What I noticed about NOT combing the hair often

[Nonie]

Nonie, you know I have to disagree with you on this one. Actually, I have a bit of experience with washing and not combing my entire head, like doing wash and gos 3 days in a row, or doing braided roots wash and gos for 2+ weeks, without having combed my hair for 2 weeks before that. So I know that, even multiple cowashes, even soaked in conditioner or with a curling product, and even with no product, my hair does not make pen spring coils from root to tip. I won't say that all 4b hair doesn't, but I know that mine doesn't. What it can do, however, is make those coils on the ends of the hair. That is what happens when I don't comb. The more I don't comb, the more of the hair that will eventually make it into these pen springs, but it maxes out at 50% on some parts, around 25% on other parts.

There are a couple reasons I think curl clumping might not make it all the way to the root (in addition to the combing). The first is that there are actually fewer and fewer hairs as one moves towards the ends of the hair, only the oldest hair in fact. So the density decreases as one moves away from the scalp. I think the denser the hair is for these tiny curl/kinks, the more strands there are, the more they interfere with each other in terms of clumping. I have a sneaking suspicion that if I had, say, only 60% of the follicles that I have now, my hair would clump more. I think this is why you had better success trying to get only a few strands to clump together. Pictures of your hair when more strands are involved didn't clump in pen springs as far as I could tell. The other reason is that the ends of most types of curly hair tend to be curlier than the center. I think this may have something to do with the ends not having additional hair weighing on them. I know it's not to do with manipulation and what not, because when I cut my hair last time (2-5") the new ends (what was once the middle of the strand) coiled up just like the old ends did. So the key is just getting the hair to be at the end of the strand, if you see what I mean. And then there's also the issue of the perfect coil vs. the z-bend + regular coil, but we talked about this a lot in another topic.

Mwedzi, you and I will just have to agree to disagree on whether people grow Z's out of their heads or not. I will always insist no one has Z's growing out of their heads. Case in point, guys also have 4B hair and I'm yet to see anyone with cornered strands in their short hair or TWAs.

Now on the note of my hair clumping in pen springs. Indeed my previous experiment was done on a small section of my hair. But it is also the only section I ever did a true WNG no finger- or comb-combing (<--- ). All the other pics of my hair you saw before that picture were finger-combed that's why you didn't see that "definition" in previous pictures. Why? Because that "definition" isn't something I have ever thought of or sought to have. In fact, until you or someone else PM'd me what it is that you all call definition, I understood that word to mean a defined uniform pattern through the strands, whether S's or coils/curls. I had no idea that in the hair realm definition was "a defined pattern formed of clumbed strands because they have the same uniform coils that interlock". So I sought to show you that even 4B hair can get that way if not manipulated, but it's not something 4B's could do every day because of the tangles that would ensue. This is why you never saw that in any of my other pics, but there's no question about whether I have coils or not. My hair just didn't clump because I didn't let it clump. Whenever I would have my hair out and drenched in conditioner, I'd be combing it. And whenever I finger comb, my aim is always to keep the strands apart. I never knew clumping would be something that anyone sought to have. *shrug* Another thing that makes type 3 hair show that definition even when combed is because with the coils being bigger, they spoon each other more easily...if that makes sense.

Further to show you that it's not just a select small section of my hair that has definition (I believe my texture is the same all through), I'll repeat a story I shared recently of how I had to detangle my hair after months of never needing to because I just would never let it tangle in the first place. Well, I had worn a twist-out, and then instead of baggying and finger-combing section by section retwisting before moving on to the next as I always do, I decided to try to finger-comb all of them at once (I was considering doing bigger twists). I got so overwhelmed by the huge mass of hair that needed detangling that I just ended up plaiting the tangled hair up and baggying for the night. Figured I could deal with it in the AM when I was less tired. Needless to say, I had quite a major feat the next day. Then I remembered Dsylla's trick of finger-combing with conditioner, so w/o even wetting my hair, I slathered on Organix Vanilla Silk conditioner. This made separating the strands with fingers very easy, but as I was doing it, my hair fell into the cutest pen springs. I was trying to make a movie to show this but I couldn't get the angle right so you could see what I saw in the mirror since I had to balance my camera and use both hands to show the detangling process. Not to mention seeing all the hair in one mass made it hard to see the coils it was falling in. So I ended up just taking pics.

This was my hair all tangled up after I undid the night plaits:

This was my hair with Organix applied during the detangling:

This was my untangled hair rinsed--even though it doesn't look it.

Mwedzi, if I were willing to endure the nightmare of dealing with my hair out of braids or twists in it entirety, I would take pics of it to show you what it does along it's entire length if I don't go out of my way to separates the strands. (It would have to be a panoramic view taken from very close over the entire head because taking pics from afar just shows one big mass.) But I believe the above pics are way bigger than the sections I experimented with before, and show that I do get spirals even on bigger chunks of my hair. And while my aim here wasn't to show definition, my hair still fell into spirals as before and even as I detangled, the spirals along the length were evident.

