What is the Max Hydration Method?

The Max Hydration Method is a regime developed to help your hair retain moisture. This keeps your hair hydrated and healthy, which is particularly useful for low porosity naturals like me.

This method made it’s debut a few years ago, when blogger/vlogger PinkeCube shared her techniques for keeping her 4C natural hair healthy and hydrated. A result of this method was naturally curly, healthy, hydrated hair (often with shine) after your hair is washed, fully dried, and with no products applied.

Using natural, often food-based ingredients and botanical gels, hair is clarified, conditioned, and clay cleansed every day for 7 days.

Yep.

It’s not a method that changes your hair type or texture. It’s more like the healthier your hair becomes, the more you enhance your beautiful kinks, curls, and coils.

The Technique

All hair types can use the method, and many have. The Natural Hair Community both loved the results of the method, but hated the time consuming often messy method to achieve the results. So far, I love the healthy, moisturized, hydrated hair I’m seeing.

The steps can be a bit intense, especially the first few times. But I’ll get to that in a minute. For more about the method, check these sites from PinkeCube and Ms. Dee Kay, who interviewed her back in the day and featured naturals using the method.

Both sites explain this method in greater detail.

Why Am I Doing This???

My hair is stuck in a dry phase and I need to bring moisture and hydration back to my strands. I’ve done a similar hair detox with Terressentials when I experienced heat damage a few years ago. They recommend a specific detox protocol for your hair for seven days.

Following their detox and using their clay was a spiritual experience!

Terressentials Lavender Garden Pure Earth Wash ($11.95, 8oz) was made in heaven. I just wish you could buy it by the barrel.

If you’re not interested in making your own clay wash, this is an excellent one to try. There are lots on the market now. If you have a favorite, leave it in the comments!

I DO NOT RECOMMEND YOU DO THIS TREATMENT

Not yet anyway.

I am using this method because I think it will be a great regime for my hair. I have gotten out of the habit of ‘doing’ my hair and it shows. I’m not sure if I can continue a method like this long term, but I’m definitely curious to see if it will work for my hair.

All natural ingredients are used, along with clay; recipes I’m familiar with…except the baking soda. Even with the goodness, I still have no idea what the short or long-term results will be of this method.

Baking soda can have a relaxing, drying, damaging effect on the hair; it’s quite abrasive and a few naturals have experienced hair loss or damage from adding it to their regime.

My hair loved baking soda the first two times I used it. The third time I tried it in the Cherry Lola Caramel Treatment and my hair loved it again.

Prior to the Max Hydration Method, I had never used baking soda on my hair. On my veggies and extensions — yes, and as a teeth whitener — heck yeah!

I shouldn’t be surprised thought, I had also never used apple cider vinegar in my hair before going natural. That’s almost blasphemous to say now.

I’ll Give It 30-Days

I’ll need to test this method, watch my hair, address a few other holistic healing concerns, and work with it before I can say if it helped my hair heal the dryness issue. If I like the results of the first 7 days, I’ll try it for another 7and so on, and so on until I reach maximum hydration or discover a new regime that’s better.

If you use this method, have tried it before, or if you’re just curious about what it is, here are the steps below — Lavish Style.

For more about My Max Hydration Experience, click here.

The Max Hydration Method (4 Steps)

It is recommended to prepare hair for this method by using the Cherry Lola Treatment (CLT) or Cherry Lola Caramel Treatment (CLCT). I used this treatment on Day 5 of the challenge because I didn’t have all of the ingredients when I started (never heard of liquid aminos before this:)

Here’s the recipe I made here.

Step One: Clarify (15 to 30 minutes)
Step Two: Condition & Detangle (15 to 30 minutes)
Step Three: Do A Clay Rinse (15 minuts or longer)
Step Four: Use a Leave-In Conditioner + Botanical Gel before styling

Repeat full treatment for 7 days for maximum hydration.

Step One

Clarify your hair with a baking soda rinse or an apple cider vinegar rinse. Here are two recipe options:

Baking Soda Rinse

2 tablespoons baking soda

4 to 6 ounces of conditioner

4 to 6 ounces of water

1 tablespoon olive oil

Instructions

Section your hair and apply liberally in sections.
Let it sit on your hair for 15 to 30 minutes.
Rinse out of your hair completely. Follow with step two.

Apple Cider Vinegar Rinse

50% apple cider vinegar

50% water

Instructions

Add to spray bottle.
Completely saturate hair with vinegar rinse.
Allow it to sit on your hair for 15 to 30 minutes.
Rinse completely and follow with step two.

Step Two

Condition and detangle with your favorite conditioner and water.

Add 2 ounces of conditioner to 4 ounces of water.
Shake to mix together.
Section your hair and work through with your fingers.

Step Three

Do a Bentonite Clay Rinse:

1 cup bentonite clay
2 to 3 cups water
1 tablespoon olive oil
1 tablespoon honey

Apply clay to your hair in small sections from your roots to your ends.
Your hair may feel weighed down when your done. The clay can get hard when it dries.
Rinse all of the clay out completely.

Step Four

Make a leave-in conditioner by adding 2 tablespoons of your conditioner to 4 to 6 ounces of water (or your desired consistency) and apply to your hair in sections.

Rake the conditioner through your hair with your fingers.

Follow with botanical gel, creams and your styling aids.