This is a hair post

[sajia_kabir]

It's taken me ages to learn how to take care of my hair ever since I moved to Canada as an adult. In Bangladesh I had a fairly simple routine of once a week massaging coconut oil on my head overnight and shampooing in the morning. When I came here I was bewildered by the variety of products, and then I discovered I had psoriasis. But over the last 6 months I've incrementally improved my control over my hair quality. I learned how to use a headwrap, discovered vinegar rinses and oatmeal hair masks, and started to use up the Body Shop Coconut Shine that I had bought a few years ago. A couple of months ago I started to use again the Neutrogena T-Gel shampoo that I bought some time back, and this time used Body Shop's Honey Balm conditioner. A couple of weeks ago I bought a cashmere lustre lotion, but didn't care for how it felt on my hair. I bought a really nice cocoa and shea butter deep conditioner, but what I really wanted was Dabur's Vatika hair oil, a special occasion oil because of its price and scent when I was a young girl in Bangladesh.
So today on my way to the supermarket, I detoured to the Indian store near Lougheed Mall. Not only did they have Dabur, they also had ayurvedic navaratna oil, jasmine oil, and my dream, amla oil. Amla is one of the three foliages used in South Asian trifola oil, with a cooling effect similar to menthol but milder. I almost bought the Dabur but they wanted a five dollar minimum on debit so I got the navaratna oil, which I have put on right now. Because the package says it's for the skin as well I decided to put a little on my lips - I have perfect skin, I look 22 when I'm 29, but my mouth is so dry due to eczema that it's cracked on the sides.
I wonder if black women ever use Indian oils on their hair, perhaps the oils are not rich enough? I know for a lot of European and East Asian hair types the hair is fine and gets limp with oil, but I wonder if Mediterranean, Latina and Middle Eastern women could use Indian oils for defrizzing - I know my Persian bellydance boss uses Morroccan oil, which is made from a mineral. It's something I would explore if I was a savvy South Asian cosmetics entrepreneur.
I'm going to try  my vinegar rinse when I shower tonight, it should in theory balance out the oil. I could use the t-gel but I already used it last night and it's really strong. When I was doing extra work on Mission Impossible 4 my hairdresser, who also showed me how to pin hair over my area of hair loss to conceal it, told me I should massage my scalp more, so that should be a bonus of regular oil treatments. Hopefully with having fruit and green smoothies every day I'll be getting much better nutrition, and with frequent oil treatments I hope to repair my hair loss (which is very uneven, so I have long hair but my scalp shows through) and maybe in a few years get the hip-length hair I always wanted.

Comments

[redrose]

You might consider looking at the Long Hair Community. I logged in regularly for a while, and there's a lot of info there for a variety of hair types.

[sajia_kabir]

I've seen that before, through Poppy Z Brite! Am afraid I will melt away in envy.

[buria_q]

i used to have really dry, curly, poofy hair in my teens, but now it's very thin and wavy. not sure why. i assumed the hair loss was due to stress. i used to use lots of henna/amla/hair oil.

dunno where you live, but though i like the scent, cocoa butter is a bit of a pain to melt in the wintertime for me.

i have dry skin and eczema now and i mostly use almond or olive oil for my skin.

[buria_q]

the eczema gets worse for me if i don't drink enough water or moisturize enough (right out of the shower).