Hey there kings and queens! This is the blog you might have not known that you needed. We have a global crisis on our hands. The Coronavirus or COVID-19 disease, a new strain of the family of Coronaviruses (CoV). Coronaviruses cause illness ranging from the common cold to more severe diseases such as Middle East Respiratory Syndrome (MERS-CoV) and Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS-CoV).

This virus is spread through cough or sneeze droplets from person to person or from contaminated surfaces, including metal, clothing, skin, coins etc. When one touches these surfaces and then touch their faces i.e. nose, mouth and even eyes, they run the risk of becoming ill. I know it’s not just me, but this obviously means this virus is as easily spread as the common cold or flu.

What does this have to do with hair-care? Everything! How you care for your body including your hair, whether it’s your crown (the hair atop your head) or your mane (beard) will determine if you contract the coronavirus. I know you would rather not. So here are the ways to protect yourself and loved ones by protecting your hair:

Ps. These tips also apply to your children and those in your care.

• Keep your hair covered as much and as often as possible when out and about. Why is this necessary? To keep any of the virus droplets from getting on your hair of course. Remember, our hair is not like our hands which can be washed every 10 minutes or sanitized every hour.

  

  Women have scheduled days for washing their hair, men wash their hair when they are taking a shower. So to reduce exposure to any harmful droplets and contaminants, cover your hair. If your job doesn’t allow you to cover your head, keep it covered until you get into the building.

No exposure is the best exposure, but less exposure is just as helpful.

• Wash your hair more often. This includes wigs and weaves! Increasing wash-days during this crisis will greatly reduce your risk of virus contraction. Other than getting germs onto the hair and passing it to your face by hand, you can also transfer germs to your pillows. Coronavirus can survive on clothing for 9 hours before it’s lifespan expires. Imagine you picked up the virus on your hair and clothes, got home, took a shower, but, you didn’t wash your hair and jumped into bed. Transferring the virus straight on to the same pillow you will hug and rub all over your face while you sleep, breathing in corona- not the lager beer type. See where I’m going?. Just wash your hair more. Move wash-days up from day 7 to day 5, from day 5 to day 3. Men stop skipping the evening hair wash, get that hair clean every night; that is unless you have long, thick locks which will take awhile to dry. You can wait until day 3 but just to be sure you can wash your hair as often as you wish just remember to condition and intensely MOISTURIZE.
  

  ---

• Wash your hands very often. While washing your hair will be good, if you keep touching your clean hair with unwashed hands, you will be defeating the purpose. So wash your hands before touching your hair. As humans we touch our faces more than 100 times per day without even realizing, we can only imagine how many of those times we run our hands over the hair at the same time. For men with facial hair, this may the exact amount of times you touch your faces. Wash those hands and keep them off the hair PLEASE.

 

• Clean hair tools and accessories as often as you use them. I’ve already written a blog about why this is so important. This is even moreso now. Germs reside in and on surfaces such as hair brushes, combs, irons, scissors etc. You would not want to use dirty, contaminated hands to touch your brush and proceed to style your beard or ponytail in the morning, repeat the same action at dinner time, only to transfer the virus from tool to nostrils, eyes or mouth. Ultimately, getting severely ill. Our actions do not only affect us at this time, so a contaminated tool may be used by your grandmother, baby sister, or family member with asthma or another illness who may unfortunately contract the coronavirus and succumb to its effects. Barbers and Hairstylists, this is even more important for you because your tools are used on multiple clients, all from different homes. You have an obligation not only to yourself but to your clients to ensure that you protect yourself and others from the virus. Before and after each use, you simply have to clean your tools, there is no way around it. The coronavirus can survive on metal surface for 12 hours so, unless it is removed by extreme heat, cleaning with an antiseptic or antibiotic cleaner is mandatory. Wash scrunchies, hairbands, hair ties and wraps after each use. Bandanas and durags too.

 

• Do your hair at home. Self-styling will be beneficial during this outbreak. As person to person contact is discouraged and gatherings of any sort are advised against. That means congregating at the barber shop or salon is not the best at this time. You know that shear that you have in your bathroom that you never use? It’s time to put it to work, fade your beard and trim your hair down for yourself. Your favorite barbershop may not be the safest place, but your home is. That braid you were planning to take down, give it a good wash, trim up the loose hairs and ends and watch my video on how to refresh old braids here. If you take them down or you weren’t wearing braids to begin with, try different easy-to-do styles that will have you looking cute, until it is safe to return to the salon. Some stylists and barbers do house calls, if you’re lucky enough to have one of those, by all means use that avenue. Remember as long as you are cleaning your home properly, it is the safest place to be.

 

• Change your pillow cases regularly. On the topic of clean homes. Changing your pillow cases and sheets more often than usual is definitely a good idea at this time. You never really know when you are exposed to the coronavirus when you go out, until you actually get sick or someone close to you who hasn’t been in contact with anyone else does. So as this favorite Jamaican expression goes “prevention better than cure”, it is better to be safe than sorry. A clean bedding and pillow case should help to do the trick of keeping this virus at bay. It wouldn’t makes sense to wash your hair often and then reintroduce it to the virus spending its last hours on your pillow.
  

  ---

This last tip is more for the benefit of the most vulnerable around you; children.

• Reduce children’s exposure to your hair. Your hair can be a net or vehicle for germs in general, trapping them in and then transporting them to your face, hands and to other people’s hands and faces. Babies, toddlers and children in general often enjoy playing with their older siblings’, parents’, aunts’ and just about anybody whom they are familiar with hair. Babies tend to pull on your hair or stuff it in their faces, to get it into their mouths as they try to figure out what it is.

  

  While that is cute, it is 100% dangerous, especially now with the coronavirus being able to enter the body through the mouth and nose. Reducing the possibility of transferring any traces of the virus to children should be a main priority. Allow them to play with your hair when this has all passed and we hear nothing more of it. Going back to washing your hair more often, this would be even more important if there are children around you who always find themselves in your locks. Every effort counts.

 

Proper hygiene is of paramount importance right now. But we often forget that a clean head of hair is just as important as clean hands and bodies. Keep your hair clean kings and queens.

Walk good and keep safe.