Anyway, in my response to Bubblingbrownsuga's thread, I was using words like "may be" "I don't know" because I really don't know if my texture has changed as I never really paid attention to texture when I manipulated my hair a lot more--say in high school when I had to comb my hair daily. Actually, it wasn't until I joined the forum that I really paid attention to my hair. I can still remember the day I first noticed the beautiful spirals at the end of my twists. I think it was 2004 when I had decided to go back to a no product regimen. And it was around then that I also realized that unless my hair was drenched in water and conditioner, I would have to stretch it first to get a comb to go through it. By stretching it, the coily strands would become somewhat straight allowing a comb to glide through easily. And really since I transitioned in 2001-2002, I have gone for months w/o combing my hair because it is usually in braids or twists, and I never undo either with a comb (nor do I ever undo all of them at once, but rather undo one at a time then redo before moving on to another). But since I doubt texture can really change, my guess is that non-manipulation just allows my strands to take on their real texture. I already shared before how I think stretching hair to plait or the plaiting effect itself has a way of bending hair back and forth so that the coils appear to take on a different shape. Do that so often and it may appear your hair is made up of Z's.

ETA: I do sorta see how (and so agree with you that) the weight of long hair (and mine isn't as long as yours) can pull on strands making coils look wavy, or different anyway. So I can see how ends can look different from the rest of the hair. I don't see that difference along the length in my hair (yet). Maybe I will when it grows longer...? *shrug*

More pics from of the day of detangling:

 

[Hairsofab]

I totally understand what you mean and wanted to help you understand why people may not be combing so much. It is definitely true that if I combed every day my hair would be less tangled. But I would also have less hair. I believe certain hair types are naturally more fragile than others (certain hair types have more or fewer protein bonds naturally), and while I believe my hair to be in good overall healthy, the comb will break it. I truly believe the comb is the reason why I didn't retain length all these years. As I combed less, my length retention increased greatly. It meant more tangles, but even with the harsher detangling required because of the tangles, it still meant less broken hair than combing every day. Now I just work on finding the perfect balance between combing infrequently enough to not break all my hair off but combing often enough to avoid baby locs.

I agree with your posts on this, at least in my situation. My hair is a similar texture to yours. It is not as long though but I've been growing it out for the past year and a half. I always thought my hair being so kinky meant it was tougher and I had to rake through it more. But now I know it really makes it more fragile. I only comb comb my hair when I wash it, which is now once a week. Other wise I finger through it the rest of the week.

 

[lonei]

I dont comb at all for 3 weeks until wash day. It becomes a bit tangled but I comb it out with NTM leave in and its fine.

 

[blackberry815]

2011 bump...

 

[KurlyNinja]

My hair would give me the side-eye if I decided to bring a comb near it.

I finger comb in the shower with ALOT of condish. And I whip out my trusty denman brush sometimes, but thats not very often.

 

[Nix08]

I'm relaxed and only use a comb from 6+ weeks post

 

[grownwomanaz]

I just started finger combing(while wet/condish) and it's really helped define my highly porous frizzy curls. I had a major aha moment upon discovering that little tid bit.

 

[GoodMernin]

I have been doing the "no comb/1x a week clearing with dc and a pic" for two weeks now and I am enjoying the easiness of it.

It feels as if my hair is softer and fluffier.

And I have also significantly minimized the amount of products that I put my hair.

 

[lilyofthenile]

Not combing is bittersweet for me. Although my hair seems to thrive from not combing or brushing, I need to do it at least once a month to avoid the nightmare tangles I can get.

 

[grownwomanaz]

My hair feels softer and smoother too which is really odd to me, but I'll take it .

 

[JessieLeleB]

Since switching to a keep it simple Reggie I comb once every 2 weeks, used to be once a week. My hair is natural but braids to the back as it gets longer from my BC I dnt need to rebraid it every week.

I do my wash, protein conditioner, moisture conditioner once a week then leave-in and oil every other day.

Once a week I wash my braids in the braids, I condition in my braids and put my leave in and oil on in braids. This takes alot of stress off my hair.

Hopefully by Feb 2012 I can move up to 3 weeks and April move to a month. A month is my max that I want to leave my braids in. Cheapie conditioner works wonders for detangling.


Sent from my iPhone using LHCF

 

[tiffers]

I comb every 2 weeks and after the first week, my curl definition gets pretty insane.

Combing once a week or more really diminishes the curls and I don't like that. When I do detangle, I use Hercules Sagemann combs and take my sweet time. So far, so good.

 

[LaVgirl]

I wear my hair in bunned twists all week. So when I wash my hair (in sections) every 1-2 weeks, I run my fingers through to get rid of shed hair - I might use a wide tooth comb. Add my leave-in and it's back into the twists and bun.