Healthy Hair by Ren

Hey ladies, I'm sure you have heard these words being thrown around but do you really understand what it means? Understanding how protein and moisture interact with our hair is vital in healthy hair care as our strands cannot survive without either. This post is going to take a look how protein and moisture impacts our hair, how we can determine what our hair needs and the different ways we can effectively infuse the same into our strands. Protein We all know that our strands are made from a protein called keratin. This gives our hair its structure and strength. Our hair experiences wear and tear as we go about our day and its exposed to the elements. We need to continually treat our strands with protein to rebuild and reinforce them. Signs that your hair needs protein: Your hair feels mushy, not just soft but overly soft when wet. Combing wet hair results in alot of breakage. You feel like its better for you to manipulate your hair when its dry because its just too weak an

Hey just coming at you with a short post on how I texturize my hair to get minimal breakage and damage. I was asked about my texlaxing process so below is a quick step by step tutorial of my touch up. Step 1: Separate hair in quarters. Take a good look at your new growth and determine where the line of demarcation is (where your relaxed hair meets your natural hair). Coat your already processed hair with vaseline and/or baby oil. Products New growth Separate in quarters Step 2: Add conditioner or oils to the relaxer to dilute the strength. This slows down the processing of the hair and allows you time for application if you move slowly like me lol. About 50/50 regular relaxer and conditioner Step 3: I apply my relaxer with my hands (using gloves ofcourse).. smoothing as I go along. I do not comb through Step 4: I leave the relaxer in for about 10 minutes Dont worry if the relaxer gets on already processed hair as its slathered with vaseline and bab

Hi Ladies, Now that we have done some theory, I wanted to share one of my favourite 'go-to' styles : the braidout. This is a very low maintenance, low manipulation style that is easy on your strands yet very stylish. The braidout can be strategically used for the following : 1. To keep the new growth stretched so that you can have a longer time period between chemical services like relaxers, perms, dry curls. This allows you to give your hair a break from the chemicals.. I will do a post on stretching relaxers in the future. 2. For persons who wear their hair curly, this is an alternative to a wash and go. Wash and gos often get matted as the hair curls up. Because a braidout is a stretched style (the hair is in a stretched state as it dries) it does not tangle an mat as easily as a wash an go. Its a great way to wear your hair 'open' with getting a tangled mess. 3. This is a great way of stretching the hair in preparation for flat ironing. The less heat the bet

Hey, By now most of you are probably thinking... ok.. who is this chic and why does she think she can give advice about hair? So I just wanted to share a bit of my hair journey with you.  This does not mean Im a hair guru...lol... I have been able to grow my hair to lengths I never thought I could, I always believed that African hair would grow to certain lengths and that was its maximum potential..... boy was I wrong.... So I had a relaxer for most off my life... I got it when I was 8 or thereabout as my hair was 'too thick and unmanageable'..lol This is me at 16 in the pic below... my hair was just touching armpit length. 2005         Got a permanent brown colour for my high school grad. That was the end of my hair, I had severe breakage and my hair thinned out dramatically! 2007                                        2008  I decided to grow my hair out and in 2008 I did the big chop. I still did not have healthy hair practices at this point. I had n

Hi Guys, This post is just to shed some light on rentention. ALL hair grows!!! To often I have heard persons saying that their hair isnt growing and that african hair cannot get as long as indian or caucasian hair. This is completely FALSE. If your hair has been at the same length for almost all your life, it may seem like it is not growing but what is actually happening is that you are not retaining the length. For example, a person may go to the salon every 6 weeks to relax their 'new growth'. If you have new growth then it must mean that your hair is growing but why are you not seeing any progress in the length of your hair? Why is your hair still shoulder length after soo many years or relaxing your new growth?What causes you not to retain length? Well the answer is simple....BREAKAGE BREAKAGE BREAKAGE!!! Let me explain, you are not seeing a difference in the length of your hair because you are losing hair from the ends . Those short pieces of hair that is all o

Hey, I wanted to come at you first and foremost with some information about the structure of the hair strand and some of the challenges we curly girls face because of the structure of our strands. Ok, so the  basic layers of a hair strand are captured in the image below. Any type of hair from pin straight to tightly curly  is made up of these three layers. This is just a basic overview of each layer for general knowledge, not going into too much detail to confuse anyone. Cuticle- This is the outermost layer. It is made up of  transparent/colorless scales that overlap eachother in order to protect the inner layers of the strand. Most topical hair products are aimed toward affecting the cuticle in some manner. Cortex-This is the largest layer of the strand and is made up of a protein called keratin and pigment. Within the cortex there are protein bonds, the number of bonds determine the texture and strength of the hair. Greater the number of bonds, the curlier the hair. The pigmen

Hi all, Welcome to Healthy Hair by Ren. This is place to be if you want to learn about taking care of African hair. Since this is my first post I think some definitions are in order : Healthy Hair:   There has been some back and forth about this term in the hair community for ages. To me, healthy hair is hair that has minimal breakage and split ends and/or split shafts. African Hair: When I use this term, I am referring to any type of hair that has a natural curl pattern even if it may have had chemical services to change the curl pattern. If it grows out of your head with relatively tight curl, I'm talking to you!! I know I might get some flack for my definitions but these debates have been going on forever and they will continue to go on forever. This is just my understanding/view of things. The main objective of this blog is to educate African (race, not nationality, can be mixed as well) women on taking good care of their hair. I believe that hair is very important to