Goodbye bleach - Hello honey!

Hey everyone,

Again - this is probably a post that will mostly interest women.  I have recently been absolutely obsessed with this website called the Long Hair Community.  I am doing my best to quickly grow out my hair - so I am just eating up all the information on this great site.

Because I had been hoping to grow my hair out I had completely given up on the thought of ever highlighting my hair again.  I have naturally dirty blond hair which I haven't coloured in over two years.

But... today I was intrigued by a link to a post on using honey to lighten your hair.  Apparently it works on blond, red and brown hair.  I am not sure if it works on black hair.  The results are significant for some of the women who have tried this method.  The results appear to be more effective for people who have naturally lighter hair.

For those of you who are interested in a less damaging way of highlighting your hair for the summer - I would suggest you give this a try.

You will need to buy some honey - preferably dark honey - they recommend jarrah honey.
You will need distilled water.
And you will need to ground cardamom as well as extra virgin olive oil or coconut oil.

Mix 2 tablespoons of honey with 3/4 cup of distilled water.  The ladies on the forum also recommend adding some extra virgin olive oil and cardamom.  You need to let the mix sit at room temperature (do not heat) for 1 hour.  This will allow the honey to produce peroxide through a chemical reaction.

You then soak your head with water.  You have to make sure your hair is very wet when you apply the honey mixture. Then you should apply the mix to your head using a brush or bottle.  After applying you need to wrap your head using saran (because you want your hair to stay very wet) and then put a swim cap on top of the saran.  The mixture will be less effective and may dry out your hair if your hair doesn't stay moist for the hour of application.

You should not go in the sun or get too warm while the mixture is on your hair for the next hour since heat breaks down peroxide.

It is not clear how you would remove the honey after the hour.  I think I will try to rinse it out using conditioner.  FYI - I bought this Olive Oil conditioner so I can do deep conditioning treatments once a week.  I bought it in the section of the store with relaxers and other products for black hair.  I am very interested in using some products that black women use since my hair is also delicate and prone to breakage.

Most women who have seen dramatic results have used this treatment a few times to get their impressive results.

I have a bad habit of posting on things I haven't tried out.

I just get so excited and want to tell you all about it.

I will definitely do the honey treatment in the next month and report back.

I personally think highlighting your hair is overrated - I just thought naturally highlighting my hair would be a fun change for the summer given that I will not be cutting it.  I really can't believe how much women spend on highlights.  I haven't been to the salon for a full do recently, but a couple years ago the cost was about $180 for a cut, highlights, wash and blow dry.  Luckily my hair was growing at a snails place and my hair is naturally light so I didn't really get it done more than once a year.

I would also like to say that I really think people with dark brown or black hair look best with dark brown or black hair.  It is the people who have the sort of darkish blond hair who sometimes need a little pizazz.  My hair is starting to fall into this category.

The most important reason to just let your hair be or consider a honey treatment is because of the harmful effects of conventional hair dyes.  The International Agency for Research on Cancer found that hair dressers were more likely to get bladder cancer because of their daily exposure to the harmful, toxic ingredients found in hair dye.

It is time we all started thinking about alternatives to things we always suspected were a little toxic.  I think anyone who has smelt hair dye must realize it is going to do bad things to your body.

Until next time, Free yourself!