Naturals and Hair Growth

[steph]

I have a question for the naturals here. How do you measure your hair growth or know the rate of your hair growth? My hair is very wavy at the scalp and very tightly curled. My shrinkage is so bad that i can not tell if it is growing. Even when i straighten the waves are still there and my hair is stil not completely straight. I have never been able to measure my hair growth or know my monthly growth rate e.g. 1/2 inch, and i wanted to see how other naturals do.

 

[NAY007]

Well when my hair is wet it's pretty straight so I always turn to the side, look in the mirror and then I see about how many more inches I have to go. But I've never measured my hair.

 

[deeplyrooted]

to combat shrinkage, i'll usually braid my hair while wet in the shower and let it air dry a little before unbraiding. if i'm really have a length conscious day, i'll just use my hand and stretch my hair until it won't stretch any more. i'm really not length conscious too much, which seems to be a great help throughout this growing out process as the back of my natural hair is now grazing my shoulder blades ! ! !

my two key ingredients: time and patience.

 

[Valerie]

How I don't measure my hair anymore, but I stretch my hair when it is dry to see how far it can stretch too. Before I started rinsing my hair, my side hair would only stretch to the middle of my earlobes, after three months of continuous rinsing, my hair stretches to the bottom of my hair earlobe. Now it stretches to the middle of my neck.

 

[Maestradiva77]

I take shrinkage photos by stretching a section of the hair (see photos). One of the ways I can tell that I have made progress is by the position of the arm (holding the section of hair) in the photos. Taking shrinkage photos keeps me encouraged that my hair is actually growing.

 

[LittleMissScientist]

Hi Steph

I totally understand the difficulty of measuring due to the amazing process of shrinkage

What I have found useful in the past few months is to find a single piece of clothing (my fav is a spaghetti strap tank) and wear it whenever you want to "measure" your hair by pulling a handful of curls and seeing where it hits on the tank. Although this will not give you a precise inches measurement, you will be able to tell that your hair is growing based on the fact that it will be falling lower and lower on this particular "stationary" shirt (i.e., I went from not reaching the top of the tank in the back to reaching past the top). This is the most common way that I measure my hair.

Alternatively, you could measure the long hairs that you shed, although this may be inaccurate because the hairs may come from different areas on the head. And finally (can you tell that someone is always trying to measure???

) you could take a small section in the back and just straigthen it out REALLY WELL using a ceramic curling iron(flip the wrist so you get right up on the roots) and see where it falls.

As deeplyrooted said, it's just a matter of time and patience so that when you do measure you can "see" some progress.

Happy growing!

OshunCurls

 

[DragonPearl]

It is really harder to tell growth because of the shrinkage factor. Once a month or every other month, right after no-poo, I used to grab individual sections of hair, stretch them taut and see where they land: Jaw, nose, Top of shoulder, collar bone, armpits, etc. Now I actually use a ruler and hold it against different hair sections.

 

[EbonyEyes]

I twist my hair wet. When my twists have dried I will pull a twist to see how far it reaches. The smaller the twist, the easier it is to stretch for me.

-Ebony

 

[jemini]

I either straightten it then use a tape measure, or stretch out a section of hair like Jessy said and see where it lands.

 

[Ipanema]

I use a ruler. I just put it at my root & stretch my hair up against the ruler to see how many inches it is. This has been my method for quite a while, and I stop measuring this way when my hair grows longer than the ruler.

 

[pookeylou]

That's what I did.

 

[nutella]

Ah Shrinkage! It's a beautiful thing! It makes your hair totally mysterious: "How much hair does she really have? Hmm, I just don't know...?"
I stopped measuring after I passed 6 inches, but before then, I would just grab a section of my front and pull it down as far as it would go (eyebrow, then nose, then chin). The other way is to pluck a strand (or collect some shed hair) and stretch it out on top of a ruler. The last time I did that, I scotch-taped one end of the hair to the end of the ruler, and stretched it completely.

 

[SVT]

[ QUOTE ]
nutella said:
Ah Shrinkage! It's a beautiful thing! It makes your hair totally mysterious: "How much hair does she really have? Hmm, I just don't know...?"

[/ QUOTE ]

YEP!

Like others have mentioned earlier, I can tell how much my hair has grown by turning to the side and looking at it while it's wet or by stretching out a section of dry hair.