Hard truths you should know before relaxing your hair

The war between staying natural and relaxing has been going on for the longest time ever. A couple of years ago it was all about rediscovering your authentic self by transitioning to natural but right now there is a big shift towards relaxing.

It seems like relaxing is the new in thing but we still have to remember those challenges that made people go natural in the first place. Although people have learnt how to take care of relaxed hair more, the struggles are still the same.

If you’re about to book your relaxer appointment soon, here are a couple of fundamental truths you need to consider first:

Natural hair is beautiful but it’s not always fun to take care of. Slowly, you’ll get problems like split ends and heat damage, and the overall health of your hair won’t be so great.

With all that damage, people often assume relaxing will magically help their hair have a fresh start which isn’t true.

If you’re not already maintaining your hair, the likelihood of your hair getting seriously damaged after relaxing is high. Then the next obvious thing when things don’t work out is to blame the relaxers when in the real sense your hair was already in its weakest state.

Before you get a relaxer, you need to be sure that you can handle the cost of maintaining it. With natural hair, you can just stock up on basic products and learn how to do simple styles at home. But with relaxed hair, you have to budget for touch-ups every few months, on top of the products you have to buy and other maintenance routines you need to do.

In case you don’t have the money to pay for all that, your hair will suffer especially when you have a lot of new growth.

The chemical alteration of relaxing leaves your hair in a very vulnerable state, regardless of what type of hair you have. It doesn’t mean that relaxed hair can’t be healthy, it just means that your hair can’t handle what your natural hair could.

Natural hair is very forgiving so don’t expect the situation to be the same when you relax.

Right now there are many people who are transitioning to relaxed hair mainly because of the struggles of maintaining natural hair. It’s true that wash days will be easier and all that but you still need to put in the same amount of effort to keep your relaxed hair healthy.

Relaxed hair has its own needs and that is something you can’t run away from. Your hair will be more sensitive and that means there is still a lot of work to be done for it to stay healthy.

The excitement to relax your hair can be real but you should remember the risk of getting scalp burns and permanent hair damage.

There are lots of tutorials online that can encourage you to relax your hair at home but that might not be a great idea if you’re not a pro. And, if you’re not keen on maintaining it properly, you will get irreversible damage.

You can avoid this by getting your hair done by someone who actually knows how to relax hair the right way and doing all you can to treat your hair right.