My name is Janice, I stopped combing my 4c natural hair three years ago. That’s right. You read that correctly: I haven’t combed or brushed my 4c natural hair in over three years. Not only that, my hair is thriving. While this isn’t a big deal for people who maintain locs, I am a loose-haired natural. My hair isn’t matted and my hair’s retention is on track. So the question is: Why have I stopped combing my hair?
I have to admit, when I started, I thought that I would have to return to combing my hair. I assumed that the shed hair would become unmanageable and that I would transition to start caring for locs. Or more extreme still, I would have to Big Chop and start my hair journey, again. However, the longer I continue this process, I am more convinced that regularly combing my hair hinders my length retention.
WHY I STOPPED COMBING MY HAIR
Exclusive finger detangling seems like an extreme way to care for my hair. Especially since since I have one of the most highly textured hair “types”: Cottony, 4c hair. This hair “type” is most prone to shrinkage, meshing, webbing, knotting, splitting, over-drying…you name it. So why would I stop combing my 4c natural hair and subject it to something that could intensify these conditions?
I first incorporated finger detangling into my hair care routine years ago to reduce breakage and increase retention. Before I started my natural hair journey, my retention was minimal. My hair wouldn’t show any length beyond neck length and I wanted more than that.
When I started my hair journey, I learned about the unique needs of 4c hair and how to care for it. I learned that its numerous coils and bends make it more vulnerable to splitting and breaking than other hair types. I realized that combs and brushes were causing my hair extreme amounts of breakage, even with reduced or limited use. Finger detangling on the other hand, offered the possibility of less breakage. This allowed me to maximize my length retention.
WHAT IS FINGER DETANGLING?
People often talk about “finger detangling” and “finger combing”, but what is it?
The term “finger detangling” describes the process of manually separating hair strands while removing large knots and shed hair. This process separates hair into workable sections while reducing breakage. Just as you would use a traditional comb or brush, you can use this process to style and arrange your hair.
Even though this process works with all hair types, it’s especially beneficial to those with kinkier and coilier hair. Particularly those with 4c natural hair.
BENEFITS OF NOT USING A COMB
Reducing Tension
One of the benefits of not combing 4c natural hair is having the ability to reduce the amount of tension applied to our hair when styling. We become more perceptive to the tension put on our hair when we detangle and comb the traditional way. We have very little control over the amount of strain that is put on individual strands. The teeth and bristles of combs and brushes can be too sharp or close together. This prevents them from gliding through our strands easily. As a result, we run the risk of excessively damaging our hair.
However, when we use our fingers, we become more perceptive to the amount of tension we put on our hair while we interact with it. We feel where the knots are. Instead of blindly ripping through them, we can gently work them out with our fingers.
Sebum Distribution
Sebum is a naturally occurring oily-waxy substance found on your skin’s surface. This substance is produced by the sebaceous glands, located under the surface of our body’s skin and scalp. It acts as a barrier and protects the body from foreign matter such as bacterial and fungal infections. It also prevents water from leaving the body. Sebum helps to keep skin and hair moist and pliable. While a lack of sebum can cause hair and skin to feel dry, too much can leave your hair and skin feeling oily. This can create scalp issues.
The natural coils and bends of highly textured hair strands can slow the flow of sebum along the hair strand. Kinky-coily scalps can and do in fact create sebum. There are a few ways we can manipulate sebum and distribute it along the length of our hair. First, make sure to clean your scalp regularly. This reduces the likelihood of sebum over accumulating on the surface of the scalp and along the strands. Too much sebum on the surface of the scalp can lead to flaky, red, and or itchy scalp skin.
Finger combing, when done right, distributes sebum along the length of your hair. This can keep your hair soft and pliable. Preening, or distributing the sebum using your fingers, works best after the scalp is warmed. There are several ways to warm the scalp. The first way, is through massage. Massaging increases warmth in your scalp. This, in turn, warms up and liquefies the sebum allowing it to spread easier. The second technique is to massaging your scalp in a warm shower. The heat from the shower along with the friction of the massage, makes sebum even easier to work with. Baggying for a few hours produces the same sebum softening effect.
THREE YEARS NOT COMBING 4C NATURAL HAIR
I don’t use any combs or brushes to remove knots and shed hair. Why not? At first it started off as an experiment. I was already primarily finger detangling and would comb my hair once every three months or four times per year. However, even with infrequent detangling with a comb, my hair would suffer a lot of breakage.
