Natural black hair care. When you think about your hair, you’re always looking for products that will help nourish and nurture. This plays heavily on ingredients.

What Ingredients Do You Look For In Natural Hair Care Products?

Tea Tree Essential Oil

Essential oils have been known to play a major role in natural black hair care. One in particular is Tea Tree oil. It’s known to benefit your scalp health. Its anti fungal properties can reduce itching due to fungal dandruff. It can also help reduce the growth of Malassezia yeast which is the cause of dandruff.

You can’t just slather tea tree oil on your scalp. You must dilute it with a carrier oil, such as jojoba or avocado oil.

Aloe Vera

Aloe Vera is beneficial for your hair and your scalp. It’s been known to help promote hair growth for brittle hair as well as reduce dandruff. Aloe vera has antibacterial and anti fungal properties.

If for some reason you’ve got excess oil around your hair follicles, aloe is said to help with reducing it. What else does aloe vera contain? It contains collagen. Collagen is often said to help repair damaged hair.

Two ingredients?  By far these aren’t the only two ingredients that are good for your hair.  For now we highlight these two and in future articles, you will see more of them.

What to Avoid in Natural Hair Care Products

As black women, you go through a lot to maintain your natural tresses. You were convinced that your natural curls were ugly. Then you had a thousand light bulbs go off and said : Says Who?

In the process of discovering, remembering and loving your hair through the years, ingredients were your friend and enemy. As you tried to mimic hair that looked nothing like yours, you were subject to dye, lye and petroleum.

As you delved deeper, you realized that some ingredients were actually harming your scalp.

Here are 3 of the harmful ingredients:

Benzene can actually cause damage to your respiratory system, irritate your skin and has been known to cause developmental damage in fetuses.

DMDM hydantoin is a preservative that’s known to leach formaldehyde when it comes in contact with water. Formaldehyde is known as a carcinogen and can cause harmful skin reactions.

Parabens are powerful preservatives that help prevent buildup of mould, fungus and bacteria in products expected to last for 6 months. Parabens can cause drying in your hair. They’ve also been known to cause scalp irritation, and hair loss.

A class action lawsuit against a very well known personal care company claims that certain shampoos and conditioners contain ingredients linked to hair loss and scalp irritation. DMDM hydantoin is the ingredient.

Bottom line…

Look for natural hair care products that are known to be created for you and your hair. As quiet as it’s kept, jealously surrounds you and your natural beauty, be it your skin, hair or both.  No one on the planet has hair like yours,  that salutes the sun or skin that been kissed by the sun.

What’s the best shampoo and conditioner for natural black hair care?  One that contains natural ingredients, that nourish and nurture, and won’t bring harm to your scalp or hair.

That’s it for this week. As always …

Dedicated to Your Beauty,

Juliette Samuel,
Esthetician/Author/Publisher,

Nyraju Skin Care