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Straight Hair Natural's Support Thread

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Wash day was yesterday.
Cleansed with Olaplex 4
DC'd with Olaplex 5 (kept in for 20 mins)
Styler was Chi Keratin Smoothing Treatment (2 pumps)
Heat protectant was Olaplex 9 (1 pump)
Flatironed at 440F, one pass

I put in 4 flexi rods overnight, and I'm so happy with how it came out! Gave me a nice little curl.

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I’m thinking of going back to being a heat trained natural. I’m tired of having to wear fake hair. My hair was longest as a natural when I used to press and flat iron my hair. I’ve been wearing braids right now but I would like to be a little more professional looking and put together now that I am working in a different setting
 
I flat ironed my hair and it poofed up immediately. Idk what I did wrong i used a heat protectant spray and a serum and it was a poofball. I tried everything but nothing can tame it other than pressing oil and a hot comb
 
Napp said:
I flat ironed my hair and it poofed up immediately. Idk what I did wrong i used a heat protectant spray and a serum and it was a poofball. I tried everything but nothing can tame it other than pressing oil and a hot comb
Click to expand...
I saw on some stylist IG that split ends can cause hair to poof after a press. Do you think you need a trim?

www.instagram.com

Lazhane Hightower on Instagram: "Reading the hair throughout the whole service will forever save you. Don’t wait until your knee deep in the silk press and realize it’s puffing up because an awkward conversation will follow. Not every hair style

12K likes, 389 comments - hairbynay247 on October 13, 2023: "Reading the hair throughout the whole service will forever save you. Don’t wait until your knee deep in the silk press and realize it’s puffing up because an awkward conversation will follow. Not every hair style is suitable for...
www.instagram.com www.instagram.com
 
GettingKinky said:
I saw on some stylist IG that split ends can cause hair to poof after a press. Do you think you need a trim?

www.instagram.com

Lazhane Hightower on Instagram: "Reading the hair throughout the whole service will forever save you. Don’t wait until your knee deep in the silk press and realize it’s puffing up because an awkward conversation will follow. Not every hair style

12K likes, 389 comments - hairbynay247 on October 13, 2023: "Reading the hair throughout the whole service will forever save you. Don’t wait until your knee deep in the silk press and realize it’s puffing up because an awkward conversation will follow. Not every hair style is suitable for...
www.instagram.com www.instagram.com
Click to expand...
I just gave myself a trim. I have very fine hair and just need something to give my strands some weight
 
Bunping this thread!

Rollersetting is cute and all, but my results are so hit or miss. It's really hit the day of; miss the next morning because the curls don't stay. I wanted to use less heat, but flat ironing gives me so much versatility and it looks better LOL.

I need to decide if I'm rewashing my hair this weekend, or if I'm going to just brush it out and flat iron it as is.
 
Finally got around to doing my hair and decided to do something new. . .I didn't use conditioner and I didn't add a heat protectant!!!

Washed with Malibu C Un-Do-Goo Shampoo 2x
Detangled with shampoo
Dried hair in microfiber towel
Applied Chi Keratin Treatment (2 pumps to both side)
Blowdried with denman brush
Flat ironed 1 pass on 440

I thought that the Malibu shampoo would be stripping, but it was very moisturizing and that's what made me feel good about not adding conditioner. I also reread the Chi Keratin Treatment and saw that it doesn't suggest adding a heat protectant, but to go straight to blowdrying and flatironing.

Results: My hair feels exactly the same as it usually does after flatironing. My wash day was less than 1.5 hrs, which is great!

I'm curious to see how my hair does over the next week or two (fingers crossed).

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My order for The Doux Press Play Collection is waiting for me at the post office. Yay! I also bought Saleeah Cartwright's book entitled "Heat Training Natural Hair 101." The book gave me some food for thought on how to navigate using heat on my hair.

I don't actually care if my curl pattern loosens some. I just want to be able to flip flop back and forth between straight and curly without breakage.
 
DVAntDany said:
My order for The Doux Press Play Collection is waiting for me at the post office. Yay! I also bought Saleeah Cartwright's book entitled "Heat Training Natural Hair 101." The book gave me some food for thought on how to navigate using heat on my hair.

