Protein Sensitivity: Coconut oil and Protein Treatments

If you're anything like me then one of the first things you bought when you went natural must have been Coconut Oil. Everyone seems to love coconut oil but unfortunately my hair decided to tell a different story.

The essence of this post is to talk a little about protein sensitivity and why for some of us coconut oil simply doesn't work. 

Coconut oil was the first thing I bought when I went natural because everywhere I looked for products I would need, coconut oil always topped the list. I read about how I would need it for prepooing, as an oil to seal in moisture, if my hair was feeling dry, to seal my ends, etc.

You can imagine how sad I was the first time I tried coconut oil. It made my hair feel so hard and brittle and had me so confused. I thought I wasn't using it right so I used it in different ways. For sealing, for moisturising, for prepooing but it still made my hair feel brittle so I stopped using it.

Another thing I read a lot about was Protein Treatments. Protein treatments are supposed to strengthen your hair and reduce breakage. From what I've read many people do this once a month and people use different things like egg, mayonnaise, honey, avocados, bananas.

I applied a mixture of egg, mayonnaise and honey to my hair the first time I did a protein treatment and covered it with a shower cap for about 45 minutes. It wasn't a good experience because my hair was wet so it was dripping down my neck. The next time I tried it I made sure my hair wasn't wet first to avoid this.

After my protein treatment my hair felt hard and I didn't understand why so the next time I did it I just used honey because honey is a humectant so it is supposed to draw moisture from its surroundings into your hair. For some reason my hair didn't like this either so I just abandoned protein treatments.

Some weeks ago I came across a video that talked about protein sensitivity and the reason why some people's hair does not respond well to coconut oil. From what I understand, if your hair strand is very thick and already has a lot of protein then there is no need to put protein back in because what protein does is strengthen the hair and our hair doesn't need this extra strength. This is why it ends up feeling hard after a protein treatment or using coconut oil.

So if you can relate you can stop trying to use coconut oil in different ways or trying different protein treatments if your hair just doesn't like it. What works for some simply doesn't work for others.

You can watch this video to understand it better. This guy explained it so well

Protein Sensitivity: Why does coconut oil make my hair feel fried?

Thanks for reading :)

Oyime