Single Strand Knots - Do You Treat Them As Damaged Hair?

[sunflora]

Do you consider your SSKs as 'damage' and get a trim/cut when you have an abundance of them

OR

Do you simply ignore them and carry on with your life?

Has anyone noticed the appearance of SSKs decrease once hair has gotten longer? I'm really praying this happens. I think a good part of the reason I stay stuck at SL is my SSKs. I've gotten an influx recently after straightening, I did not blow dry my hair straight enough before flat-ironing. Trying to search and destroy but there are A LOT.

 

[OhTall1]

Do you consider your SSKs as 'damage' and get a trim/cut when you have an abundance of them

OR

Do you simply ignore them and carry on with your life?

SSKs can be the source of future damage so I do S&Ds as I find them.

 

[Tyra]

I don’t consider it damaged. I have fine strands and sometimes SSKs just come with the territory. If I notice an abundance, I take time to assess my hair and see if something else is going on. Sometimes I find that I could use a trim, or I could stand to step up my moisture game.
For the most part, I’m not bothered by the occasional ssk. Truth be told, sometimes I just snap it off and keep it moving.

 

[I Am So Blessed]

They are just part of the package with natural hair. Don't trim them so much. I trim my 4B hair every 6-8 months. If I trimmed every time I saw SSK I'd be still at neck length, I am past WL now. I embrace the single knots. Leave them alone.

 

[faithVA]

For me SSKs are damaged hair. My hair is tightly curled with extreme shrinkage. I only dust my ends every 3 to 4 months, but I search and destroy regularly. If I don't get rid of them, my hair curls up, they grab other hairs and and I end up with sections of split and broken hairs. They also lead to tangles.

I wouldn't do a trim or dust every time though. I think its better to stick a a regular trimming schedule. And if your hair needs it do a search and destroy. Some people can just leave them but it doesn't work for my hair. Dusting my hair every time wouldn't work either because they would just be back in 2 or 3 weeks

If you haven't had a trim in a well and you have a lot, then you should get one. But if you have had one in the past 3 months, then just search and destroy as you can until your next scheduled trim.

 

[Sanddreams]

Do you consider your SSKs as 'damage' and get a trim/cut when you have an abundance of them

OR

Do you simply ignore them and carry on with your life?

Has anyone noticed the appearance of SSKs decrease once hair has gotten longer? I'm really praying this happens. I think a good part of the reason source I stay stuck at SL is my SSKs. I've gotten an influx recently hair after straightening, I did not blow dry my hair straight enough before flat-ironing. Trying to search and destroy but there are A LOT.

Nope, and only a few times a year. I feel like this way it gives me overall better growth.

 

[GGsKin]

I wanna like this again. +1 for all of what @faithVA said, minus the extreme shrinkage.

For me SSKs are damaged hair. My hair is tightly curled with extreme shrinkage. I only dust my ends every 3 to 4 months, but I search and destroy regularly. If I don't get rid of them, my hair curls up, they grab other hairs and and I end up with sections of split and broken hairs. They also lead to tangles.

I wouldn't do a trim or dust every time though. I think its better to stick a a regular trimming schedule. And if your hair needs it do a search and destroy. Some people can just leave them but it doesn't work for my hair. Dusting my hair every time wouldn't work either because they would just be back in 2 or 3 weeks

If you haven't had a trim in a well and you have a lot, then you should get one. But if you have had one in the past 3 months, then just search and destroy as you can until your next scheduled trim.

 

[snoop]

I just ignore them and assume that there are a few. However, if I see a lot of them then I realize that my hair is telling me that it's parched and I need to do something to hydrate it.

 

[I Am So Blessed]

I just ignore them and assume that there are a few. However, if I see a lot of them then I realize that my hair is telling me that it's parched and I need to do something to hydrate it.

Same. My hair is so moisturized and my ends are slicked with grease so I get very few and ignore them until it's trim time. I use to trim my hair over every little thing and I hardly saw progress. Just like in life, if you sweat the small stuff you won't be around for the big stuff.

 

[charmtreese]

I just cut them out whenever I run across one. While moisturizing my hair I will feel the ends of my hair, and if I feel a knot I will just segregate it, and snip it out. I consider them damaging and feel that they will only snag onto other healthy hairs and create more tangles and knots.

