EzrasNumberOneFan
TheLORDisMyShepherd
Okay so not that I think anyone will care or read this but hii!! I'm new here (I've been lurking for mad long but that $6.50 was telling me not to join for the longest time lol) but I figured it was a good time to join because I've finally found out how to moisturize my low, low, low porosity hair after like almost 4 years. (Sad, I know lol)
Before I go into detail, I want to say sorry this is so long in advance! I wanted to include my "hair history" and everything because, as a new member, there is no other info on my hair on here and it helps to know if someone's hair is similar to yours. So sorry!
I have the main subjects in bold so you can just skip to whatever interests you, okay?
Backstory: I've been natural since birth. I'm extremely low porosity, a weird kind of type 4 (I say this because like type 4c I'm easily 85% shrinkage, but most 4c is more cottony than mines, while type 4b hair has zig zags and I don't have those. So I just call it wooly. You know, like sheep hair? A true blessing from the LORD
I'm so glad that my mother never relaxed me and that I never relaxed myself even though I was tempted to texlax because detangling used to be so hard). There are no curls that I can see in it with some random coils coming out when they feel like it. I honestly consider myself 4c, its just not as cottony as the main examples that I usually see. I think it might be because most 4c heads have finer strands, but mine are mostly medium/average, and they grow thicker and coarser as my nutrition gets better. It behaves like a type 4a/4b when styled, but there are no curls or zig-zag pattern. Long story short... I LOVE IT!
I had between shoulder and armpit length as a kid but my mom would just shampoo roughly and blowdry, then put my hair in those big two-strand twists with the little bo-bo-bos at the end lol. This kept on until I was like 9 I think.
I got locs when I was 9 (by choice. My mom and sister was getting them so I was like "I want them too!" Mind you I had no idea that it was permanent... didnt care neither now that I look back. No regrets lol) and I had them until I was in 9th grade. I combed out my 7 year old locs instead of chopping it all off over the length of an entire summer (that was a HOT HOT mess) with a rat-tail comb (the metal end side) and that left me with a foreign head of super kinky (pure 4b/4c), APL hair. Mind you, I was new to ever handling my own hair in my whole life, loose or loc'd.
Long story short, I big chopped that off about 15 months ago due to an extreme struggle. I'm talking about struggles of all kinds. I could go into more detail, but you probably have a life to return to so just know that I did everything and anything trying to learn how to get my chronic dryness and the unsightliness (severaly style challenged) to go away and it wasnt working! lol. Another reason I bced was because detangling was taking me 5-6 hours because I had a good 4 inches of feathering/splits at the ends that would tangle so so SO bad when I washed. I was also not washing enough because I knew 5 hours of detangling and another failure was awaiting me, and I'd end up hopping into the shower with a crap load of shed hair still up in my dome (so it was matted), then using a cheap BSS BRUSH (I can ONLY use wide tooth combs!) to try to detangle the matted mess I was left with... *cringes*
When I think about all of the common sense things that I got wrong back then I get sad sometimes.
So I big chopped out of frustration when I moved and that was on August 2nd of 2015. Now my hair is about collar bone length in the back and chin length in the front (a little shorter in the crown.)
One of my biggest struggles was with moisture (the other was detangling, but I've got that down pact too! yay!). When I tell ya'll my ish was drier than I thought hair could possibly be... not even gonna go there. Just know that it was beyond terrible and it took me so long to recognize all of my hair's triggers. So anyway, lets get on with it.
The things that moisturized my hair:
Soaking! My hair cannot be washed with a shower head, it needs to be soaked and immersed in the water completely for a couple of minutes for the cuticles to open. Now that I think about it, I should have known this a long time ago because when I did that water test (where you sink a strand in water) to check my porosity the strand floated for DAYS, but when I held it under the water for a minute or two and then let it go, it sunk and the strand accepted the water. Try it and see if yours works the same. You'd be amazed at how just using water differently makes a big difference. I fill up my bath and get in, then lay back and keep my entire head under the water, massaging my scalp of dirt with my nails for seven minutes. I do it for seven minutes because 7 is a holy number (a little luck from The Most High will never hurt). Its baby soft when I'm done. I really believe prayer and cleaving unto God has helped heal my head, if not that alone.
I don't use any commercial products - shampoo or conditioner. There is nothing in my routine that takes the moisture out of my hair in the first place because my strands are never shampooed. I use a simple (and more efficient than shampoo for me) mix of 50% white vinegar (because its cheap) and 50% green tea (for shedding and alkalinity) on my SCALP ONLY by using an applicator bottle out of the bathroom. I then massage that into my scalp and let it sit for 10-30 minutes while the tub fills up. Girrrlll vinegar is bomb for a clean scalp! And cheap too. I get like a gallon for $2.00 at Weis. No fuss. I warn you lo-po people to dilute it and not use it on the length of the hair since it is acidic and it will close the cuticles. Scalp only is key.
