Just Another Natural Hair Update! Braiding Too Tightly Almost Costed Me My Hair!

Good morning again!  I seriously feel like I'm on a role today because I haven't written this much in one day in a really long time and I have to admit that it feels pretty darn good.  Anyways I wanted to share one more update and two collages with you because I feel that this topic that I want to write about is very important when it comes to natural hair care.

Now I love to do protective styles because they're so easy o keep up with and once I have a protective style set and ready for the week, I for the most part won't have to mess around with my hair for a whole week until it's time to take everything down and go on from there.  With that said I accidently reminded myself the importance of not putting too much strain on my roots by pulling too tightly when doing a protective style and I want to share that reminder with you.

Now what exactly happened?  Well two weeks ago I discovered that my hair was having a hard time drying with the protective style that I had had in previously so I came up with the solution to take everything down, wash and condition my hair, then part my hair into slightly smaller sections so that my roots could breath a little easier, and braid my hair versus the twisting because I wanted to see how my hair would do with the braids vs. the twists.

Now I wish that would had taken pictures when I took my braids down the first week because my ends were beautifully preserved and the moisture retention was awesome!  And to top it all off my hair did a much better job drying that week.  So with the success that I had that first week I decided that I was going to do the same exact thing all over again, so I changed a few parts but I took my grease mixture and proceeded to grease my hair and scalp and then started to braid my hair all over again.  My braids lasted me one day and then I ended up taking them down because I accidentally braided my hair too tightly towards my roots which was causing me some discomfort.  Whenever I set a protective style for myself I make sure that My scalp feels good and I make sure that there isn't a section of hair that's pulling too tightly, because I'm not stranger to traction alopecia.

What is traction alopecia?  It's a type of hair loss that happens over time due to to much pulling or tension on the hair and it's not something that I want to have to deal with again.  If you want to do more reading on traction alopecia I will have a link to a website that helped me learn about it so be sure to check that out if you are interested.

So what did I do to fix my protective style that was causing me discomfort?  I took the braids down but replaced the braids with loose twists.  I tried over and over to braid as loosely as I possibly could but I just couldn't do it, so I'll be practicing that until I can get the braiding down with hurting myself because I actually like how the braids protect my ends more.

Not to say that I don't like how my hair came out with the large twist because I was really feeling my hair on this day and the day after!  Well I just wanted to share my experience with almost causing more damage to my hair so that I could use my story as an example to be careful!  No hair style is worth the risk of loosing your own God given hair.

Be blessed and I'll be talking to you on the next one!!

Learn more about traction alopecia -  http://www.hairsentinel.com/traction-alopecia.html