Warm weather is finally making its way through our neighborhoods, melting icy frosts and encouraging the earliest buds to bloom. While I’ve always loved this change, I know that it marks an end to my good hair days. The heat and humidity reduce my curls to frizzy puffs! With the right products, I can usually get most of my hair to cooperate — except for my roots, where I develop a halo of frizz. If only there were an easy hack for taming those flyaways … and as I just found out: There is. My roots finally met their match in the form of the dental floss.

The trick comes from TikTok influencer Matthew Newman, who runs the account @mattloveshair. In the eight-second video, Newman holds a piece of floss taught and presses it against his scalp, sliding it down over his hair. The results are impressive; his flyaways become smooth and nonexistent. But does this trick really work in real life?

one of my FAV #hairhacks is using dental floss for #sleekhair 🦷🦷🦷 #hairvideo

Upon watching the video and looking in the mirror at my halo of frizz, I immediately ran to the bathroom and picked up my floss. I wrapped a piece around my pointer fingers, held it taught, and slid it across my hair. Nothing happened. Disappointed, I looked for more information online, and found a video of another influencer, Sarah Palmyra, testing it out. Palmyra offered some wise advice in her caption: “Make sure you use floss that has a wax coating.”

I was using unwaxed floss, so I rummaged through the bathroom cabinet for waxed floss instead. When I tried the trick again, I pressed the floss down hard against my head and pulled downward. The extra pressure and the wax coating seemed to help.

I wasn’t fully satisfied, however. Curly roots make this hack a little tricky, because they curve in different directions and don’t give flyaways much to stick to. So, I lightly sprayed the top of my head with hairspray — I used an all-natural one from Innersense Organic Beauty (Buy from Innersense, $26) — and pressed down with the floss once more. This worked like a charm.

The dental floss trick should work well for women who have straight or wavy hair and struggle to tame frizz and flyaways. Frizz at the root is a particularly difficult problem for women over 40, as their hair may become dry and brittle due to age and frequent coloring. Dental floss makes for an easy solution and a very inexpensive one. (Just think about how expensive anti-frizz products are these days.)

Of course, dental floss is not a substitute for proper hair care. Dry, frizzy hair needs a healthy balance of moisture and protein to restore its strength. To learn how to reinstate moisture into your hair, check out these tips.

And even though this trick took a little time and finesse to work, I certainly plan to use it this spring. It’s a much better solution than using my hands to press down frizz, which is what I used to do!

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