I realized that finger combing could remove the same amount of shed hair as using a traditional comb, but with less breakage.
My 4c hair was responding positively to this change. I began my experiment slowly so that I could monitor how my hair responded. I extended my quarterly detangling sessions to twice per year. After six months, my natural hair wasn’t anymore tangled or hard to navigate with my fingers than in the previous months. I turned the six-month interval into nine months and eventually stretched it to one year. At the one-year mark, I concluded this method worked well for me. This was an amazing discovery! Not only was I improving my length retention, but my hair wasn’t matting and locking. I found this encouraging and decided to continue this process for another year. One year turned into two years. Now three years later, I feel less compelled to comb through my 4c natural hair or to have it fully detangled.
My Method
The way that I install, wear, and care for my hair creates minimal matting. The style that I think works best for my hair is two-strand twists. They are easy to install and easy to take down. Braids would also work for this method.
Two-strand twists allow me to better moisturize and seal my hair while they are in this low manipulation style. Over the course of wearing a set of twists, my twists will hold onto product well. Each tendril holds onto leave-in conditioner and oils after each moisturizing session. This allows my strands to slide past one another easily when I take them down. Through my diet, I create sebum to naturally protect my scalp and hair.
When finger detangling, I also manipulate my natural oils so that they coat the length of my hair. This can aid in slip and allow for separation of my strands. By the time that I take my twists down, I only need to use water to detangle my hair.
Shower Detangling
Each time I detangle my hair, I do it twice. The first time is when I take down a set of two strand twists. The second time that I detangle is in the shower. When I detangled out of the shower my hair tends to have a lot of shrinkage. The shrinkage alone is enough to create new tangles which makes detangling the detangling process harder.
As a result, I’ve stopped combing my 4c natural hair and learned to detangle my hair in the shower. I find that my hair responds particularly well to being detangled under warm running water. The warm water warms the oils on my hair and elongates my coils. I don’t add any additional products to my hair. I find that knots slip out easily when they work alongside the gravity of the shower’s water flow.
Varying Sizes of Twists
The method that I use for installing and maintaining my twists hasn’t changed over the years. I wear my hair in three sizes of twist: small, medium, and large. Finger detangling can become overwhelming. I plan my detangling sessions in advance so that I don’t become stressed out by the process.
I’ve observed that many naturals who use finger detangling as their primary method of hair care. Those naturals didn’t strive for 100 percent detangled hair. With this mindset, I’m perfectly content not to remove every single shed hair every time I detangle my natural hair.
Partially Detangled Hair
I developed a strategy to remove various amount of shed hair without combing my 4c natural hair. This strategy is to vary the size of my twists. With each install, I don’t use a comb. Instead, I finger detangle my hair enough to effectively create twists in my hair. The cycle starts by detangling and installing jumbo twists. With this size twist, I aim to detangle about 40% to 50% of my hair. I wear jumbo twists for approximately one week at a time.
From there, I will break the jumbo twists down into medium-sized twists. When I install medium-sized twists, I further detangle my hair. Again, the goal is to remove enough shed hair so that I can effectively install medium-sized twists without issue. At this point, I detangle each section so that it is approximately 70% tangle-free. I wear medium-sized twists two weeks at a time.
Finally, I break the medium twists into mini-twists. During this installation process, I further detangle my hair to allow easy installation. Since these twists are small, I finger detangle my hair to about 90%. I will wear these twists anywhere from one to three months at a time. After wearing these twists, I will reverse the process until I get back to wearing jumbo twists. All of this, I do without using a comb.
My hair is the most detangled and free of shed hair when I wear my hair in mini-twists. When I wear mini-twits, I don’t worry about my hair getting overly tangled because the twists are small and compact. Mini-twists prevent my strands from moving as much as they would if they are in larger twists. Mini twists don’t tangle quickly when washed as compared to jumbo twists.
Knots and Tangles
If I’m honest, most knots and tangles that I experience are a result of my lack of skill twisting my hair. Even though I have been styling my own natural hair for over 10 years, I’m still subjected to knots and tangles due to bad styling practices. First, I often forget to smooth my hair along the strands as I twist. This can cause individual strands to wind it’s way into a neighbouring tendril which creates a webbing effect. Second, I still sometimes “borrow” while twisting my hair. This to can lead to my hair meshing over time. Third, if my strands gets too dry, then they can’t slide past each other and instead form knots.
