Swimming With Natural Hair, Dive-In Without Damage!

With spring/summer right around the corner, swimming is not only a great exercise option, it's a great social activity! Here's a few tips to ensure that your tresses aren't damaged during that cool dip in the pool or ocean!

• Cover it: It may not keep all the water out but a swim cap will limit the amount of chlorine or salt-water invading your lovely locks. I like to wear a silk scarf under my swim cap to ensure that the rubber does not pull or tear my tresses!

• Drench it: Not into swim caps? No problem. Start by drenching your hair with tap water first. If your hair is saturated with tap water, there's less absorption of the chlorinated and damaging water of the pool or ocean. 

• Wash it: The chlorine compounds used to clean and disinfect swimming pools are salts. Salts are drying so you want to remove them as soon as possible The only way to do this is to wash your hair; preferably with a clarifying shampoo. If you can't wash your hair immediately,rinse it until you can. The less chlorine in the hair, the better! After washing or rinsing, coat your hair with a leave-in conditioner and nourishing oil to feed your hair that which was taken out. 

• Protect it: If swimming is part of your daily routine, you want to stick with sulfate-free shampoos.  Sulfates are salts of sulfuric acid. Sulfates are used in shampoos and other products to clean the hair (ie ammonium lauryl sulfate, sodium lauryl sulfate, etc) The chlorine compounds used to clean and disinfect pools are also salts. In combination, the salts of shampoos with the salt of chlorinated water= massive heart attack for the hair! It's just too much! It will lead to drying, color-stripping, and damage. So limit your use of sulfates by choosing sulfate-free shampoos/conditioners.

• Treat it: Feed your hair that which was taken out. Pre-poo and deep condition as often as possible. I make a simple recipe for both. Check it out....

Now that you know..... DIVE IN CURLFRIENDS!!!!!!!