Tuesday, January 8, 2013

Deep Conditioning with Heat A MUST

Even though I've been on my healthy hair journey for a while, I still forget how important some things are.  When I first started, I always deep conditioned with heat.  For the past year or so, I've been slacking and from my big chop in June up until a couple of weeks ago, I didn't deep condition with heat once.  Not once! I thought that leaving the conditioner in overnight or while I worked out was good enough. I was so wrong...

A couple of weeks ago, my man's friend Zo came by the house.  Zo is a hairstylist and he asked me how my hair was coming along:

Me: (whining) It's so dry!
Zo: Do you deep condition?
Me: Of course!
Zo: With heat? Under the dryer?
Me: No, I haven't sat under the dryer in a while.
Zo: You need to deep condition with heat, especially since you're natural and it's winter. No matter how long you leave the conditioner on, it's just going to sit on top of your hair.

Duh!  I should have known better.  I know my hair is low porosity.  A few days after this conversation, I deep conditioned with a mixture of protein and moisturizing conditioners that were almost empty and mixed with a little oil. I deep conditioned using the 15-10-10 method.  I sat under the dryer for 15 minutes, added more conditioner to the extremely dry parts and smoothed my hair down, sat under the dryer for another 10 minutes, added more conditioner, and sat under the dryer for 10 more minutes.  When I finished, my hair felt so good.  For real, this was the first time in about 2 years that I felt like my hair was truly moisturized.  I've done this 3 times, and each time I get better results.  Oils and products seem to absorb into my hair now when before they were just sitting on my hair doing nothing.

This was a hard lesson learned, but at least I finally got it.  I feel like I've wasted so much product that was just sitting on top of my hair and not moisturizing it!

2 comments:

Unknown said...

YESSSSSSS! I am always saying this, I never feel my hair is as conditioned no matter how long I leave it on if I don't use heat!

Ria said...

I have a question, why is it that some ppl come across as if deep conditioning, especially with heat, is a myth? I have never relaxed my hair or even flat ironed more than a few times my whole life and yet my hair, also low porosity, grows like a weed but cannot stay healthy. I recently started dc with heat and it seems to be working well because I don't wake up to dry hair anymore and I do not feel the need to moisturize my hair so often. I wish someone would put an end to this nonsense because it is harmful to ppl whose hair may require heat in order to be healthy. I have tried overnight dc with no heat and it seems to make my hair worse but at best it does no good.