Photo credit: Science Buddies
The Scientific Method is so far the best tool we have in science to distinguish fact from speculation and while we don’t all own complex equipment at home to create experimental conditions for our Hair analysis, we do have the most important thing of the scientific method.
That is…OBSERVATION: This is the first & most crucial step, to care properly for our hair we first need to know everything there is to know about it and for that we should observe carefully. Is it dense, does it have a tendency to shed, do I have dandruff? There are so many things we can learn just from observing our hair and how it reacts to the products we apply to it. Observation is key to love and manage our curly hair as we should.
After that first step the “fun” begins…
ASK Interesting QUESTIONS: All questions are interesting when it comes to self discovery and “transitioning” or “big chopping” or curly hair haircare. You will learn (if you don’t already know) that the natural hair journey has a lot about self discovery in it. It’s amazing the surprises our changing hair holds in store for us. Enjoy the ride!
RESEARCH & HYPOTHESIS: OK, this one is tricky but let’s try it out together. Once you have specific questions about your hair, pick the most important one for you and look for background information from reliable sources it can be a hairdresser, a friend you trust, even a medical doctor and of course serious websites like for example Naturally Curly and well Google Scholar. Once you have your information try to predict what results you could get, thus formulating your hair hypothesis.
EXPERIMENT: Here we must be careful, because it’s our beloved hair we are talking about; but with the power of knowledge you can feel confident in testing and trying different things and actually find out that it is a lot of fun! At least for me it is fun 😃. Usually the first experiment would be something simple like replacing your current products in the hypothetical situation, that for instance, your hair is dry for more moisturizing ones. As confidence & knowledge grows so does your hability to experiment more freely, based on observations, good questions and background research.
ANALYSIS & CONCLUSION: This is basically when you decide whether or not your hair experiment was successful for you or not. One thing that can make your journey easier is writing things down, step by step and revisiting these steps regularly and make small or big changes depending on your results.
This is basically how I personally started approaching my natural hair journey, like an experiment. I have previous experience as a reseacher in the lab and in the hospital, but you do not need to have this background in order to enjoy your hair journey back to your curly true self.
My fun experiment is still ongoing; and now I also blog, run hair Instagram & facebook accounts, participate in collaborations with other bloggers and so on. Just now, sharing all this with you is another type of experiment for me, that has given me a lot of joy in the form of lots of new curl friends from all over the world.
I hope I will be able to inspire you to make a change too.
If you have questions feel free to ask, all questions are good questions just remember to always “say something nice”.
PS. Just know that even in science we are not limited by our hypothesis or our research questions, sometimes you have one question and find an answer to another question you did know you had. In terms of hair my very personal view point is that “if something works do not change it just because the hype is leaning in another direction”, with your hair you are the CEO, the big boss, you ultimately have the final hair say.
Cheers!
The Hair Lab MD<<<<<<<
The Hair Lab 