After that I just clean in the twists as I'm soaking my hair by removing dirt with my nails. I do this weekly. My scalp is cleaner and healthier than ever (and the sebum and natural moisture remains), my shedding has gone down a lot from the tea and my hair is so so soft since there's no shampoo drying it out AND no crappy, protein-filled conditioners making it drier and brittler than hell. Both shampoos AND conditioners were a problem for me. The only answer was removing them both, because believe it or not, these coconut-oil filled, secretly aloe vera juice containing, shea butter filled conditioners were waaayy worse than sulfate shampoos for my low porosity hair! Even the protein-free ones contain either olive or coconut oil, and my hair will not tolerate those. I can only condition with real H20, thank you very much.
And lastly, my beloved leave-in! 50% water and 50% glycerin. Simple. I just apply a little before retwisting and it leaves my hair moisturized for more than a week. No touch-ups necessary.
For so long I hated that my hair was so dry, wishing for normal porosity, but now I realize that low porosity is a blessing! My hair was just trying to tell me that it doesn't need all of the extra stuff. Not even conditioner. It just wasn't accepting water in the first place. And even the leave-in that works for me now is based upon holding water to my hair (glycerin is a humectant. And for anyone wondering, I began using it in the middle of a dry, zero-humidity winter - still works AMAZING. When premixed with water, glycerin does not pull in or out an excess water in any environment or humidity. Just don't use it straight and you can use it all year round.)
For any low-porosity and frustrated people out there, stay motivated because low porosity will stay moisturized for DAAYSS when you find out what works for you. Good things takes a lot of work in the making.
(If anyone wants details on how to detangle 4b/4c hair faster and with less breakage, message me. I've been there done ALLL of that and I'll help you in a heart beat!!)
I hope this helps somebody. Have a good day!! (And again, sorry this was so long! Don't come for me! lol)
Before I go into detail, I want to say sorry this is so long in advance! I wanted to include my "hair history" and everything because, as a new member, there is no other info on my hair on here and it helps to know if someone's hair is similar to yours. So sorry!
I have the main subjects in bold so you can just skip to whatever interests you, okay?Backstory: I've been natural since birth. I'm extremely low porosity, a weird kind of type 4 (I say this because like type 4c I'm easily 85% shrinkage, but most 4c is more cottony than mines, while type 4b hair has zig zags and I don't have those. So I just call it wooly. You know, like sheep hair? A true blessing from the LORD
I'm so glad that my mother never relaxed me and that I never relaxed myself even though I was tempted to texlax because detangling used to be so hard). There are no curls that I can see in it with some random coils coming out when they feel like it. I honestly consider myself 4c, its just not as cottony as the main examples that I usually see. I think it might be because most 4c heads have finer strands, but mine are mostly medium/average, and they grow thicker and coarser as my nutrition gets better. It behaves like a type 4a/4b when styled, but there are no curls or zig-zag pattern. Long story short... I LOVE IT! I had between shoulder and armpit length as a kid but my mom would just shampoo roughly and blowdry, then put my hair in those big two-strand twists with the little bo-bo-bos at the end lol. This kept on until I was like 9 I think.
I got locs when I was 9 (by choice. My mom and sister was getting them so I was like "I want them too!" Mind you I had no idea that it was permanent... didnt care neither now that I look back. No regrets lol) and I had them until I was in 9th grade. I combed out my 7 year old locs instead of chopping it all off over the length of an entire summer (that was a HOT HOT mess) with a rat-tail comb (the metal end side) and that left me with a foreign head of super kinky (pure 4b/4c), APL hair. Mind you, I was new to ever handling my own hair in my whole life, loose or loc'd.
Long story short, I big chopped that off about 15 months ago due to an extreme struggle. I'm talking about struggles of all kinds. I could go into more detail, but you probably have a life to return to so just know that I did everything and anything trying to learn how to get my chronic dryness and the unsightliness (severaly style challenged) to go away and it wasnt working! lol. Another reason I bced was because detangling was taking me 5-6 hours because I had a good 4 inches of feathering/splits at the ends that would tangle so so SO bad when I washed. I was also not washing enough because I knew 5 hours of detangling and another failure was awaiting me, and I'd end up hopping into the shower with a crap load of shed hair still up in my dome (so it was matted), then using a cheap BSS BRUSH (I can ONLY use wide tooth combs!) to try to detangle the matted mess I was left with... *cringes*
When I think about all of the common sense things that I got wrong back then I get sad sometimes.
