Textured Hair Care

Textured hair types are essentially wavy, curly, or coily. The many twists and turns a single strand of textured hair can have causes the hair a certain fragility.

About textured hair

Of all the hair types, the cuticle (the outer layer) of textured hair has the least amount of cuticle scales which have a tendency to ‘fray out’ and not lay flat to the hair shaft. This can cause the hair to have a duller appearance. Textured hair does absorb moisture but doesn’t always retain it.

Due to the issues regarding moisture retention, it is important to have a good product regime. The correct products will coat the hair, allowing it to retain moisture without compromising the overall health of the hair.

Frequently Asked Questions

This is an inflammatory complaint often caused by ingrowing hairs. Due to the inflammation, the follicle can become enlarged which may lead to an infection. This allows the possibility for the hair to grow back on itself, resulting in inflammation and possible scarring.

This condition affects many black men around the neck and beard areas and can also be caused by extreme and regular clipper use or shaving. The areas appear as pustules and inflammation. Inflammation causes the follicle to be open at skin level, allowing bacteria to enter the follicle. Cross contamination can occur from scratching and contaminated equipment.

Central Centrifugal Cicatricial Alopecia is a condition that presents itself as a loss of hair over a flesh coloured area. It is an inflammatory condition revealing itself mostly over the central scalp area, which enlarges centrifugally as the condition progresses.

Essentially, this is a natural occurring complaint which completely destroys the hair follicle and replaces it with scar tissue, causing permanent hair loss. This simply means that specific areas of the scalp suffer an atrophy of the hair follicle and surrounding skin causing a slow, degenerating process eventually taking on a scarred appearance.

The scarring is caused by the inflammatory infiltrate to the follicular stem cells. It can be a symptomatic condition whereby patients can complain of irritation, soreness, scaling or scalp discharge.

It is still a rarer complaint in comparison to other more common conditions of hair loss, but the number of sufferers with CCCA whom we have consulted, has most certainly risen over the past 5 – 10 years.

Within the last few years, there has been a link to a mutated gene which contributes to the onset of this complaint. A number of hair care practices can contribute to further aggravate the condition.

CCCA can appear to look like other similarly looking types of hair loss including Genetical Alopecia, Tractional Alopecia and Alopecia Areata. Therefore, misdiagnosis will not only be very distressing to the recipient but also, being misinformed, can delay the correct treatment of a complaint, causing further possible hair loss.

For any of the above complaints (including CCCA), we administer a deep, stimulative external therapy to the scalp here at our clinic. This increases the blood supply to the hair follicles and encourages a follicle to continue to promote hair growth.

Permanently damaged or degenerated hair follicles will not have the ability to produce any further hair, but with most sufferers of hair loss conditions, we are able to help slow down, control and maintain an ongoing complaint.

We have been treating patients with this problem for many years now and those who are fairly consistent with some form of stimulative therapy (whether here at our clinic or/and combined with home use products), appear to maintain a better density of hair.

FRONTAL FIBROSING ALOPECIA (FFA)
This affects the frontal hairline extending to the ears as well as eyebrows.
The affected area can look discoloured and often appear lighter to the surrounding skin.

Any of the above ‘Alopecias’ are devastating conditions for anyone, irrespective of the cause. Hair loss effects self-esteem, social interactions and relationships, and early diagnosis and prevention of complaint progress are crucial to the wellbeing of the patient.

Be aware!! There are a number of so-called hair clinics that may promise to do more than they are truly able. Their aim is to offer you false hope at a price. Remember, scar tissue will NOT grow hair so please be careful.

Here at The Spencer Clinic, we have been examining, diagnosing and treating all complaints and conditions associated with textured hair for over 30 years and are proud of the experience and knowledge we have been able to offer over that time.

We are one of the highest authorities in Europe dealing with all matters concerning Textured hair and our expert and consultant, Samantha Stewart, is a specialist in this field.