Hair woes - Detangling matted hair

Sometimes, something goes wrong and you end up with severely matted/tangled hair. It could be that you left your hair in braids for too long, used a product that dried/matted up your hair, neglected your hair... whatever the case may be, you now have matted/tangled hair. One thing to note is that though it is recommended to detangle hair when wet and saturated with conditioner, this applies only to mildly tangled hair. Wet hair is more fragile than dry hair and when overly manipulated is more susceptible to snapping. So today, we are going to be working with dry hair. Here is what you will need


1. A good conditioner:
You can use any good conditioner that your hair responds to. I use the nexus humectress conditioner. Vo5 and herbal essences hello hydration are also pretty good:

Nexxus humectress - Leaves my hair feeling very soft

2. Lots of olive oil
Invest in a big bottle of extra virgin oil. I use the EVOO O-live oil.

Any evoo will work. This was on sale at my local grocery store

3. Lots and lots of patience


Ok, so let's begin:

1. Co wash your hair:
Don't shampoo wash. Shampoo will strip your hair and aggravate the situation. Co wash your hair with your conditioner. Apply the conditioner generously to your hair, leave it in for about 5mins and then rinse it out.

2. Air dry:
Let your hair air dry. This may take a while especially around the matted areas because the hairs are tightly entwined making it more difficult for air to get to these areas and dry them. But obviously, if you wait long enough, they will eventually dry.

3. Oil/lubricate your hair:
Apply lots and lots of olive oil to your hair, especially the matted areas. This is to lubricate the strands, reduce friction and enable the strands slide over each other freely without snagging against each other.

3. Detangle:
Begin to detangle in small sections. If your hair is well conditioned, despite being matted and tangled it would be soft. First thing you want to do is loosen the ball of matted hair by using your thumb and fore finger  to gently and repeatedly pull it apart.

Matted hair

Take the section

Gently pull apart

Repeat until matting is loosened as much as possible

Once it is loose, begin pulling strands of hair out of the ball of matted hair. Do this until all strands are out. This will require A LOT of patience. It could take hours or days depending on how matted and tangled the hair is so be prepared for this.

Take a teeny section

Pull it out

Take another section

Pull it out

Keep pulling sections out until you've pulled all the strands out of the matted area. Once this is done the entire section should be detangled.

Detangled section

Repeat this until all matted/detangled areas are dematted/detangled. Again, you'll need a lot of patience and a positive attitude. Don't get frustrated, sad, annoyed, defeated. If you are tired, not in the mood to continue, tie a scarf or a turban or wear a wig and go out: Go to the mall, go see a movie, grab a kit kat, take a break, regroup, come back and keep going at it. Best of luck!

xoxo

Bey