I don't actually care if my curl pattern loosens some. I just want to be able to flip flop back and forth between straight and curly without breakage.
Click to expand...
You might like my channel. It isn't much right now and I am probably going to wait until it gets warm again(in spring after Easter) to fully straighten the next time, BUT I switch between natural, straight, and stretched styles regularly and I am going to demonstrate how I do that efficiently. This year will be my 20th year fully natural, so, I wanted to celebrate it. I am doing that by sharing the way I do hair stuff on YouTube. Feel free to look at my lhcf media album for receipts (my fotki album is long gone, but I will make a hair journey video for my 20th anniversary later this year). I have been getting the most out of switching my hair up for decades and this year I will demonstrate how I do that, on my channel. It will take a while to get up a set of videos since my schedule only allows me to do one a week, but if you want some free examples of how to go from natural to straight then stretched and back again and you want to see how I do it in my everyday regimen that isn't a burden, I will be posting it on youtube. Disclaimer: I wear a mask in some of my videos. I know some people recognize me in real life and I am not hiding my identity...but the mask is for a healthy boundary between online and real life.

My upcoming video will be on reverting my current press back to coily. After that my full post-press wash day. If you are interested in demonstrations of some of the stuff I have spoken about on here over the years, you might like what my channel brings. Happy straightening. It is absolutely possible to press your hair without bad breakage.

 
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Lylddlebit said:
You might like my channel. It isn't much right now and I am probably going to wait until it gets warm again(in spring after Easter) to fully straighten the next time, BUT I switch between natural, straight, and stretched styles regularly and I am going to demonstrate how I do that efficiently. This year will be my 20th year fully natural, so, I wanted to celebrate it. I am doing that by sharing the way I do hair stuff on YouTube. Feel free to look at my lhcf media album for receipts (my fotki album is long gone, but I will make a hair journey video for my 20th anniversary later this year). I have been getting the most out of switching my hair up for decades and this year I will demonstrate how I do that, on my channel. It will take a while to get up a set of videos since my schedule only allows me to do one a week, but if you want some free examples of how to go from natural to straight then stretched and back again and you want to see how I do it in my everyday regimen that isn't a burden, I will be posting it on youtube. Disclaimer: I wear a mask in some of my videos. I know some people recognize me in real life and I am not hiding my identity...but the mask is for a healthy boundary between online and real life.

My upcoming video will be on reverting my current press back to coily. After that my full post-press wash day. If you are interested in demonstrations of some of the stuff I have spoken about on here over the years, you might like what my channel brings. Happy straightening. It is absolutely possible to press your hair without bad breakage.

Click to expand...
I enjoyed watching your videos. However, I was not prepared for your mask even though you warned me about it. LOL
 
So I read Saleemah's book. While most of what she said made sense in the scheme of things made, I was left with questions. Some of her ideas contradict cosmetic chemists, but most of it is neither here nor there. I just found it interesting that Saleemah felt blowdrying the hair alone was a way of heat training. The blowdrying method is to start once a month with blowdrying. Then you increase the blowdrying sessions to 2 times a month. I guess someone could even do once a week. This is suppose to be most gentle method of heat training and takes the longest to see results.The temperatures of most blowdryers don't go over 250F. Hair protein starts degrading depending on who you talk to somewhere after 350F to 375F. Since hair is a fiber and most fibers can be stretched out over time, I don't know if the blowdryer heat is directly what is breaking the disulfide bond for heat training. Pulling your hair back in a ponytail especially when wet too often can permanently stretch out curls. So not everything is heat related.

Saleemah even mentions not to use round-brushes too often because they will weaken the elasticity of the hair by constantly stretching the strands. I understand that hair is the weakest when wet. However, using the heat of a flat iron is traditionally considered more damaging to the internal structure of hair than the pulling of a round brush. The inside of a hair strand is where the elasticity lies. She says that having straight ends as a heat trained natural is perfectly fine if a person wears their hair straight all of the time. Are not those straight pieces the hair that has weakened elasticity? Round brushing and blowdryers are more likely to damage the cuticles and remove the lipid layer. If done properly, it will also eliminate the need to use a flat iron.

Then I started looking for journal articles on mechanical damage causing disulfide bonds to break before I said nuh-uh she is wrong. I found this one. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0006349522003289. This article is a little more technical than I wanted it to be. It seems as though if you go past a hair's tensile strength, hair will break no matter what. The sites at which the disulfide bonds break differ depending on if the hair is wet or dry. This only leaves me with more questions. Will a bond builder prevent the disulfide bond breakage or at least mitigate it? If so, will bond builders/peptide repair products stop or prevent the hair from even being heat trained with or elasticity lost from the mechanical use of tools?

What do you all think? Do you think the heat from blowdrying has the ability to heat train hair?
 
