Many of you might have heard of the term “Pre-Poo” and to simply put, Pre-poo, is a pre-shampooing or pre-cleansing process commonly done with oils , a Organic Cold Pressed Coconut Oil, or Extra Virgin Olive Oil, or even conditioners to prevent things, such as hygral fatigue and single/double strand knots. Pre-poo acts as a conditioning treatment that overall protects and strengthens the hair. Check out my Wash Day Routine video to view how I apply my Pre-Poo method on my Low Porosity 4C hair.
Features: Princessfaith, aka Miss Stylesbyprin, doing a Pre-Poo in her 4C Wash Day Tutorial
Why should you do a Pre-Po treatment?
You should Pre-Poo to reduce snags or tangles, improve moisture, maintain length retention, and boost hair elasticity. The main goal of a Pre-Poo treatment is to protect the natural hair strands from oil stripping often caused by shampoos, more so cleansing shampoos.
Without Pre-pooing, we face the risk of our natural hair sebum being stripped not only from the hair strands, but also from the scalp, leading up to excessive dryness. While those are great reasons to Pre-poo, an even greater one is to maintain hair elasticity and prevent moisture (from the water molecules ) from escaping the hair. Read more on Hygral fatigue and how it relates to Pre-Poo here.
Pre-Poo Reduces Snags and Tangled Knots
Natural hair has its perks, however, there are some underlying factors we deal with, especially with coarse textured, otherwise known as 4c, natural hair. I am also a 4c/coarse textured babe and I know what it feels like to constantly have to de-tangle your ends. Pre-Pooing before your cleansing process will create slip in your hair and make the washing and conditioning process smoother so you do not have to loose massive amounts of hair. The slip also reduces the snags and tangled knots that often occur in coarser textured hair. In my recipe for Bentonite clay mask tutorial, I even mention how Pre-poo might benefit you in the removing stubborn lents or flaky build up that tends to remain on the hair even after you have washed it. The oil helps with providing slip in that regard so that whatever type of wash you perform, is bound to actually result into squeaky clean tresses.
Pre-Poo Improves Hair Moisture
As I mentioned earlier, most shampoos, whether it be a clarifying or cleansing shampoo, contain an oil stripping property. When you pre-poo overnight, under a heated cap or under a blowdryer (on low heat, ofcourse) , you coat you hair strands with penetrating oil that fights against those harsh properties that cause the natural hair sebum to be stripped. After pre-pooing, what happens is that, the shampoo is able to remove the necessary dirt from your hair and the oils you need for your hair stay put.
Pre-Poo Helps Maintain Length Retention
This circles back to my point about reduction in strand knots and snags. While split ends play a factor to why you may not have length retention, stranded knots, play a huge role in preventing you from achieving your desired hair length. Now you can promote length retention when you do a pre-poo before your hair wash routine. The length retention inadvertently comes into play when you are also using pre-poo to avoid unwanted snags at the very ends of your hair.
Pre-Poo Boosts Hair Elasticity
Okay so remember what I mentioned about hygral fatigue? Hair elasticity ties into it as well. For those that love to apply water into the hair strands almost every day, be aware that you are not only reducing your hair elasticity, but also making your strands vulnerable to hygral fatigue. Your hair’s elasticity is its ability to “bounce” back. Think of when you stretch your curls and what happens when you let the stretched curl go, does it bounce back into its form? Or does it not? The ability for your curls to bounce beautifully is a huge part of your hair’s elasticity. That is where hygral fatigue comes in: when you suffer from this issue, it is because you most likely applied much more water than your hair actually needed, which then lead to loss of hair elasticity. Be careful with this, but know that Pre-Poo can help fix your elasticity and fatigue issue. One thing a lot of my natural sistas fail to realize is that you cannot make efforts to fix an issue while doing other things that promote the very thing you are trying to stop from happening. Do not fix elasticity with Pre-Pooing if you are going to keep applying water onto your strands as an everyday routine.
