Black tea rinse

Black Tea

Tea rinses have been known to effectively reduce shedding; some people confuse breakage with shedding. Shedding is a natural process where hair that has reached the end of its growth cycle voluntarily falls of your head from the roots. It is different from breakage which usually occurs when hair breaks at a point above the roots. To identify shed hair you will notice a little white bulb on one of the ends of the fallen hair. Shedding is normal, excess prolonged shedding on the other hand is not and could lead to hair thinning and eventually bald patches and may be caused by a number of factors ranging from change in diet, medication and stress among others. If you experience excess prolonged shedding please see a dermatologist/doctor to check that out.  Where I am from Henna is normally mixed with black tea or lemon juice sometimes both and it just occurred to me that women who use henna for hair and mix with tea have been doing indirect tea rinses without knowing it from time immemorial.

On my last shampoo wash day I boiled one black teabag in three cups of water about 750ml and let it cool while steeping.  I prepooed, shampooed, tea rinsed and then deep conditioned on top of the tea rinse in that order. Results; my hair felt really dry and brittle while sectioning it for deep conditioning. On final rinsing after DCing a little softness was back but it still had a dry feeling which I did not like I was so tempted to pour a cupful of coconut and almond oils on my hair just to get rid of the dry and hard feeling. As my hair air dried the dryness reduced but the texture still felt hard. Having read reviews from other bloggers on tea rinses I somewhat expected it to be a bit dry but definitely not feel like straw. Andrea over at Lengthening Locks had a similar dry hair experience first time round while Tendayi over at African Hair Blog and Jen over at Just Grow Already had really positive results. Some people live by tea rinses others do them once in a while. The dry and hard feeling bothered me so much I had to cowash the next day to regain soft feeling hair, that straw like feeling was not doing it for me at all. I will not be incorporating this treatment into my regular regimen but will only do it on a need to basis when I experience a little more shedding than usual or maybe even try a garlic mix instead.

Have you ever done a tea rinse? 

Wishing you all a very happy new year and plenty of blessings in 2013.