So I big chopped out of frustration when I moved and that was on August 2nd of 2015. Now my hair is about collar bone length in the back and chin length in the front (a little shorter in the crown.)
One of my biggest struggles was with moisture (the other was detangling, but I've got that down pact too! yay!). When I tell ya'll my ish was drier than I thought hair could possibly be... not even gonna go there. Just know that it was beyond terrible and it took me so long to recognize all of my hair's triggers. So anyway, lets get on with it.
The things that moisturized my hair:
Soaking! My hair cannot be washed with a shower head, it needs to be soaked and immersed in the water completely for a couple of minutes for the cuticles to open. Now that I think about it, I should have known this a long time ago because when I did that water test (where you sink a strand in water) to check my porosity the strand floated for DAYS, but when I held it under the water for a minute or two and then let it go, it sunk and the strand accepted the water. Try it and see if yours works the same. You'd be amazed at how just using water differently makes a big difference. I fill up my bath and get in, then lay back and keep my entire head under the water, massaging my scalp of dirt with my nails for seven minutes. I do it for seven minutes because 7 is a holy number (a little luck from The Most High will never hurt). Its baby soft when I'm done. I really believe prayer and cleaving unto God has helped heal my head, if not that alone.
I don't use any commercial products - shampoo or conditioner. There is nothing in my routine that takes the moisture out of my hair in the first place because my strands are never shampooed. I use a simple (and more efficient than shampoo for me) mix of 50% white vinegar (because its cheap) and 50% green tea (for shedding and alkalinity) on my SCALP ONLY by using an applicator bottle out of the bathroom. I then massage that into my scalp and let it sit for 10-30 minutes while the tub fills up. Girrrlll vinegar is bomb for a clean scalp! And cheap too. I get like a gallon for $2.00 at Weis. No fuss. I warn you lo-po people to dilute it and not use it on the length of the hair since it is acidic and it will close the cuticles. Scalp only is key.
After that I just clean in the twists as I'm soaking my hair by removing dirt with my nails. I do this weekly. My scalp is cleaner and healthier than ever (and the sebum and natural moisture remains), my shedding has gone down a lot from the tea and my hair is so so soft since there's no shampoo drying it out AND no crappy, protein-filled conditioners making it drier and brittler than hell. Both shampoos AND conditioners were a problem for me. The only answer was removing them both, because believe it or not, these coconut-oil filled, secretly aloe vera juice containing, shea butter filled conditioners were waaayy worse than sulfate shampoos for my low porosity hair! Even the protein-free ones contain either olive or coconut oil, and my hair will not tolerate those. I can only condition with real H20, thank you very much.
And lastly, my beloved leave-in! 50% water and 50% glycerin. Simple. I just apply a little before retwisting and it leaves my hair moisturized for more than a week. No touch-ups necessary.
For so long I hated that my hair was so dry, wishing for normal porosity, but now I realize that low porosity is a blessing! My hair was just trying to tell me that it doesn't need all of the extra stuff. Not even conditioner. It just wasn't accepting water in the first place. And even the leave-in that works for me now is based upon holding water to my hair (glycerin is a humectant. And for anyone wondering, I began using it in the middle of a dry, zero-humidity winter - still works AMAZING. When premixed with water, glycerin does not pull in or out an excess water in any environment or humidity. Just don't use it straight and you can use it all year round.)
For any low-porosity and frustrated people out there, stay motivated because low porosity will stay moisturized for DAAYSS when you find out what works for you. Good things takes a lot of work in the making.
(If anyone wants details on how to detangle 4b/4c hair faster and with less breakage, message me. I've been there done ALLL of that and I'll help you in a heart beat!!)
I hope this helps somebody. Have a good day!! (And again, sorry this was so long! Don't come for me! lol)
to LHCF!
Welcome out of lurkdom. I wash my hair in the shower but I am with you when it comes to making sure my low- normal po hair is saturated with water. The moisture lasts for days and days.
and 
I saw some straight apple cider vinegar hiding in my house that im going to try and I'll use some coffee for shedding since I heard its stronger. I'm also making a coffee spritz for my eyebrows since I know caffeine works for me like crazy. I was originally using it on my eyelashes and now my eyelashes won't fall out and they're OD long . Also, it seems like I don't get fallout or breakage pieces since I started using tea in my shampoo. I think the breakage part is from moisture though. Caffeine works amazing for me. Let's see if it thickens my eyebrows 
the only problem I'm having currently is feeling the need to retwist... only like 11 months to go.
maybe the soak was the difference for me. I hope so.
