Are you taking care of your curls? Many curly headed cuties chose to take a break once and a while from the long routine process, applying products, keeping up with wash days, and choosing a style for your hair for the day. An easy alternative that many take in this community is the decision to straighten out the curls. Straightening allows us to wake up and start our day immediately without having to worry about the frizz or routine that may start a lot of our mornings. Are you making sure you are taking the right steps to avoid heat damage when applying heat to your hair? This week's blog will cover the necessary steps to avoid heat damage when straightening out your curls.
Let us start off with the basics of discussing the facts of what happens to hair when it is damaged by heat. Heat damage causes the hair to feel and appear brittle, dry, flat, frizzy, have straggly strands, split ends, breakage, and the loss of curl texture and pattern. These are all characteristics for a hair disaster. However, I am here to help you prepare your hair before applying heat.
Cleanse your curls
Before applying heat, it is best to ensure that your curls are fully cleansed. This means always shampoo and condition your hair before straightening or diffusing. Without clean hair to work with, you will be applying heat to product build up within the scalp which weighs down your hair. If you have ever tried to straighten your hair without washing it, you may have noticed that it already appeared greasy and flat, not washing your hair initially is the cause for that!
Heat Protectant
After your hair is fully washed, you can either let it air dry or use a blow dryer. Using a blow dryer and or a diffuser can also increase heat damage to your hair as well. It is important to choose a low setting of heat, and to not hold the device too close to your head or else it can burn your scalp and damage your hair. Heat strips the natural oils from your hair that is why it is also important to wash your hair with cold water as I have discussed in previous blogs.
A heat protectant is also significant to avoiding heat damage. A heat protectant is just a spray that you mist over your hair before applying heat. When searching for a heat protectant spray, make sure to watch out for the silicone ingredients as we already know we want to avoid silicones entirely! The key is to protect our hair and keep it moisturized as we apply heat. A popular heat protectant spray in the curly hair community is No Remorse Heat Protection & Taming Spray
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