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Chemical relaxers are types of lotions or creams that work to relax the natural curl of hair. Many African-American women have their hair chemically relaxed to calm their curly, frizzy hair and help make it easier to straighten. The chemical relaxing process can damage hair and be quite expensive. Even after thick curly hair is relaxed, it can still be quite challenging to straighten. You can straighten relaxed hair to feel like silk by following a few specific steps.

Deep condition your hair. There are hundreds of deep conditioning products on the market today. Look for one that contains cocoa butter, shea butter or aloe vera as one of the main ingredients. These ingredients provide nourishment to the hair and are completely natural and safe to use. Relaxer contains a strong alkali and can be incredibly drying to hair. Hair straighteners use a high heat to smooth the hair and are damaging to the hair follicles. By deep conditioning the hair before straightening, you are essentially preparing the hair for the straightening process. The healthier a state your hair is in before straightening, the better.

Heat the straightening iron.

Spray a thermal heat protectant over your entire head of hair and brush through. This helps protect the hair and prevents it from burning.

Section hair into top and bottom sections, clipping the top section up on top of your head. This gets it up out of the way, so you can focus on one section at a time.

Take a section of hair about 1-inch in width and place the straightener at the top of this section. Working in smaller sections helps get hair as straight as possible, leaving it soft and silky smooth.

Grip the paddles of the hair straightener around the top of this section of hair and in a fairly swift motion, move it down the hair shaft to the ends.

Continue this throughout the rest of the bottom section of hair and repeat on the top section.

Squeeze a nickel-sized dollop of hair serum into one palm and rub it between your hands. Smooth your hands over your hair, starting at the ends and working your way up. The hair serum protects the hair and leaves it looking shiny and smooth.