How I got my dry/damaged hair healthy again!!

I am a serial hair dyer. I've always had a funny relationship with my hair. I'm a natural ginger although I've had pretty much every hair colour. I was bullied a lot when I was younger for having ginger hair, I even got attacked on the way home from school when I was 11. I know, so pathetic. Anyway, after that incident I really really wanted to dye my hair, my Mum finally caved and since then my hair has been to Hell and back. 

I went so long just dying my hair red, purple, brown and black, and it wasn't until about 18 months ago I actually decided to go blonde. I did it myself which was my first mistake. Putting shop-bought bleach on dark brown dyed hair is never going to work. My hair turned this bright orange with dark patches everywhere. Then I made my second mistake, bleaching it again! Putting bleach on already bleached hair is probably the worst thing you can do to your hair. My hair went so dry. I decided not to cut the dead ends off my hair; mistake number three!

You'd think I would've learned my lesson. Nope! My hair was so abused for so long, it was in such bad condition. I ended up having to cut my mid-length hair up in to a chin-length bob. I wasn't too fussed about that. But... I still didn't learn! I decided to bleach my hair again. So stupid. My hair basically turned to mush so I had to have even more cut off, but even after so much hair being removed my hair was so dry. 

So this is how I got my hair from horrible, dry straw to soft and healthy:

I used a lot of products for this. But I think the main reason my hair is so much better now is because I only wash it once a week, if it's lucky, I can go longer. This allows my hair to soak in its natural oils to add a bit more moisture to it. This also helps if you have greasy hair, or it gets greasy really easy because your scalp releases oils and if they're not removed your skin will eventually stop producing so much.

I also used a lot of coconut oil with Aloe Vera (not sure if it did anything really) as a hair mask. Sometimes I'd leave it on overnight otherwise I'd leave it on for an hour or two. It made my hair smell so so good, and it was super soft although I didn't really notice a difference in the texture of my hair; there may have been a small improvement.

Then, about 6 months ago I was browsing the Superdrug website and decided to have a look at the Black hair care section because I know that the texture of African/Black hair is different to my hair; it's dryer and doesn't take in moisture as well so it needs heavy duty hair moisturisers. There I found out that Almond oil is amazing on dry hair, and I also found coconut and manuka honey protein masks by Palmer's.

These products work heavenly. After one use of the almond oil and half a pack of the coconut protein mask mixed with Shea Moisture's black castor oil hair mask my hair was so soft and smooth. My hair just soaked up all the products because it was so dry but the end result was amazing. I now use this mask a couple times a month just to keep my hair moisturised.

I highly recommend these products as they have seriously done some magic to my hair. I'm so glad I found them. They can all be found on the Superdrug website and are reasonably priced. The black castor oil mask is more on the pricey side but you get such a huge tub (I've barely used any) and it works like a dream so I really believe that it's worth the money. In fact they're all on offer on the website currently (1/1/18)

Thank you for reading!
Bx