 

[PlanetCybertron]

Do you consider your SSKs as 'damage' and get a trim/cut when you have an abundance of them

OR

Do you simply ignore them and carry on with your life?

Has anyone noticed the appearance of SSKs decrease once hair has gotten longer? I'm really praying this happens. I think a good part of the reason I stay stuck at SL is my SSKs. I've gotten an influx recently after straightening, I did not blow dry my hair straight enough before flat-ironing. Trying to search and destroy but there are A LOT.

It really depends.

I personally don’t consider SSKs as damage. Simply because it’s more to do with my texture, as to why they form. I can get them all the way at my roots where the hair is still rather Virgin, espeacially if no relaxer has touched any strands.
I’ve also noticed that for me, shedding typically is the main culprit of SSKs. I’ll separate them down to the last strand and it the last one usually is a shed hair that’s decided to wrap itself around a group of hairs.

However, I don’t just ignore them and go about my day. I’ll sit there for however long it takes to get them separated. I use a sewing needle for those extremely tight ones so I rarely snip them if I find them. Which is on a bit of a weekly basis. Maybe once every odd numbered months I’ll find a knot that can’t be saved so I’ll snip those 1-3 hairs that are caught.


I don’t get a trim if I find an abundance of them. As stated before I don’t consider them damaged. But I noticed an added protein treatment helps. And cones in the form of some type of serum. Oil does the trick, but I use my oils more for coating than anything else.

As my hair gets longer, they appear more and more frequently to be honest with you. However that may just be me and my hair texture. Because even when I was natural, they just popped up frequently as my hair grew longer. I have extremely fine strands and more often than not my hair just floats around as a whole, if I have it loose. I wish it had a bit more weight to it so that the strands can hang a bit heavier due to gravity being....well, gravity. I’ve noticed that even at this length the longest parts of my hair don’t really hang, they kind of just float and drift around each other and it typically leads to knots and tangling. So I keep my hair up pretty much all day every day, but wash day where I let my hair air dry, they just....fluff and float as they dry lol.


I think people with a thicker diameter of individuals hairs probably don’t have that problem much, if at all. Overall density probably is something to factor in as well. I have quite a bit of density to my hair, coupled with it being delicately fine. Even when it’s sopping wet, and I have it clipped up, I can still barely feel my hair on my head.

Blow drying, or just standing in front of a very powerful fan to speed up air drying helps a lot versus having damp hair, at least for me when it comes to knots. If my hair is dry the shed strands tend to come out one by one, since most of them get stuck around the first 15-20inches of hair that I have. It’s also where my hair starts to taper mostly from the breakage that’s caused by that over the years. If my hair is damp they clump together which catches them all in some type of ball, but still irritates me a lot.

I kind of just deal with it because my shedding rate and growth rate are both waaaaaaaay up there. Espeacially when protective styling for some odd weeks, and then I take whatever style it is, down. One one hand i protective style to preserve my hair, on the other hand, I try to tend to my scalp to ease the shedding and sensitivity. Sometimes it helps for several days to stretch my washes, and sometimes I’m fed up with letting the shedding build up so I’ll take two days or so to sepearate every last strand or wash more frequently so that the water flow can help detangle my hair more often.


So I’d say it depends again. At longer lengths they may decrease, or increase. I think hair diameter, and density play an important role too, as well as how much shed hair you have on a daily and weekly, and even monthly basis.

 

[rileypak]

I don't consider them to be damage (barring the state of some of my ends). My hair coils and it is what it is. I snip them off when they annoy me or bring other strands into the mix. For the most part though, I just consider them a part of my natural hair life.

 

[YvetteWithJoy]

I asked my hair stylist if my hair could be okay with the SSKs that are midshaft (she removed the ones on my ends).

She said the integrity of my strands are okay even if they have SSKs. She said I shouldn't worry about it.

She's been doing and growing out hair for at least a decade. But otherwise, I can't attest to her knowledge base.

Her words were reassuring. She advised me to remove SSKs on my ends via a trim every 3-4 months, since they cause tangling on my hair.

 

[NowIAmNappy]

I dont consider them to be damaged hair unless they are creating knots with my other strands, generally do this when its time for me to trim. I trim every 4-5 months