Aloe Vera Juice for Natural Hair

Happy New Year to all you curly mamas! Woo hoo! Hope that everyone fulfills their hair goals this year as well as their other goals.

I wanted to talk about aloe vera juice and how I've been using it on my hair for the past two weeks or so. I've been using it only on wash day, after I wash, condition, and rinse. I apply AVJ on my sections, squeeze out the excess liquid, then apply my usual oil mixture to my hair and scalp. Then I proceed with de-tangling, whether or not I use a leave in moisturizer, then braid/twist it up.
First and foremost, I wanted to try using AVJ on my hair because I have heard a ton of great things about it. I always want to go as natural as possible with my hair and body health, so I wanted to give it a try. The day I bought the AVJ from Walmart, there was only one kind left... the one that had extra berry juices in it. Apparently, other people have caught onto the benefits of it and bought out the plain one. I scanned the ingredients for anything foreign, saw nothing, then bought it, the Fruit of the Earth brand.
Aloe vera juice is great for a lot of things, one being balancing the pH in our hair, just like apple cider vinegar does. Here's one article about the benefits of AVJ: http://blackgirllonghair.com/2012/01/4-hair-benefits-of-aloe-vera/
So I am doing it the way I mentioned above, for the last two weeks. I've already seen a difference in my hair. It's mega soft with my oil mixture on top. Now AVJ is an astringent, so it is used as a cleanser as well as other things like skin care, so it has a really squeaky feeling when you smooth it in your hair. It's kind of like the feeling that you get if you totally strip your hair of all dirt and grime and are left with a squeaky clean head. But it moisturizes at the same time. It also feels good because AVJ has to be refrigerated, so when I pour it into my hair with my dispenser bottle, the coldness feels awesome on my scalp lol!
I don't rinse the AVJ out; I leave it in, massage it into my scalp and my whole head. My oil mixture (see here http://curlsofinnocence.blogspot.com/p/my-hair-regimen.html) goes on top and then I de-tangle, then twist and braid the sections. For stretch, I put the twists into one big fat bun, and even though it takes longer for my hair to air dry that way, my hair is stretched and extra soft when it does dry.
Last night, I deep conditioned my hair, rinsed it out after two hours, and then tried using the AVJ the same way. Awesome results again! My hair is softer because of the DC/light protein treatment that I use. Don't even have to use a moisturizer with this stuff. I've seen a change... my hair appears a little stronger and silkier.
So, I will be sticking to this for as long as it works. ;)
How do you guys use AVJ if you do use it? What changes have you seen?

Peace out and Happy New Year again!

~Epic Realist~

Our Hair is like a Plant- Hair Tip #3

Buenos dias, ladies! I have an interesting topic that I thought about a few days ago. It pertains to our hair growth. It began when I started seeing more and more posts about hair supplements, such as pills that claim to grow your hair (Hairfinity) and the all too famous... Monistat. -___-
I started to think about how impatient women are in growing their hair, and it got me thinking hard about patience. We're living in a world now where no one is patient anymore. We want everything now, now, NOW! Every woman wants long hair ASAP. We're popping pills, religiously doing scalp massages, and even resorting to 'coochie cream' for abnormally quick growth. And I ask myself, why are we breaking our backs to get long hair and ultimately missing the main ingredient, patience?
So, then I started to think about our hair, and how, like anything, it requires time. Time to grow, to flourish, to regenerate. Just like.. a plant. Plants take time, right? A lot of time. Trees take years to grow to their full potential. I don't understand why some naturals still don't use water on their scalps enough. Don't plants need water? That's the main ingredient that plants need. Everyone knows that if plants aren't watered, they'll die.
But that's the same way our hair is. All the years that we've been perming, we've been afraid of using water on our scalps, which is why our hair was not growing and was always dead. Well, all hair is dead, but you get the point.
My point here is that our hair is like a plant. It requires water, food, and time. I will emphasize time because like I said, women want their hair long fast, fast, fast! That's how we get jacked up, trying every little thing that promises to make our hair grow beyond our wildest dreams. Most hair vitamins have side effects that you aren't even aware of until you stop taking them. Some people get hives, some people get headaches, some people get muscle twitches. It's ridiculous. All for the sake of having long hair. Patience, ladies. Your hair WILL grow as long as you take care of it and put what's supposed to be in your body into your body. Start eating better and your hair will definitely grow. Get out of the mindset that you have to have to do something extreme just to prove that your hair can grow to great lengths. Remember, you went natural for a reason. Why are you going back to unnatural means of growing your hair? That makes no sense. I mean, Monistat? Really? I don't care if someone got waist length hair in two years after big chopping. That's still an unnatural way. So when you decide to stop using Monistat for whatever reason, don't be surprised if you get massive headaches or something like that.
If it takes you five years to get to waist length, so what? Everyone's hair grows at a different pace. What's the rush? Really? You get waist length hair and then what? Gonna brag about it to kingdom come? Not the right way to go about it. My hair grows fast, but even if it didn't, I'm not impatient with my hair.
I'm just happy to have hair in the first place. Imagine how cancer patients feel. They're stressing about losing all of their hair and they can't do anything about it. And we're sitting around, stressing because our hair hasn't reached BSL length within two years of returning to natural. Come on, guys. We can do better.

Hair Tip #3: Start thinking about your hair like a plant. Whenever you get discouraged about your hair not growing, take a look at a tree and think about how long it took that tree to grow. Even a small bean plant. Everything takes time to grow, even hair. Growing your hair unnaturally is not best. Do it the natural way. Eat right, guzzle water, keep water on your scalp, exercise, use castor oil, deep condition weekly, protein treatments, you know the deal already. You'll be better off in the long run. Peace out and be blessed, curly mamas.

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~Epic Realist~