Building Your Own Hair Regimen

Building Your Own Hair Regimen

A hair regimen is a hair routine or hair plan. Learn how to build one for your lifestyle.  To grow long hair there is no special cream or pill to make your hair grow faster you need to properly care for your hair.

To draw a hair regimen, you need to start with a skeleton. Begin with the basic things you would need to do to your hair such as, shampooing, co-washing, and deep conditioning, depending on your hair and preferences. Next, try choosing special treatments you would like to try, depending on what you know what works for you or what you think would work for your hair.

After drawing up a simple daily plan of what you’d like to do to your hair on a daily basis along with the products you’d like to be using, it’s time to try them. Try the regimen for at least three weeks and after that, cross out whatever might not have worked and keep going like this until you get your own custom made hair regimen. Of course you can play around with it as the seasons change or your hair changes (length, needs, etc.) but whatever you do, try keeping the main regimen as the reference. Do not try changing anything in your hair regimen if everything’s working fine! If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.

Key questions: How often will I wash my hair? Deep condition? Protein treatment?  Hot oil? Clarify? Style? Trim? Rotate shampoos and conditioner?

Example:

  Here are some guidelines:

CLEANSE

How often to wash my hair? 1-2 times a week is recommended for kinky curly hair with a moisturizing sulfate free shampoo. You don’t have to shampoo every wash. Try Co-washing mid week with a big shampoo once a week. For example, wash your hair with shampoo and conditioner on Sunday and then wash your hair with conditioner only on Wednesday.

CONDITION

How often to deep condition –Coat your hair with a rich quality penetrating conditioner. Not the quick surface kind.  We are talking about a DEEP conditioner. This is typically done 1-2 times a month for 20-30 minutes with heat for extra penetration.  The amount of times is up to you. If you are a 3 times a week co-washer then deep conditioning can be cut down to once a month as moisture will likely not be an issue for your hair. If however you wash once per week, then make your big washday a deep conditioning day also!

 MOISTURIZE

Try to wet your hair every 3 days. This counts as a wash day, co wash day, or a day where your spritz it with water or your spray bottle concoction, add a water based moisturizer etc

Always moisturize & seal: Water based moisturizers penetrate the hair shaft, oil based moisturizers coats the hair shaft (and seals moisture in or out). To use the two effectively, you will need to apply your water-based moisturizer first, then the oil based. The reason for this is that oils and other “moisturizing” products that contain petrolatum, lanolin, and mineral oil do not moisturize your hair effectively. Instead they seal moisture in or out of your hair. They should only be used to seal the hair and add shine. Try applying your oil moisturizer after rinsing the moisture treatment to combat dryness. But do note that mineral oil, petroleum and lanolin will build up on your hair quickly without the use of sulfate shampoo. Instead try shea butter and penetrating oil like coconut, avocado and olive oil.  

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