One Cool Hair Care Tip Men Can Learn From Cats

Read this article to learn this cool hair care tip for men that Rogelio learned from his cat. It involves spreading an oily substance you secrete every day across your locks. Sounds gross? Then read below for an epic men’s hair tip!

Using your own sebum for great hair: or how my cat and I share the same mane-grooming method

I like animals, and I especially love dogs. I think dogs are intelligent, loyal and loving creatures, and most will go out of their way to defend you and your loved ones. On the other hand, one of the pet animals that I have never been a real fan of are cats: they’re usually independent, make themselves too comfortable in the house, only want things their way and they would rather spend their days sleeping on the sofa than go out for a run or a walk as a dog would usually be up for.

Having said the above, some months ago I got myself a (male) kitten and I have fallen in love with the little guy: he is funny, cute (a tuxedo cat), active and he is showing me a lot about cats that I didn’t know. He also has the glossiest, softest and smoothest fur imaginable, and that’s what this article today is all about; well, not exactly, as the article is actually going to be about what I have learnt from my cat in terms of hair grooming and hair care.

Cats are the cleanest and most groomed of all animals

You see, cats are really clean creatures; I have a box with cat sand for my cat to do his defecating needs so that he won’t pee on the floor, and the dude ever since he was a kitten has followed suit and peed/pooped in the box and even covers it with sand so the box looks clean. Not only are cats some clean dudsters themselves but they’re also the most groomed of all animals, and their grooming is done by themselves (or other cats) on a daily basis. If you have a cat or have petted a cat before, you will have noticed that they have really smooth and healthy-looking hair (fur). In my case, my cat has such glossy fur that even our guests always comment on his fur’s gloss; my cat dude spends hours each day licking his own fur to keep it well groomed and glossy, and, after repeatedly catching him licking his fur, I noticed a pattern.

Well, I too have noticed this behavioral pattern with my cat, but I digress…

Scalp sebum is a male’s best hair care and grooming product

Cats will lick their own fur daily for three main reasons:

• To clean their fur from accumulated dirt and dust
• To stimulate the hair follicles to secrete sebum
• To spread the secreted sebum across the hair strands that make their fur

If you have read my bestselling hair care book, The Men’s Hair Book, the above 3 reasons and actions will ring quite a bell. In the book, I give you my No Shampoo method involving my Sebum Coating method, with the latter method being effectively what my cat, and the millions of cats around the world, do on a daily basis.

Your scalp, just like the skin of cats, contains hair follicles from where hair strands grow. Attached to those hair follicles of yours and theirs, there are sebaceous glands that secrete an oily substance known as “sebum”. Just like I describe and explain in detail in The Men’s Hair Book, the purpose of your secreted sebum is to protect the hair while giving itgloss and healthy-looking volume. Essentially, as a dude with a head of straight locks or curly locks, it’s in your interest to use and make the most of your sebum.

The small purple sacks in the diagram above are the sebaceous glands from which sebum is secreted daily (image credit:http://training.seer.cancer.gov/)

My Sebum Coating method: a revolutionizing method to use and take advantage of the “grease” you produce daily

I developed my Sebum Coating method while learning about my thick mane of coils and kinks. A very long time ago, I decided to carry out some tests to see how my hair would fare without using any men’s hair products whatsoever for weeks at a time, and thus be able to learn through, trial and error, more methods with which to maximize my hair care, hair grooming and hair styling. The results of all my experiments related to the abstinence from hair products were great and thought provoking, and I ended up devising a method to look after my hair by means of maximizing my own scalp sebum, and that method was my Sebum Coating method.

My Sebum Coating method forms part of my Hair-Management Equation system, which is a holistic system to optimize one’s own hair and customize it long term (including hairstyles, haircuts and hair care) and which has already benefited lots of guys worldwide. I wholly describe and explain the Sebum Coating method in Chapter 3 of The Men’s Hair Book (click the link to see the book in Amazon) and you can learn this pioneering method of mine in full detail in the book. In summary, though, the method consists of using your fingers to mechanically spread the sebum secreted by your glands across the length of your hair strands so as to clean your hair and condition it too. Such a mechanical action, when combined with the right shampooing frequency and hair grooming strategy as detailed in my book, provides great-looking hair that is customized to the particular needs of your hair and that allows you to enhance your mane and the products you use, and it even allows you to stop using hair products if that’s what you want!

How my long curly hair has benefited from my Sebum Coating method

Unlike the many other websites, magazines and books that copy and rehash information from each other, I like to test, trial and experiment to then come up with different angles to tackle issues and thus provide solutions. The Sebum Coating method is one method I had been using for a long time already, but it was some 2 years now that I decided to do a live 30-day natural hair challenge in which I would be going a full 30 days without using any hair products whatsoever,including shampoo. Just me and my curls; I would shower each day, and I would use my Sebum Coating method to clean and groom my hair, but that was all. The end result of my experiment was as follows:

Day 1

I shampooed my hair the night before and officially started that day without using hair products. The picture below was effectively how my hair looked clean and hair product free.

Day 30

The picture below was how my hair looked by the end of the 30 days of using no hair products, just using my Sebum Coating method. I sweat a lot due to the intense weightlifting training sessions I endure and I naturally produce a lot of sebum, so I truly put my curls to the test with this challenge and with my method!

You can actually track the picture updates that I provided every 3 days for this live natural hair challenge of mine (click the link to read the updates). I simply went about my usual business during those 30 days, only using my own sebum to my advantage. Needless to say, my hair didn’t become greasy, dirty or look bland or gross; in fact, my experiment was followed by hundreds of people online and the consensus was that my hair looked even better than the first day! And all thanks to my very-own greasy sebum.

Want a great hair care tip for men? “Sebuminize” your tresses

Incidentally, this is not the first time that I improvise a hair care tip from an animal: I already talked about the curly hair care advice a curly dude could learn from a curly dog, so this article with a second tip on hair care derived from my cat’s daily rituals isn’t unexpected as per Manly Curls’ standards. For those of you new to my site, Manly Curls is the MacGyver of men’s hair care and styling, where you will not only find stuff about your hair that is of actual use but you will also have it delivered in an unconventional fashion (y’all know, like that one time MacGyver got a broken helicopter to work by using an elastic band and a paper clip).

In conclusion and to finish off this big tip: if you want to make the most of your hair, regardless of hair type, then it’s in your interest to put my Sebum Coating method to good use. Does using my method mean that you won’t have to use hair products? Well, that’s up to you; you may very well like to use a hair gel such as this one or a styling cream such as this other one so as to put the finishing styling touches to your mane, but, again, it’s up to you; and that’s where the beauty of the method resides: you are free to fully customize your hair as you want it to and as per your exact needs and wants! One hair product that curly dudes would do good with, though, is a regular hair conditioner so as to provide even more moisture retention to your coils and kinks, especially during the early phases of the Sebum Coating method and as you perfect it (this hair conditioner will work well with my Sebum Coating method).

So there, get your sebum spread and go on to get the mane of a lion!

All the best, gents.

Rogelio

P.S: you can get my book, The Men’s Hair Book, in Amazon as a paperback or kindle (click here in this link to see/buy any of the 2 versions), and you can also find my book in specialized bookstores across USA and UK.

via:http://www.manlycurls.com/2014/01/one-cool-hair-care-grooming-tip-men-can-learn-from-cats/