HOW TO DETANGLE 4C NATURAL HAIR WITHOUT A COMB
On the surface, detangling natural type 4c hair looks quite intimidating. That’s partly due to the fact that it takes quite some time to do it efficiently and carefully. Especially, without a comb.
Unlike traditional combing, finger detangling requires patience. It requires the person detangling to understand how much tension each strand of hair can handle before it looses elasticity or even breaks. It also requires you to have dexterous fingers to manipulate and separate the hair strands without forming new knots.
In spite of that, finger detangling and finger combing can be a rewarding activity. The results are cumulative, so the more that you do it, the more benefits you will notice.
Tips for Detangling 4C Natural Hair Without A Comb or Brush
Work on Moisturized Hair
When manipulating natural hair, it’s important to work on hair that is well moisturized and even lubricated.
Natural 4c hair has many twists and bends. For this reason, it’s necessary to moisturize your hair well, before manipulating it. Moisturizing the hair makes it more pliable and therefore reduces the risk of breaking the strands while working with them. After all, increasing breakage would be counter productive to using this method.
In addition to moisturizing your hair, you can add slip with products that will create a film over your strands. Slip will allow the strands to glide past each other without resistance. This will prevent them from meshing with each other while you are detangling and separating them. Products like conditioner, aloe vera gel, and carrier oils can create a foundation for making finger detangling easier.
When I detangle my hair, I gently spray it with warm water to prepare it for the detangling session. The warm water softens and prepares my hair for manipulation. I add extra moisture to the roots of my hair. This is where the most sebum and product buildup occur. A lot of shed hair sticks here for this reason.
After, I squeeze the water into my hair to make sure that it soaks in.
Work in Small Sections
Working in sections is important to the physical process, but also for your piece of mind. If you are new to the finger detangling process, you might find working in large sections to be quite daunting. While the process is quick, you won’t remove a lot of shed hair. Also, without a comb, detangling 4c natural hair in large sections effectively doesn’t work. Conversely, if you work in sections that are too small, you might find the process to be overwhelming. Working in extremely small sections is time consuming. It could feel like the process will take forever which could result in you giving up entirely. Medium sized sections tend to work well since it’s not an overwhelming amount of hair to work with.
Start with Your Ends and Work Your Way Up
It’s best to start detangling your 4c natural hair without combing it is by starting at the ends of our hair. After that, work your way up to your roots. Unravelling and detangling your ends first, creates a path for shed hairs to move through and out of the section of hair.
Then take small section of hair and start separating your hair from tip to root.
Removing Shed Hair
When I come across a section of hair where strands have difficulty sliding through, I add more moisture or product with slip to that section. This works especially well with knots that aren’t very tight. The additional moisture allows me to work single strands of hair out of the knots. Larger knots are reduced to smaller knots by releasing the hairs one strand at a time. Left behind is a single strand of hair that has wrapped itself around the others.
Remember to remove knots from your hair using scissors. Nail scissors, fabric scissors, or any scissors that aren’t meant for cutting hair can create more damage. The same thing is true for scissors that are dull. Pulling on knots will lead to split strands and reduced elasticity in hair strands. When you cut knots out, remember to cut as close to the knot as possible.
Detangling the Roots
Look for areas that tend to trap shed hairs, such as the roots in your crown or your nape. The crown area tends to be a common spot for dryness. For this reason, it’s harder for hair strands to slide out easily on their own. On the other hand, sebum tends to build up along the nape. Shed hair can get trapped in sticky sebum if the shed hair or the sebum isn’t quickly removed. When these areas build up with shed hair, it can result in an increased amount of knots and webbing.
Be Gentle!
The goal of finger detangling is to be as gentle as possible with your hair. This is so that you don’t create additional breakage and splits. When detangling your hair, make sure that you aren’t in any rush or feeling overwhelmed. Rushing the process and mishandling your strands could create just as much damage as mishandling it with a comb or brush.
Will I Start Combing My 4c Hair Again?
The big question is: Will I go back to combing my 4c natural hair? For now, I’ve found that the benefits of putting down the comb have outweighed the negative effects. My hair retention is much better, my hair is sheenier, and I have less split hairs and single strand knots.
At some point in the future, I may try different styles that require a smoother or sleeker look. In that case, I can see how a comb or even a detangling brush may be helpful for achieving that result. Until then, I’ll continue relying on my fingers to do the heavy lifting.
Have you ever tried not combing your natural hair? What did you think?
