Throughout your healthy hair journey you may be looking for ways to keep your hair healthy.  Unfortunately throughout that process you'll come across some factors along the way that will damage your hair despite your best efforts to minimize them.  Environmental factors such as air pollutants, heat,…

Known for its peculiar and refreshing scent, the peppermint plant is one of nature’s superstars.  Known for its ability to soothe digestive disorders like menstrual cramps, indigestion, nausea and flatulence, peppermint has many other beneficial properties that you may not have known of.  For starters, peppermint is rich in vitamins like vitamin A, thiamine, riboflavin and…

Winter is the time of year when the weather wreaks havoc on your body.  The cold air dries your skin out, leaving you with cracked skin and chapped lips.  Your hair hates the winter air because the winter chill leaves it dry and looking just as ashy as your skin.  Since we know that the winter air does these things…

I recently read a few frustrated Facebook status updates by others stretching their relaxers expressing a strong desire to just cut off all of their hair. Everything boiled down to an overall sentiment that the roots have become somewhat unmanageable, styling is feeling increasingly impossible and the relaxer is…

It's that time of year, and my hair is going into hibernation mode, a la protective styles. While wearing protective styles isn't anything new for me, I am particularly cautious these days about making sure my ends are heavily moisturized before putting them up in my silk rollers and then into a bun style (after I…

In this second part of our series on understanding pH balance and chemically treated hair, we delve deeper into figuring out what types of products to use to balance out the pH level of your hair. (Check out Part I of the series…

If you are all about healthy hair, you want to think about pH (the potential of hydrogen) and your hair. pH values are set on a scale between 0 and 14, where 0-6.9 is acidic, 7 is neutral, and 7.1 to 14 is alkaline. Healthy hair ranges between 4.5 to 5.5 in Ph value. 

When it comes to relaxed hair (or any chemical treatment for that matter), your…

If you're interested in growing longer, healthy hair, I encourage you to believe that is in fact possible. So many women have documented their hair growth online and have demonstrated that regardless of their hair texture/pattern/current length, they are able to achieve long tresses by implementing strategies…

I got my relaxer touch up last week (after another four-month stretch) and am very happy with the results! Here is my length check pic (after cutting off some split ends this morning): 

My thumb in the picture marks my goal by my next relaxer (scheduled for late January 2013/early…

Our healthy hair journeys provide a mix of different feelings. Feelings of elation as we see progress or meet a given length goal.  Feelings of boredom as we continue to go through with the same humdrum processes day in and day out.  Also, we experience a wide range of experiences that cause us to grow in…

Many of us know the feeling: We do something to our hair (overprocessing the hair with heat tools or chemical treatments) and wonder if it will recover or if we just need to chop it all off and start over. While some type of damage may be irreparable, your hair can bounce back from negative treatment if you…

As we trek along on our collective healthy hair journey, many of us eventually begin to look for more natural ways to keep our hair and scalps healthy.  We experiment with natural oils, fruit extracts and a plethora of other items in order to keep our hair growing long and strong. You may not have known that the aloe vera plant is a great natural item to add to your…

Sometimes Grandma is Wrong!

If you are having difficulty stretching your relaxer, don't give up! When you are struggling with your new growth or are experiencing issues such as breakage, it is very easy to give up and just schedule your next relaxer appointment. Trust me when I tell you: When I first started stretching, it wasn't easy. At times, it was so frustrating and I had difficulty managing my hair while my new growth came in. However, I learned certain methods and basic truths about my hair that helped…

If you have ever seen natural castor oil, it may look like a thick, heavy duty oil with few (if any) benefits for your beauty. Au contraire, mon amie! Castor oil is packed with many punches when it comes to enhancing your beauty, and can literally…

Rosemary is a part of the mint family of herbs and  is an incredibly beneficial herb for your scalp and hair. It can help condition your hair, reduce dandruff, strengthen the hair shaft, and stimulate hair growth. You can choose from many rosemary recipes online that you can incorporate into your hair…

Increasing numbers of black women today are going natural, embracing their natural texture and learning how to take healthy care of their curls. However, there are many myths about natural hair that simply need to discarded into a black hole of nonsense and misinformation. Here are seven silly myths…

We all know that one of the key ways to achieve healthier hair is to incorporate protective styles (e.g., buns, braidouts, ponytails) into our styling regimens. However, it is easy to get caught up in the idea of a protective style and forget to fully nourish and protect our hair while in those styles. Here are some ways…

We attended a Natural Hair event in Detroit this March called It's All Good Hair 2 (held at the Charles H. Wright Museum), which showcased a natural hair show, performances, as well as educational seminars. Here are some of the…

Off the the stretching finish line! For the last relaxer, I stretched 15 weeks. For this relaxer, I'm pushing it for a week more (16 weeks). It may just be an additional week of stretching, but I believe in taking it week by week when it comes to adding on stretching time. That way, I slowly evolve with learning how to take care of additional new growth over time. 

I have to pat myself on the back with this one: By Valentine's Day week, I will have reached four months of stretching my…