 Trini girl natural. Hi everyone, welcome to my channel. We've been having lots of fun. Whenever we have a lot of fun I'm like okay take a break and do something more serious now. So I'm going to do another one of my natural hair school series and today we're going to talk about protein. So we talked about moisture in the last video and the next most kind of essential basic element of hair and hair care is protein. Our bodies now here is made up of mostly protein more than 90% so it's kind of good to get to know what it does, why you need it, how to use it and whether you need it in your life basically. So is protein for natural hair doing too much? Is it essential? Is it helpful? Do you need it? We're here to talk about all of that in this video. First of all, why do you need protein? You need protein for the same reason that you need trims. Your hair is made up of mostly protein and your hair kind of wears and tears but it doesn't just wear and tear. Basically the protein is lost and the protein is the glue that kind of seals your cuticles together. So when the protein is lost your cuticles start acting well, start breaking off, start being damaged and raised, you get high porosity, you get split ends, you get breakage. So all of that started with protein so that's why you need protein. So people who say they don't need protein just ask them if they ever need to trim their hair and that will be their answer and your answer as to whether you need protein. The main reason that naturals use protein is to prevent damage and to limit damage and to protect against damage. So your hair can be damaged by chemical processes like color, bleaching, lifting. Your hair can be damaged by heat because adding heat also contributes to protein loss and contributes to cuticle damage. Your hair can be damaged just by manipulation, combing, brushing, twisting, stretching and your hair can be damaged just by regular maintenance like washing, wetting, etc. So your hair is always getting a little bit more damaged and that little bit more damage means that your hair is always losing protein and that's why you need protein because your hair is always losing protein and the more it loses the more damage your hair gets leading to breakage which is not I think the goal which is not what we want. So if you want length retention, if you want especially those who want longer hair it's really good to replenish your protein. So if you just buzz cut or keep your hair really short it doesn't matter that much especially if you don't do much damaging stuff because by the time your hair is damaged enough to break you'll probably be ready to cut it off anyway. So this the whole discussion about protein is more for those who want to retain length and who want to grow their hair and who wants waistline hair and who wants five years of hair in the head like those are the ones that need to keep watching. There are some you can watch just to see me but this is more for those who have their long-term goals. So the discussion about protein usually kind of starts with the moisture protein balance. I know a lot of you have heard of that before. The basics of protein is that it adds strength and structure to your hair and the basics of moisture is that it adds elasticity which allows you to manipulate your hair just your regular day-to-day stuff without it breaking. So both protein and moisture are important. Protein actually like I said helps cement the cuticle and protects your actual cuticle and your hair structure whereas moisture helps pretty much lubricate it you could say helps lubricate the hair strand. Too much moisture is the easier one to get. When you wet your hair your strand expands and that contributes to protein loss. Things like over conditioning your hair, saturating your hair too often, leaving it wet too long like greenhouse people you know those are some of the ways that you can over moisturize your hair. One side by adding moisture and the second by the moisture you're adding causing loss of protein. The damage that I mentioned plus the extra moisture is what causes that mushy overly elastic hair that's like easy to stretch permanently and be permanently damaged from from just stretching. You have a whole bunch of water exploding through the windows of that damaged structure basically just reaching even further havoc. So if you're in that position where here's over moisturized you should stop over moisturizing it. You don't want them to become dry but stop doing that actually that causes it in the first place and add some protein to your regimen. So the other side is too much protein where there's actually too much protein in and around the strand. Pretty much the only way you can get too much protein is by using products with too much hydrolyzed protein. It's not something that really happens naturally just in your regular hair care. Too much protein in and around the strand can cause the strand to feel stiff and hard because without the moisture you don't have that elasticity that you need. As to knowing if you have too much protein in your hair if you have too much moisture in your hair basically if you have too much moisture here is overly mushy and stretches a lot. It is hard to tell in a sense if you have too much protein whether your hair has too much protein or your hair is just dry the moisturizing treatments have an answer so if your hair is dry and brutal moisturize. Both of them are relatively avoidable. For the most part you can almost say that you won't see extreme struggles just in your general normal day to day life but for lack retention to prevent wear and tear to reduce breakage and reduce the need for trims definitely get protein to try and it will definitely help you with your natural hair growth journey if you are on a growth journey it will help you to retain length. So people can have naturally high porosity hair although most people naturally have low porosity hair naturally high porosity hair mimics damaged hair so it mimics hair in need of protein and core strands like mine are very thick strands mimic hair that has too much protein so even though it's natural my hair I can stretch it how much I want to it's not going to stretch like it doesn't break either but it doesn't stretch even when it's wet so those who have natural high porosity will follow the protein regimen for damaged hair and those who have naturally coarse strands like me will follow the protein regimen for hair that