If it's loose, it won't do any damage. It can delay the progress a bit. And it will cause them to try and form into 1 big lock. You may just need to separate a little more often. If you haven't, yet, check out my video on separating. There's a healthy way to do it. You don't need to separate all the way to your scalp. Just enough to keep the bodies of the locks from tangling. There should always be a bit of a tangled mess at your scalp

I had to put my hair up a lot for work and it didn't seem to do too much damage. The only downside is that I needed toseparateA LOT more than I probably would have otherwise.

My dreads are a little over a year now and have recently started growing so I'm assuming that means they matured in a normal timeline anyways.