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DVAntDany said:
So I read Saleemah's book. While most of what she said made sense in the scheme of things made, I was left with questions. Some of her ideas contradict cosmetic chemists, but most of it is neither here nor there. I just found it interesting that Saleemah felt blowdrying the hair alone was a way of heat training. The blowdrying method is to start once a month with blowdrying. Then you increase the blowdrying sessions to 2 times a month. I guess someone could even do once a week. This is suppose to be most gentle method of heat training and takes the longest to see results.The temperatures of most blowdryers don't go over 250F. Hair protein starts degrading depending on who you talk to somewhere after 350F to 375F. Since hair is a fiber and most fibers can be stretched out over time, I don't know if the blowdryer heat is directly what is breaking the disulfide bond for heat training. Pulling your hair back in a ponytail especially when wet too often can permanently stretch out curls. So not everything is heat related.

Saleemah even mentions not to use round-brushes too often because they will weaken the elasticity of the hair by constantly stretching the strands. I understand that hair is the weakest when wet. However, using the heat of a flat iron is traditionally considered more damaging to the internal structure of hair than the pulling of a round brush. The inside of a hair strand is where the elasticity lies. She says that having straight ends as a heat trained natural is perfectly fine if a person wears their hair straight all of the time. Are not those straight pieces the hair that has weakened elasticity? Round brushing and blowdryers are more likely to damage the cuticles and remove the lipid layer. If done properly, it will also eliminate the need to use a flat iron.

Then I started looking for journal articles on mechanical damage causing disulfide bonds to break before I said nuh-uh she is wrong. I found this one. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0006349522003289. This article is a little more technical than I wanted it to be. It seems as though if you go past a hair's tensile strength, hair will break no matter what. The sites at which the disulfide bonds break differ depending on if the hair is wet or dry. This only leaves me with more questions. Will a bond builder prevent the disulfide bond breakage or at least mitigate it? If so, will bond builders/peptide repair products stop or prevent the hair from even being heat trained with or elasticity lost from the mechanical use of tools?

What do you all think? Do you think the heat from blowdrying has the ability to heat train hair?
Click to expand...
I think that under the right conditions certain hair characteristics would allow someone to heat train through blowdrying. If you have fine strands, then maybe. If you have coarse, thick strands, probably not.

I remember that there was a natural on YouTube years ago (I think that it may have been Longhairdontcare) who eventually heat trained her hair with monthly blowdrying over the course of years.
 
DVAntDany said:
I enjoyed watching your videos. However, I was not prepared for your mask even though you warned me about it. LOL
Click to expand...
@DVAntDany You must have known that those of us inclined to put off watching @Lylddlebit ’s videos are immediately going to rush over to see this mask business. ;) :lol: Well done, very smart way to make sure we click the link. :lol:

And when I saw “mask” I thought of several possibilities, but NOT what is worn in the video. :look:

(Oh, and to get back to actual hair talk, that video about re-moisturizing an old press is excellent; I would never think that press was over 3 weeks old, and even less so at the end. :love: )
 
I finally used The Doux's Press Play collection on my hair bright and early this morning. The fragrance for this collection is unique. All of the products felt very light weight. The shampoo was kinda strange. It has absolutely no lather. The directions for the conditioner say to apply generously, but each squirt from the pump is pretty small. I decided to use the silent treatment. It barely feels like anything on the hair. I probably used more than intended because I had my hair in about 8 to 10 sections vs the recommended 4 to 6 sections. The O.P.P. felt nice on the hair. It wasn't spray starchy or spritz-like as some wet heat protectants can feel. The Doux Drops is ultra lightweight, but does give some additional sheen. Its also as fragrant as the shampoo and conditioner.

I decided to try out Saleemah's plan and start with using the lowest setting of 350F for my fine hair. I used the Revair hairdryer to blow-dry my hair. At first I did it on low heat with highest speed and my roots were left cool to the touch as if still damp. I switched to high heat and highest speed (7) and everything dried nicely. Also, the high heat portions were straighter and flatter. I flat ironed my hair on 350F with both a ceramic and titanium flat iron. I didn't really see a drastic difference. I actually felt the ceramic got my hair a little straighter. 350F left my ends look crinkly. I did do a test section at 380F and my hair looked silky smooth. I can officially say that 350 isn't strong enough for me.

Also, strike 1 for cosmetic chemist info. They say it is better to use the lowest heat setting multiple times than a high heat setting only once. They also say that going over the hair at lower heat setting multiple times can eventually get the hair straight. The mirco crimps did not leave the section I went over 3 times at 350F. I guess there is some validity to what these stylists are saying.:lol:

This is my hair after I took it out of my bun.

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@DVAntDany Thank you so much for sharing your product review and pics!! You're hair looks so full! Lovely!
I'm shocked that your hair is so straight on 380. I've tried 410, 425, and even 430F. My hair would start to revert before I finished the other half of my hair LOL. I currently do 440F (titanium) with 1 pass, but I might try going down to 430 with 2 passes. I'll give it a try my next wash day.
 
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