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Khiwi's Pointless Ranting
Henna
This stemmed from a thread where a person was asking about dying over henna. I just wanted to clear up some misconceptions about henna as a plant used to dye hair.

What many professionals think about henna and why it is misleading:
If you have used henna and go to a salon professional for chemical services, prepared to get lectured: "Henna!? Oh no! That stuff is horrible for your hair! It'll make your hair melt if you ever dye over it!" What a lot of professionals don't understand is that henna itself is fine to perform chemical services on. However, henna will react horribly with chemical dyes when it has metallic salts added to it or indigo mixed with it. Metallic salts will often cause bad reactions when they come into contact with dye. Indigo tends to turn green upon contact with bleach or peroxide. Most -but not all- professionals are not trained to use plant dyes like henna and indigo and many of them are misinformed about henna.

BAQ (body art quality) henna, such as that which can be obtained through Mehandi(US), Henna Sooq (CA/US) or Hennaboy (UK) doesn't have metallic salts in it. The henna products available from Lush and Henna Hut are compound hennas, which just means it has other things added. The henna products from these companies are still safe to dye over because these companies are based in a country with adequate labeling standards you can trust that you are getting what the ingredients list says you are. The problem is when a person goes to, say, an Indian food store and buys henna. India and several other countries that produce henna do not have adequate labeling standards. They are not required to list all the ingredients included in the product, so a person could buy compound henna with metallic salts because they trust the ingredients list without understanding that it could be falsified or not all encompassing. When dying with henna it is of utmost importance to know that your henna is pure and if it isn't what it really contains. That isn't possible if it was packaged in certain countries. If in doubt test it: click here and scroll down to the section entitled "How can you find out if the henna hair dye you've been using has toxic metallic salts?"

Other facts about henna:
-Pure Henna can be dyed over with chemical dyes with no problems.
-Henna comes in one color. Red, which may tend more towards orange or brown.
-When used on hair, henna allows your natural color to show through.
-Fresh henna produces a darker, more vibrant stain.
-The exact shade of red that pure henna will dye your hair may depend on the region in which is was grow and the growing conditions that year.
-Henna should not be used by anyone who is glucose-6-phosphate dehydrogenase (G6PD) enzyme deficient.
-When henna is used in body art, it is often terped to produce a darker stain.

If you have any further questions, please post them as comments on this entry. Others may have the same question

It's easy to say you'd die for someone, but would you live for that person?
The Long Hair Community

Post Permanent Link Khiwanean · Fri Apr 01, 2011 @ 12:09am · 1 Comments
Khiwanean
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    User Comments: [1]
    Thank you for the information! I was just reading that thread and came over here. I will hopefully get to try henna soon! mrgreen

     
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    comment radicalgarden · Community Member · Sun Dec 04, 2011 @ 09:18am
    User Comments: [1]

     
     
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