3 IMPORTANT TIPS YOU SHOULD KNOW WHEN DOING A HOT OIL TREATMENT

                                                                                                                                                               

    As you know I'm still on my relaxer stretch and still researching the best ways to keep the new growth healthy as well as trying to prevent shedding and breakage during this stretch . By march i will be 3 months into my stretch and with the help of  supplements ,good hair care products and general hair care maintenance i think my relaxer stretch is coming on pretty well,so much so that i may decide to stretch much longer than i used to,probably up until May this year.
      If you've also been following my blog on my stretch you will realise that breakage and shedding is something i have also been writing about a lot .For a lot of people who are actually transitioning to natural hair ,the hot oil treatment is like a life saver when you're worried about losing some of your hair after washing your hair .  In this post i will be sharing a few tips on how to to maximise
 the benefits you get when doing a hot oil treatment,so below are some of them.

First Tip : ENSURE YOU USE GLOVES :   When applying the heated oil  ( i use coconut oil) on my hair,i never realised that my cuticles and finger nails were actually responsible for some of the hair i was picking up from either my comb or the floor of my bathroom, i would massage using my fingers and the tip of my fingers ,but because i had a few length of nail growth, it often interfered with sectioning and application,this is because my finger nails would drag or pull the hair strands from the point of demarcation and cause it to break away,hence causing hair breakage, sometimes i would find hair strands trapped in between my chipped nails,this definitely didn't help at all and was also bad for length retention .
    The solution - I got myself some kitchen gloves separately for this , i didn't bother going to get the surgical ones because it made no sense if after each usage they would end up ripping at the tip and eventually i would have to get another pair.

Second Tip : SECTIONING IS VERY ESSENTIAL : I've got really thick hair which often gets thicker during a relaxer stretch , and having a thick hair means it will be quite difficult and sometimes frustrating to reach all areas of the hair when applying products to them or even when detangling.
  So in order to ensure that your hot oil treatment gets to every strand and also to the scalp of your hair ,one has to section the hair. It could be into 4 ,5, or even 6 sections ,which ever is convenient for you and then apply the hot oil to each section working your way from the scalp to the new growth and then to the entire hair. That way you are sure of reaching every where.


Third Tip : LEAVE THE SHOWER CAP ON FOR MUCH LONGER:  Reaching all areas of the hair with the hot oil  is one thing but making sure it penetrates into the fibres of the hair to get maximum results is another. Initially ,after application i would leave the shower cap on for about 20 mins or less ,and then head into the bathroom to wash the hair,i couldn't tell if this short period of time was enough or not to get the oil into the hair shaft but either way i decided to try and leave it on for much longer. Some people do leave theirs on over night which i think is quite good too. The picture above was taken last night during sectioning and application of the hot coconut oil (as you can see the gloves are already greasy in the picture on the right)  and after that i wore my shower cap for about 2 hours before i washed my hair. The difference was really clear , detangling was easy and i didn't get that shrinkage that usually occurs after washing the hair,my hair felt softer too.

     These tips have been really helpful to me especially the first one because i really don't like losing any hair during and after my wash days, i also use gloves when I'm detangling ,moisturising and styling. Feel free to leave your tips and how you apply them in your healthy hair journey,i love hearing from my lovely readers. Thanks for stopping by.

WHAT TIPS  DO YOU APPLY TO YOUR HAIR WHEN USING HAIR CARE PRODUCTS ?