Safiya Damani

In the last hair sense ar­ti­cle I touched on some ba­sic prin­ci­ples we should re­mem­ber when de­tan­gling our hair. These in­clud­ed: when the hair should be de­tan­gled and how it should be de­tan­gled. To­day, I will fur­ther ad­dress these is­sues for dif­fer­ent hair types and lengths. All types of hair do not re­quire the same kind of at­ten­tion where de­tan­gling is con­cerned. The curli­er your hair is, the more dif­fi­cult it will be to de­tan­gle. Straight or curly hair may en­counter prob­lems with knots and tan­gles when it is washed in an open or out state. As you wash your hair un­der these con­di­tions, the out­er lay­er of the hair cu­ti­cle is lift­ed, caus­ing it to get hooked on­to oth­er hairs. This en­cour­ages tan­gling. Hair that has been shed from the scalp but is still lurk­ing around in the hair can al­so latch it­self on to oth­er hairs and con­tribute to tan­gling. There­fore it is im­por­tant that the hair be de­tan­gled thor­ough­ly to avoid this kind of tan­gling dur­ing sham­poo­ing.

Mat­ted hair: Hair can be­come mat­ted due to prod­uct build-up in the hair or be­cause of hair that is no longer at­tached to the scalp be­com­ing in­ter­twined with the rest of hair. It can al­so be a com­bi­na­tion of the two fac­tors. Wa­ter can be used to soft­en the mat­ted sec­tion of hair. This al­lows for you to eas­i­ly take apart the hair with your fin­gers. You may tear some of your hair in the process but this may be in­evitable be­cause of the con­di­tion of the hair at the mo­ment. Try your best to re­move all hairs that are no longer at­tached to the scalp. Af­ter this is done, con­tin­ue to sep­a­rate your hair with your fin­gers. You can then go on to us­ing a wide toothed comb to fur­ther sep­a­rate the hair once the hair is not dry. Re­mem­ber dry hair is brit­tle hair. You can now sec­tion the hair in­to about four or eight and braid it so that it does not be­come tan­gled again be­fore you sham­poo or style it. Thin, Fine or Oily Hair: Once again you can use wa­ter to loosen the tan­gles in this type of hair and then sec­tion the hair. Very Short Hair: If there are tan­gles in hair that is too short to sec­tion, it may be a good idea to wet them with wa­ter. De­pend­ing on the na­ture of the core tan­gle, you could al­so use con­di­tion­er or oil to moist­en the hair to con­tin­ue de­tan­gling it. If you fol­low these guide­lines along with those giv­en in the last 'Hair Sense' ar­ti­cle, it should help you to pre­serve the ma­jor­i­ty of your hair for the longest time pos­si­ble. How­ev­er, oth­er steps in the hair care process such as Cleans­ing, Con­di­tion­ing and Mois­tur­is­ing are in­te­gral for re­tain­ing the length of your hair.

For more hair care in­for­ma­tion, you can ref­er­ence the book "Grow it!" by Chicoro or email me at safiyascre­ations@hot­mail.com with your ques­tions.