Common issues with locs can be anywhere from product buildup to hair loss around your edges. These are only common issues for those who aren’t handling their locs with the right products and maintenance techniques. There are also protective styles out there and, unfortunately, styles that can harm your hairline and locs. In this article we’ll review some common issues and how to prevent them.
Choose Your Style Wisely
It’s essential to choose styles that aren't pulling too hard on your edges and scalp. Be aware of the types of style you're using and make sure they're not pulling on your edges. Even simple styles like pony tales can be too tight. You can use three or four locs and tie it into itself as a style, but it could be too tight around your edges and cause problems like hair loss.
Know When it’s Time to Take Down a Style
Another common issue is when one wears a style for too long. This can cause scalp issues and can cause flakeage. When it’s time to wash your hair and you skip a wash to keep that style, both your scalp and locs can suffer. By a month's time it’s a good time to take out the style and go for your wash routine.
Understanding How Events in Your Life Affect Your Locs
For example, if you just had a baby you may experience hair loss, or hair breakage around the edges. Locs are a timeline, you can have fragile hair after having a baby and in that moment in your life, your locs will be fragile. Once you stop nursing, your hair will go back to its usual - but that area where you were nursing will be present in your locs.
Things like going vegan, or changing your eating habits can cause a shift in your hair. Locs are hairs bonded together and you can see these life events more than with loose hair. So, let’s say you had to take a certain medication at some point, this may reflect a change in your hair. When you stop taking that medication, your hair will take time to make that shift, going back to something more akin to its undisturbed rhythm.
Understanding your life will help you understand your hair. Pay attention to yourself and not just your hair and quick fixes.This will help you manage your hair more efficiently both in the long and short term.
Locs show you exactly what's going on (and what was going on) in your life. Your hair will do its thing. Give yourself some grace, when the things you do or experience affect your hair.
Stay Away from Heavy Products.
You shouldn't see the product you’re using during a washing. You'll know you're using a product you shouldn't be using if you wet your lcos and it turns the color of the product you're using, ie white, brown, or red.
When your hair is dry you won't see the product, but when you get it wet, it comes up. Then you'll know your hair didn’t like that product. Your hair will drink up a good product, but if it doesn’t like it, it’ll just wait for that wash to get it out - if that wash can get it out.
Sometimes, when you're getting your hair done you're not looking at your hair, so you can’t see that your hair isn’t liking a product. Look at your hair when it's wet since your loctician might not be paying attention and check to see if there’s product in there that your hair doesn't like.
All of Dr Locs’ products are buildup free and will not cause buildup, but other products may have heavy ingredients that aren’t actually good for your locs.
Wash Out ALL that Shampoo
When you're washing your hair, a good preventative measure is to make sure you're washing out all your shampoo. If you’re washing your hair in the sink or shower without looking at what's going on, make sure to go for an extra rinse and really get it all out.
The ends of your locs hold onto that shampoo, so make sure to give those ends an extra rinse or two. And, if you're washing your hair in the shower, give some extra water love to the back of your neck. Roll your head back and forward to get that water on the back of your neck where shampoo tends to stay. This way you ensure you’re really getting all that shampoo out in some of the lesser obvious locations.
Flakes from Dry Scalp or Dandruff
If you have a lot of flakes when you're shampooing, the flakes will be on the surface and wont go down that drain. We recommend going to a dermatologist to find out what's going on and how to fix that. Using the Pre-Cleanse with the shampoo will help pull up those flakas and get rid of it. The apple cider vinegar present in the pre-cleanse will eat up those flakes to help get rid of them. The Yasin Shampoo will take it one step further to heal and remove the issue. But again, if you have a scalp condition, you’ll need to go see a dermatologist to find out what’s going on.
Buildup in Locs
If you have buildup, the Pre-Cleanse will make it look worse during your wash before it gets better. The buildup is hiding inside the middle of the loc, which then gets pulled up from the locs via the pre-cleanse. Then rinse it and shampoo it out. You may need to go through this process a few times in one session depending on how much buildup and flakes you have.
What issues have you been experiencing with your locs? And how have you found a way to treat those issues?
