Oily Hair B GONE

I come from a thick Cherokee background. One feature us Cherokee girls are known for is our THICK Cherokee hair. What they don’t tell Cherokee girls though is, “Hey, you need to take extra special care of that hair.”  Until recently, I had the Mermaid length hair. It was pretty, it was kinda thick, and everyone complimented on it. I believe this is because they didn’t have to take care of it.

I had recently had come to the conclusion in my life that I needed to cut a lot of stuff out of my life (i.e. unhappiness, fake shady people, mentally and emotionally abusive people, OH and some of my hair). I went in with the thinking that I was going to cut 4 inches at most off of my hair. My poor hairstylist, Debbie, I think was in complete shock of how long my hair had actually gotten. It’d be forever since I had even had a trim because someone would always threaten me within an inch of my life if I mentioned cutting it.

I sat in her chair, showed her what I wanted done, and she took me back to wash me up. Well, she asked what I’d been putting on my hair that was making my scalp so oily. I told her nothing, other than I had been trying to figure something out with my scalp. I was getting what *looked* like dandruff but it wasn’t flaky. It was sort of balled looking and when I’d scratch my scalp, I’d have this oily feeling white crud under my nails (sounds lovely and real attractive right?!) Well she informed me that what was going on is that my hair was so LONG and damaged at the ends that my scalp was over producing oil trying to work it down the shaft of my hair to moisturize and nourish the crap that my ends had turned into but it wasn’t making it down that far because my hair was so long.

So, at the end of the day, we had to cut 8 inches off (the hair was breaking, split, snarled, and the ends had even turned ORANGE they were so damaged *which I could see the color difference when I put it in a ponytail). She gave me a scalp detox but most importantly, she told me how to combat the over producing oil stuff. Girls with oily hair/scalp this is where you pay attention.

Taking care of this is as simple and cheap as baby shampoo. Yeup, regular Johnson and Johnson yellow baby shampoo. Now, when you get in the shower you need to wet your hair like you normally would. Take a little baby shampoo and make it into a thick lather on your scalp and out about an inch/inch and a half. Don’t use this all over your hair!!! This is going to neutralize the oil and it’ll wash away CLEAN (it’s made for babies remember). Once you get it on there thick and you’ve really massaged it in there, get it a little wet and make a more soapy lather with it and rub it in a little more. This should take you 2-3 minutes. Then, you can shampoo your hair as normal.

If you have this oily scalp issue, you need to use a clarifying shampoo or any shampoo that has citrus (lemon, lime, orange, grapefruit) in it. Citrus is amazing for keeping oil at bay. I recommend Tresemme Naturals Low Sulfate Shampoo with Lemongrass and Sweet Orange. It smells amazing, it has the citrus in it that you need, and it’s low sulfate which is better for your hair. You should only need to do the baby shampoo once a week (maybe twice a week if it’s really bad until you get it under control). Continue to use the citrus shampoo every time you wash your hair though. You should see a vast improvement.