needs more moisture than protein let's just put it that way but we can still benefit from protein like as I said before so just because you're low porosity just because you have coarse strands don't mean you have to avoid protein because you still need trims don't you your protein's still going somewhere man in it okay anybody who says oh I'm low porosity I don't need protein or anybody who tells anybody else oh you're low porosity so you don't need protein just tell them no no no okay if you have fine strands you don't use a lot of protein you might just be like oh my two styles don't work oh my washing goes don't last protein can actually help you with that because it adds some structure to your hair which helps it be able to retain cool better gives it better cool memory to retain the shape of twists or to retain your washing goes so if you have very fine strands they're goodly consider adding protein to your regimen and they can also add body to your hair as well because certain proteins coat the strand which can add body to your hair so that's another reason for those with fine strands to use protein even those with coarser strands can see tightening of their curl pattern and more bounce to their curls by adding protein once you've tried that first time you can see if you notice any difference for example my curls are a lot more like loose and like stretched out when I don't have enough protein in my hair when I have protein in it the curls become tighter and bouncier and more shrinkage which is good I can tell the difference even though I'm low porosity on my strands of course I can tell that the protein also has some benefit for me not to mention of course the long term benefit of protecting your hair from eventual breakage which is good right if you're low porosity you still want to use protein but not as much and maybe you can just use it in your products instead of necessarily doing a treatment or if you're doing a treatment you can do it like every three months every six months or something whereas if you have high porosity I definitely recommend at least doing a monthly protein treatment next we talked about how to get protein so of course eating protein is very important and definitely will also help your hair of course your body tends to send nutrition to your hair last and it's very difficult just in general to eat enough protein most people don't so it also helps to use protein fail products so in order for the protein to be useful for your hair the protein has to be hydrolyzed or small enough to penetrate your strands so using things like eggs and mayonnaise and most DIY stuff will not work because those proteins are not small enough to penetrate the strands your hair might feel stiffer because some of it might be on the outside of the strand until you wash it but that's all it is it's not sealing up any holes in the cuticle it's not sealing up any holes in the strand it's not penetrating from a protein perspective it's not doing anything so all those DIY projects please they're not protein treatments if you really need to do a DIY protein treatment I would suggest gelatin because gelatin contains hydrolyzed collagen so that is a protein that is small enough to penetrate the strand I had one person in my group try the gelatin and didn't really see any result though so I don't know but if you really want a DIY go in that direction of what is natural and contains hydrolyzed protein it's not milk it's not eggs it's not mayo well those people use it's not yogurt DIY no hydrolyzed protein yes and even with the gelatin you're not sure what size that collagen is so it's still better to buy a product specifically to address your hair need that contains protein because you know you would hope that they would pick the right types and amounts and sizes of proteins in that product as opposed to buying gelatin that's not really meant for showing up hair strands and hoping for the best in terms of protein sensitivity I do believe that not all proteins work for everyone so I would say if you try the product and you or if you even try several products and you react negatively to them and they all have protein definitely look at the ingredients and see what type of protein they have how high up on the ingredients list the protein is try using a milder protein and try using protein for the down the ingredients list but it's worth it if you want to retain length to at least give your best attempt to try to find protein that you like I do believe when people say that their hair got stiff and so on but I encourage them to try to find the protein that agrees with them because in many cases it's a matter of finding the right one your hair is made up of protein so if you will completely protein sensitive or be reacting to itself on your head be stiff all the time right so the fact that your hair likes itself but doesn't like certain products kind of indicates that it's certain types of proteins that your hair doesn't like but if you're protein sensitive let me know in the comments how we can talk about which proteins you've tried and just what was the result I do notice that a lot of people who are protein sensitive also have issues with um leg retention let me know if that's true for you let me know if you plan to try protein if you have been using protein I have been using protein I'm a proud protein user and I definitely think that has helped me with my natural hair journey and I recommend it so I hope all of that was really informative and helpful for you I actually had so much to say about protein that I had to split this video in half so in the next episode I'm going to discuss the different types of proteins and what each of them does as well as how to try protein if you're new to it or didn't have a pleasant experience and how and when to use protein and I'm going to talk about examples of products containing protein so stay tuned and make sure you watch that video before trying protein for the first time or if you didn't like it before let me know if you want to see more videos like this where I just kind of do some teaching share some of the research that I got but and of course I will always be doing like you know regular journey stuff as well I just want to pass along what I learned in addition to just enjoying my journey because I already know these things but I want to let you know as well so you can enjoy the benefits as well so thanks for watching I'll see you in the next one bye