You find a photo from two or three years ago, and your hair is the same length as it is today. You conclude that your hair isn't growing. This conclusion is wrong, and it's costing you.
The question isn't whether coily hair can be long. It can, and the traditional hairstyles of an entire continent have long been proof of that. The real question is where the length goes between the moment it emerges from the scalp and the moment you measure it. Two phenomena are at play, and only one of them is a problem. If you want the complete method at the same time, the six steps of the Rituel Texture® are gathered in our step-by-step tutorial.
Shrinkage is not length loss
My grandmother wore her very long hair, always hydrated, her whole life. Man Dol', my great-grandmother, had coily hair that reached down to her lower back. No one at home ever wondered if it was possible.
Ghana Elin, founderA coily fiber curls in on itself as it dries. What hung down her back in the shower springs up, shrinks, and ends up at shoulder length an hour later. It's spectacular, it's baffling when you first discover it, and it's absolutely not a loss: the length is there, intact, simply folded in on itself.
It's actually a good sign. A fiber that shrinks is an elastic fiber, capable of returning to its shape. A hair that no longer shrinks, that hangs straight and limp, has often suffered thermal or chemical damage. We return to this phenomenon in why coily hair shrinks, and on ways to make the length visible every day in how to stretch coily hair.
Breakage, on the other hand, is
The second phenomenon really does cost you length, and it's silent. It's due to what a coiled fiber undergoes every time you handle it. Observed under a microscope, coily hair has knots on ten to sixteen percent of its shafts, compared to a fraction of a percent on straight or wavy hair, and these shafts show traces of repeated breakage (Khumalo et al., Journal of the American Academy of Dermatology, 2000). Hair normally grows at the top, and it breaks on the way. What we gain at the top, we lose at the bottom, and the result doesn't budge from one year to the next. Why the fiber is built this way, we explain in why do we have coily hair.
The sign is visible in the comb, and it's unmistakable. A naturally shed hair carries a small, lighter bulge at its end, the bulb. A broken hair does not: it's a fragment, often short, sometimes two or three centimeters. If your comb mostly brings back fragments without a bulb, you're not losing hair, you're breaking it.
The consequence is important for what follows. Length is gained through retention, that is, through what we keep, and not by the speed at which hair grows. This speed cannot be controlled, and no product changes it. What can be controlled are the four moments when breakage occurs.
The four causes of breakage
Dryness
This is the underlying cause, and it precedes the other three. A fiber that lacks water becomes rigid, and a rigid fiber breaks at the slightest touch, where a flexible fiber would have bent. This dryness is not a maintenance flaw: it's due to the shape of the hair, and we explain it in why coily hair is often dry. Addressing this single point already changes the bulk of what breaks.
Detangling
This is the moment when most breakage occurs, and often in a few minutes. What breaks is not dry hair: it's the comb passed through dry hair without product, which forces on every knot instead of undoing it. The Rituel Texture® instead starts with detangling with the fingers on dry hair, the Tchad comb detangling, and Le Peigne de Man Dol' only comes in afterwards, on hair coated with mask, from the ends toward the roots. The detail of the gesture is in detangling without breakage, and what it changes to the touch in soft and supple coily hair.
Night
Eight hours of rubbing against cotton are not seen the next morning. They are seen six months later, on ends that haven't advanced. It's the only one of the four causes that acts while you do nothing, and it's also the easiest to neutralize: lengths braided rather than loose, a silk scarf, a silk pillowcase. Our nighttime hairstyles give the exact setup.
Tension
It's the only one of the four that can leave permanent traces, because it doesn't stop at the fiber. A style that is too tight pulls on the follicle itself, and the frontal hairline is the first to give way: this is the mechanism of traction alopecia, found in women and adolescent girls who repeatedly wear braids, cornrows, or weaves (Khumalo et al., Journal of the American Academy of Dermatology, 2008). As long as it's just irritation, everything returns. When the area has been bald for months, regrowth is no longer guaranteed.
Of the four causes, three make up for themselves over time. The fourth, no: what is lost at the hairline does not always return.
Cut to keep
Here is the other gesture that we push back, for good reasons apparently. A split fiber does not close: the split progresses upward and damages the hair that was doing well in the process. Not cutting therefore costs more length than cutting. Count eight to twelve weeks between two passes, only removing the damaged ends, and on dry and stretched hair, because shrinkage otherwise makes any assessment misleading. All this is detailed in protecting the ends of coily hair.
A word on the tool, since it comes into play in every routine. Le Peigne de Man Dol' is hand-carved from buffalo horn from the food supply chain, revalued by an artisan in Vietnam. Its teeth are wider than those of combs of yesteryear, and its surface slides without snagging the fiber. It's a detail that is measured over a year.
Measure rather than look
The mirror is a bad judge, because shrinkage hides progress as much as breakage. The only reliable measure is to always take the same strand, in the same place, stretch it wet along a ruler, and write down the number. Repeat every three months. Many women discover on this occasion that they have much more length than they thought.
The first signs come before length, and they are the ones to watch for: fewer fragments in the comb, ends that stay supple between two routines, detangling that becomes silent. When these three things are established, length follows, because it stops being lost again. Our length retention tips go over the gestures one by one.
The trap of growth promises
No oil, no supplement, no treatment makes a healthy hair grow faster, and nothing serious allows us to claim the opposite. The products that promise it sell length retention under another name. For dietary supplements, ask a pharmacist's opinion before taking any.
Is your hair stagnating for years?
An online consultation is mainly for this: to identify which of these four moments is costing you length, rather than starting everything over at the same time.
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Sources
- Khumalo N. P. et al., « What is normal black African hair? A light and scanning electron-microscopic study », Journal of the American Academy of Dermatology, 2000.
- Khumalo N. P. et al., « Determinants of marginal traction alopecia in African girls and women », Journal of the American Academy of Dermatology, 2008.
- « Alopecia », MSD Manual, professional edition, dermatology section: duration of the phases of the hair cycle and traction alopecia.
