Why do people go out of their way to keep their dreads dry?

yeah it just doesn't make sense to me for a person to wash the rest of their body, but not their hair/scalp, as if for some reason not washing that part is "natural" ... do you know what i'm saying?

ALSO i've been thinking about this the past few days.... what is the purpose of the sea salt spray? what is the benefit of drying out hair as far as forming locks/knots goes? and i'm wondering why i didn't ask this months ago lol.

NaturalWomyn said:

I couldn't imagine never washing my hair and scalp! I guess different things work for different people but I need to wash my hair!

updated by @so-wouldve-i: 07/13/15 12:07:38PM

the only thing i can come up with is that by drying up the hair with salt it causes maybe ridges and kinks on the hair rather than it being smooth like conditioning makes it? but isn't that really just intentional damaging.......

the salt water pretty much just adds texture and I guess dryness. I never used the sea salt spray but I swam in the ocean almost every day when I first stopped combing and my hair knotted up super quick! Some of that may have been from swimming in the waves too, but it definitely felt different after the ocean, waayy more tangled too. I'm not sure it caused any real damage,if you really dry it out with the salt and don't rinse, it would probably cause some breakage.

Salt water has to do with stripping the natural oils from your hair. This is a bad thing in that in can over-dry the hair follicles, but a good thing in that dreading takes place best in drier hair. This is likely part of why african hair dreads so naturally, because we tend to have so little oil present in our hair. Haha, unless your rocking a jerry curl of course, but that is a different kind of grease all together.

So if your scalp naturally produces a decent amount of oil, is there even any need to condition....? (I never really did the baking soda/acv rinse very much and don't intend to... I really do not like how it ends up making my scalp feel. Just got the kiss my face shampoo yesterday and love it more than anythinggg)

EDIT: I mention this last part in the parenthesis just to point out that the shampoo I use is already pH balanced so I don't need conditioner/acv for that...

Thundersquall said:

Salt water has to do with stripping the natural oils from your hair. This is a bad thing in that in can over-dry the hair follicles, but a good thing in that dreading takes place best in drier hair. This is likely part of why african hair dreads so naturally, because we tend to have so little oil present in our hair. Haha, unless your rocking a jerry curl of course, but that is a different kind of grease all together.