phase- new hair grows, this phase usually last from 3-5 years but can be longer for some people. When you see individuals with extremely long hair they probably have a longer than average anagen phase. About 90% of hair is in this phase at one time.

Catagen phase-the hair begins to transition into a rest phase, it is the end of the growth phase. About 1% of hair is in this phase at one time. This is the shortest phase and usually only last a couple of weeks.

Telogen phase the hair is no longer growing and eventually sheds. About 10% of hair is in this phase at a time; it typically lasts 3-6 months. So, shedding isn't entirely a bad thing. 

However, We have some bad habits that doesn't help this growth process. 

Dirty Scalp; We forget that our scalp is an extension of our skin, imagine what happens when you don't wash your face for 2 weeks -___- Yet, we have product build up and still don't wash and condition our hair sometimes for over 2 weeks. Yikes! I think our hair needs to be washed atleast every week. 

Dry hair; Lack of moisture cause hair to be brittle and its prone to breakage and when your hair is breaking at a faster rate then its growing? 

Lack of Exercise & Malnutrition; I know you are not skinny and your bones are not showing (Well atleast that is the image in my head when I hear that) but not eating the right kind of nutrients is making you malnourished. Drinking alot of water helps your hair and engaging in exercise also. 

Let. it. Breathe; Not every time protective style or hand-in-hair, sometimes just let the hair be.

Over processing; Dying, applying heat... the whole works. Do your research and find out what works for your hair so you are not doing trial and error that will damage your hair. 

I really hope this answers your hair growth questions and will help us to better take care of our hair so that we can be like 'Long hair don't care' in the next year :D 

How come dreadlocks grow faster than free natural hair?

Hey everyone,

Hope your week's been great! The topic I want to discuss today is something that came to mind after I saw an acquaintance's hair. She's had locs for a while and I hadn't seen her for quite some time, and when I recently saw her, it struck me that her hair length seemed to have doubled! I remember the question crossed my mind - "How did her hair grow so bloody fast?"

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And then it struck me that I routinely see people with waist length loc'd hair, even in Nigeria, and I came to the conclusion that there's something different about locs, so I asked my friend Google. Well, it turns out that dreadlocks are actually not different from free natural hair, but 2 things come into play...

1. NO manipulation! Think about it. Those of us with free natural hair are constantly manipulating our hair by detangling (fingers, combs and brushes alike), styling (twists, braids, updos, weaves, etc), and more. With manipulation comes breakage. Of course, there are ways to minimize breakage such as finger detangling and protective styling. However, people with locs hardly have to deal with any manipulation. Therefore, their odds of experiencing breakage is a LOT LESS than people with free hair.
   
2. SHED hair. Hair sheds on ALL types of head, simple and short. BUT the difference with loc'd hair is that the shed hair has nowhere to fall to. Instead it stays matted up with the dreadlocks, and seemingly adds to length and thickness! 

So there, you have it. It makes sense now and it's such an easy explanation. So for all those who want to achieve floor length hair, now you know what you can do to speed up the process :p.

Would you switch to locs simply for length purposes? Let me know what you think. The first person to comment and leave their email, wins a N500 airtime recharge as usual (Nigerian networks).

Have a lovely weekend,

Berry Dakara.

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.