Is this really breakage or am I making myself paranoid?

AphroditeDot

I did the big chop the first week of May.
My hair has been fine so far and the only real problem I have is trying to keep it moisturize throughout the day.
I was looking up and I saw something about the differences between shedding hair and breakage.

My question is this:
Does the hair the comes out while I am detangling with a comb count as breakage?

I read that broken hair doesn't have that little white bulb at the end.
When my hair is dry, it doesn't fall out or anything and my hair doesn't really fall out when it is wet. Only while I am washing it and detangling it. When I was it, only a little bit falls out.
I am starting to freak out a little because I am worried that I am already starting off my "natural hair journey" with breakage and it hasn't even been a month yet.
Help!

Fronomenal

AphroditeDot wrote: »

My question is this:
Does the hair the comes out while I am detangling with a comb count as breakage?

Yes, if there is no white bulb attached to one of the ends.

Breakage always occurs during detangling--that's how it is for all hair types. The key is to find a detangling method that minimizes it. This takes time to figure out through research & trial-and-error.

Ninjarette

Yep...don't think you're going to completely eliminate breakage. You won't. You can only minimize it by using gentle styling methods, maintaining a proper moisture/protein balance, paying special attention to your ends, etc.

Relax.

TheCurlyOne

Yeah unless it has the white bulb on the end (which is shedded hair) then its breakage. ut I wouldn't worry too much about it. Most people experience breakage, it's difficult to avoid, but if I were you I would just use detanglers a lot and finger comb and pick the tangles out gently ass opposed to combing. People seem to like the deman brush for detangling though

AphroditeDot

OK! Thank you for answering and clearing that up for me!

I feel better now lol.

Jo Somebody

Agreed, you're never going to make breakage completely disappear, but in my opinion, what you're experiencing may be breakage and may be shedding. My hair is dense, so shed hairs do not just fall out, whether my hair is wet or dry. They have to be manipulated out during some sort of detangling, so when I'm detangling, shed hairs come out AND breakage occurs (unavoidably). When I finger detangle, there is almost no breakage, so I know how much my 'default' shedding is, which I can compare to the hair lost when I comb detangle.
As long as I do the things to keep my hair stretched, use slip, detangle gently and with the correct techniques (e.g. from the ends to the roots, in sections), then I can usually be confident that most of the hair in the comb is shed hair, not breakage.
Not that I go looking, but I have never seen a white bulb at the root of my hair, but I don't worry that all the hair in the comb is breakage.

To summarize (lol! I talk too much) :laughing6: :
When washing and detangling breakage AND the removal of shed hair will occur. The hair lost will be a total of both.
Maximise all the techniques you can to reduce breakage.
You may or may not see white bulbs at the root of your shed hair.

Just one more thing (Columbo stylee!), when I first big chopped, I let my hair shrink up all the time, often didn't bother covering it at night, washed every other day, detangled all my hair all at once as quickly as possible (not always using products with slip), tested new products here there and everywhere and the hair I lost (say, in a week) was twice the amount of the hair I lose now, yet my hair is twice as long. Not sure if you have a twa, but I did and because I knew/thought it should be easy to manage, I took the {*bleep*} sometimes. Anywho, good luck with everything! I'll shut up now!