Why Pre-Pooing is Essential to Healthy Natural Hair

All my friends can’t seem to understand why I must dedicate almost an entire day to washing my hair. The extra effort that I put into my hair is benefiting me in the end, and I try to explain that I’ve made a habit out of doing things to keep my hair healthy. One of those things is pre-pooing, I swear by it!

Pre-pooing is the first step of my wash day. I section my hair and apply coconut, castor, and sweet almond oil from root to end. I cover my head with a plastic cap and let the oils seep into my hair and scalp overnight – the minimum amount of time for a pre-poo would be 30 minutes with heat added. A more detailed description of my pre-poo routine can be found in my wash-day routine.

Why bother doing all of this? Not only does it help detangle, add shine, and help with frizz, it also helps make your wash day the best in 3 different ways.

Hygral Fatigue.

Hygral fatigue is the damage done to hair by the expansion and contraction of our strands. Expansion occurs when we wet our hair and the shaft must expand to accommodate water and other products that we apply to our hair. But our hair must shrink back down to normal size, and during this process, hair can split and break. Constant expansion and contraction can damage the hair fiber and weaken the hair cuticle – a weakened hair cuticle leads to higher porosity and an easier disposition to breakage.

Polar oils – such as coconut oil, jojoba oil, and avocado oil – can help prevent hygral fatigue. These oils make their way into the hair fiber, reinforce it from inside and strengthen the structure. This happens when the oil binds to the hair’s inner proteins, which reduces the proteins chemical ability to bind to water molecules. Fewer water molecules keep the swelling of the hair at a minimum, leaving less damage to be done as it contracts.

Hair Moisture Retention

Adding a pre-poo treatment to hair helps to restore lost moisture. During the shampooing process, our hair is stripped of many natural oils that help with hair growth – thus making hair drier within the first step of wash day. By infusing hair with oils pre-shampoo, not only are you sealing moisture into the hair shaft, you’re also limiting the amount of shampoo entering the shaft to strip away hair’s moisture.

No Breakage During Your Wash

Having hair saturated in oil provides a slip between all the strands as they are rubbed together vigorously during the shampoo. If the pre-poo is done correctly, with detangling occurring as the oil is applied, there are fewer knots that end up shedding from your ends. It also prevents tangling while washing. I personally have type 4C hair, and without a pre-poo treatment, my strands tend to wrap around themselves causing single strand knots. If we can wash our hair with extra care, we can prevent breakage that occurs during washing.

Although a clean scalp is a healthy scalp, shampoos sometimes inadvertently cause more trauma than we know. Pre-pooing is the step that is necessary to protect your hair during the washing process. It might add a bit more time to your wash-day routine, the health of your hair is worth the extra care taken.