How to be Kind to Your Hair Amid This January Heat, According to Charlyne Kentaro of Kentaro Organics

January is doing the most, aside from the dust that’s literally everywhere, the heat is terribly high, and yet we have haircare goals to accomplish. Your hair is that accessory you wear every single day, it’s important to be kind to it.

In light of this, we reached out to Charlyne Kentaro, the founder and CEO of Good Hair Collective Limited, a company that creates hair care products under the brand name Kentaro Organics to talk haircare. Kentaro Organics, is a hair care brand founded formally in 2014, known to create safe and non-toxic hair products that suit African woman. Their products are plant based and good for both the body and planet.

Charlyne, who describes herself as a “ a wife and a mother of two beautiful girls with a passion for natural hair.  She had some much to share and, we have a lot of listening to do.

What’s the Kentaro brand story?

The brand Kentaro Organics started back in 2015, but formally in 2014, when I started making hair products in my parents’ kitchen. We started out by making hair butters, which was a blend of shea butter, coco butter, and some plant oils like coconut and grape seed.

We have seen it grow into a company that makes a wide range of products, including shampoos, deep conditioners, hair moisturizers, scalp scrums, hair oils, beard oils, beard washes, twisting creams, styling creams, and we are really just getting started.

Our ethos as a brand is to create hair products for African women that are safe and non-toxic, that don’t have any toxic chemicals in them, that are plant-based, good for the total body heath and also good for the planet, and that actually work and are created with hair care issues of African women in mind, to provide effective solutions to problems like dandruff, breakage, stunted hair, dry hair, and scalp among others.

We exist to create hair care solutions for African women. I can say with confidence that from our growing fan base of over 6000 women, we have created products that actually work. From our anti-breakage set, growth oil, and anti-dandruff shampoo, these are actually products that are very effective, some of them from the very first use for these kinds of problems.

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What effect does the heat and sun have on hair?

Extreme heat, even from the sun, does affect African natural hair. Our hair, naturally, as a race, tends to be very dry and needs the most moisture out of all the races compared to the Asians and Caucasians. When we are experiencing a heat wave like what we have in Kampala at the moment, you tend to see a lot more people’s hair dryer than usual because they are losing moisture to the atmosphere.

Not only does it tend to dry up hair, once the hair is dry, it breaks easily because water or moisture gives the hair that elasticity so that you are able to style it or pull it and it doesn’t snap. You can think of it as a stick of spaghetti. When you get it fresh from the pack and snap it, it snaps very easily. But once you’ve placed it in water for a while, you’re able to manipulate it without it snapping immediately.

The major problem we have with extreme heat on the hair is that it dries out the hair, and if your hair is not getting enough moisture, it will break, which is not great, especially if you’re trying to retain your length.

Does sunburn turn hair brown?

Yes, it can also turn the hair brown for a while, but that’s only if there’s been prolonged exposure to the sun. Let’s say you are in the sun for several hours in the day. That’s when you will see browning from sun exposure. Otherwise, if you’re walking to work or somewhere, it’s not something to worry about.

Then, how do you care for hair when you have to be out a lot in the sun & interfacing with dust?

The advice I usually give almost all year round is to get enough moisture for your hair. This starts from the moment you shampoo your hair. You basically need a hair routine or regimen that focuses on getting your hair to optimize some health.

So, the regimen looks like shampooing, which means cleansing the hair of dust and dirt, built up from dead skin cells and sweat. So you will want to cleanse your hair regularly, every week or every two weeks at least. You cleanse your hair with a good shampoo, preferably one that is sulphate free, and all our products in the Kentaro brand are sulphate free.

Sulphates are ingredients that strip the hair of a lot of its natural oils. So even when it’s cleansing and taking away the dirt, it tends to cleanse a bit too well and take away the natural oils that are better left on the scalp and the hair.

If you are experiencing dandruff, look for one that is anti-dandruff. Otherwise, you can use a regular sulphate-free shampoo and follow up with a deep conditioner. This step is so vital and it’s one that people tend to skip over. I guess that’s because that’s not how we have been raised. At least in the age bracket I am in (30-35+), most of us have gone from having relaxed hair to transitioning to natural hair, but natural hair needs deep conditioning. This step is like feeding your hair, and it’s a step where your hair gets to repair the broken protein bones, get moisture from the inside, and so many other things.

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Supposing I live a little more comfortably. I’m in doors a lot (office) but it’s as hot as it is now. What should be my routine..

So, once you shampoo with a good deep conditioner throughout the weeks or the times you wash your hair, in between the washes, you want to use a liven conditioner, which is known as a daily moisturizer, something that is water-based that you are going to apply to your hair every time it feels dry. For example, every couple of days you apply your liven moisturizer and follow it with an oil or butter that acts as a seal on the hair so that each time you step out in the hot sun, it’s harder for the hair to lose moisture to the atmosphere.

These are the fundamentals of a good regimen that will help you moisture your hair and retain length during this hot season.

Supposing I wear wigs a lot. What do I do for my hair with the heat and dust in my midst?

Even when you wear wigs, your routine or the way you care for the hair underneath the wig should more or less look like what I just described. You want to take off the wig in the evening, give your hair time to breath and, of course, wash the wig regularly. You can check YouTube on how to wash wigs depending on if they are synthetic or human hair. There are many tutorials on how to care for your wigs because you don’t want to keep placing a dirty wig on your scalp.

Generally, what are the natural hair dos and don’ts?

Some quick dos and don’ts. Well, like I said for the dos, hydrate your hair as often as you can. I don’t just mean water, oiling it. Women talk about oiling their hair regularly, but oil is different from water. Your hair needs water first, then oil as the final step. So, hydrate your hair regularly and hydrate your body more than you normally would, for it to work the way it should.

From a beauty aspect, at this time, if you’re not getting enough water in your body or enough nutrients in your body, your hair, skin, and nails will get less than they normally do. The body does not consider that a priority. So, you need to get enough of it. Other than the rest of your organs, the skin, hair, and nails can also get the water and nutrients they need from the inside out. This is important.

Another thing to do is to sleep on a satin pillow case and bonnet, silk or satin scarf, since cotton robs the hair of moisture. So if you are in a dry environment like this and you’re sleeping on cotton, it’s sucking the moisture out of your hair and it’s going to make a bad problem worse.

Then the don’ts. Try to minimize heat styling at this time because heat is also something that sucks moisture out of your hair and breaks down its protein. You can style your hair in other ways that don’t necessarily require heat.

You can style your hair in ways that don’t need heat, like twists, you can choose to even braid your hair, you can do cornrows, African threading, and other million ways to stretch your hair without blow drying it or silk pressing it right now because that is getting moisture from your hair and yet it really needs it right now.

Discover Kentaro Organics‘ product range here.

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