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The moisture vs protein balance is the most confusing aspect of learning how to care for your naturally wavy hair, in my opinion. I felt really overwhelmed by it early on. I tried to just avoid it, at first, and that wasn’t a disaster.

If you just cannot seem to figure out if your hair needs protein or not, that doesn’t mean you can’t embrace or waves. It may just take time to learn your hair well enough to make sense of your moisture and protein needs. It may help to take my how to determine your wavy hair type test!

Once I started to grasp my moisture and protein balance, it did help me get results that I was happier with.

I’ve gotten many comments and emails from people asking about moisture vs protein. I’ve pushed off writing this blog post because most resources say that high porosity hair needs a lot of protein, and low porosity hair doesn’t need much protein. That isn’t the case for me.

I’m not an expert so I can’t say with 100% certainty why that is. I have found a single source that gave me a potential answer…but just one, which is odd.

I’ve wondered if I just shouldn’t speak to this topic due to my hair not following the basic expectations of how porosity and moisture/protein balance are said to impact each other. I decided to finally write this post, though…because I don’t imagine that I am the only one who has found that my low porosity hair likes protein….a LOT.

Unfortunately, as far as I can tell, there isn’t a ton of research about different hair types and how they react to different ingredients.

While I can’t provide any science behind why my hair needs what it needs, I can share how I’ve learned what my hair needs…and that may be helpful to others who are struggling to figure out what their hair needs, too. With that “disclaimer” in mind…let’s jump in!

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