How To Grow Long Healthy Hair

This post is long overdue and I apologize for you ladies who have been waiting for it- but at last it is here! This is a continuation to my post on how to make your hair grown an inch a month, you can click here if you haven't read it yet.

When you're growing out your hair it's important to keep it healthy if you want it looking long and nice instead of long and damaged. Who wants that? In addition, if you don't keep it healthy an get too much breakage you'll be forced to cut it more often which if you remember from my last post is a cardinal sin when trying to grow out your hair! No bueno!

 So here are the steps you should take to make sure your hair grows out as healthy as possible! And remember, even when your hair is at your desired length you should still make sure to follow these steps to keep your hair looking good!

1. Use A Deep Conditioner- Our hair needs to be deeply nourished to stay as soft, silky, and hydrated as possible. You should be using a deep conditioner 1-2 times per week. It will add shine, moisture and strength to your hair to help with breakage  This step is especially necessary if you have bleached or color treated hair as it has been damaged more so than untreated hair has. 

My all time favorite deep conditioner is Macadamia Oil Deep Repair Masque. This stuff works wonders on your hair and it smells divine! 

Another good one is It's a 10 Miracle Deep Conditioner. 

A more cost effective option is Extra Virgin Coconut Oil  %100 Organic (any brand is fine as long as it's extra virgin and organic)

If you want to get even better results you can apply the deep conditioner, wrap a plastic bag around your head then blast it with your blow dryer for 15 minutes. Proceed to take a shower and let it sit wrapped up while you shave your legs, exfoliate, etc, then wash it off and feel your smooth silky hair!

Use A Sulfate-Free Shampoo- I've mentioned before in my Holy Grail Beauty Products post that my all time favorite shampoo is L'Oreal Ever Sleek Sulfate-Free Shampoo (and conditioner). If I talked about all the reason why you should use a sulfate-free shampoo this post will be much longer than it already is- so I'll spare you. I'll only quickly mention some of the negative side effects of using sulfate on your hair which are:
- Itchy and inflamed scalp (which probably means you're allergic)
- Reduce the quality of hair strands
- More breakage
- Increase in hair fall
- Lost volume (who wants thin, flat hair?)
- Remove hair dye (if you have color-treated hair)
These are just some of the side effects, if you'd like to no more just Google it.

Limit The Heat!- I think we all know how much damage heat causes to our hair yet we cannot put the hot tools down! I was one who thought I could never ever ever go a day without using heat on my hair, until I started on my hair growth journey and forced myself to! I only allowed heat on my hair once a week which is I would advice for you ladies to do. I got creative and learned how to make my curly or straight hair last for four days without using heat on it (maybe I'll do a post on that too?). Or I found other ways to make it look cute without heat. It helped me get out of the daily habbit of putting heat on my hair and damaging it by burning it! Now I don't feel the need to always use hot tools. 

When you do put heat on your hair, please please please do not forget your heat protector before doing so! It's already damaging enough to style it with heat but it's even worse if you don't protect it! That's another cardinal sin! 

Two of my favorites are 

Tresemme Thermal Creations Heat Tamer Protective Spray

and

Fantasia IC Hair Polisher Heat Protector Straightening Serum

Do Not Wash Your Hair Everyday- This is another cardinal rule that can make a huge difference in the health of our hair but not every women follows it. Each time you wash your hair you're stripping it of it's natural oils (this is why we have to use loads of conditioner afterwards). I've heard women say that they simply can't skip a day or two of washing their hair because it's too oily.. I'm here to tell you that you can!

(This is the- "I should listen to Amy so that my hair stops looking gross and oily" face)

The reason why your hair may produce too much oil is because it feels the need to being that it feels it doesn't have enough since you're always washing it. The more you wash your hair the more oil your hair will produce to try and compensate for the natural oils you're washing off.. get it? Wash your hair less = less oily hair- It's counter intuitive I know, but it's true.

You'll have to essentially "train" your hair to be able to skip washes. Start off with skipping one day more than you already do for a week or two, then increase it by one more day if you'd like. Your hair will be oily at first because it's not use to it, but after 2 weeks or so your oil glands will learn to stop producing excessive oil since there's no need.

And if you need to hide some oiliness meanwhile, you can use a dry shampoo or some baby powder to soak up the oil- it works wonders!

Caution: Special Care When Wet- Our hair becomes very prone to splitting and breakage when it's wet which is why you have to watch how your treat it. Make sure you're not rubbing your hair in between the towel, or twisting it to wring out the water in it- that is no bueno! Also, brushing your hair while it's wet is a no-go, too! I promise you you're breaking your precious strands if you're doing any one of these. Instead, squeeze (don't twist) the water out starting from top to bottom. Then, if you'd like you can wrap your hair in an over sized shirt which is more gentle on your hair rather than a towel. If you want to untangle your hair either do so before jumping in the shower or wait until it's dry.

Night Time Care- Even when we're soundly asleep we still have to make sure our locks are being protected. Using a silk pillowcase helps from the snagging and pulling that a typical cotton pillow case does to our hair. You can also loosely braid your hair to help keep it from breaking while you're tossing and turning and snoring and kicking and... is that just me?.. Just kidding, I sleep like a peaceful angel :)

Keep Your Hair Away From Harsh Ponies- Putting our hair up is fine, except when you have it up all the time, in a super tight hairstyle. Hair is also susceptible to breakage from hair ties or "too harsh" hairstyles like super tight braids or buns. Again, it's ok once in a while but make sure you're taking caution of how often your pulling your hair taught.

That's about every piece of detailed advice I can give to you ladies! If you want good looking hair, you gotta look after it! Hope it was helpful, let me know if you have any questions!

How To Grow Long Hair Fast! (1 Inch A Month!)

This post has been a long time comin'! I feel a bit guilty for not writing it sooner but as I mentioned in my last post I've been so busy! Nevertheless, I finally made the time to sit down and and write down the secrets to how I grew out my hair super fast!

But firs, I want to give you a semi-quick run through of my hair history because.. well, I simply feel compelled to do so and I want a pitty party for all the tragedies my locks have gone through!... If you simply don't care and want to skip through all this and get down to the nitty gritty, feel free to scroll down to the the bold How To Grow Long Hair Fast section.. no hurt feelings :)

 I always had long hair growing up, up until 7th grade when I chopped it off to my shoulders and like most girls I immediately regretted it. I let it grow a few inches down but would get trims often which would keep the length just below my shoulders. Three years after that I went through the worst hair experience ever! I went in for a trim and came out with hair up to my ears, to say the least! I felt like a boy! Seriously, worst experience ever- I cried!

(...skipping the oh-so tragic stories of the times I fried my hair with an extra-strength relaxer, bleached my hair to look like Ronald McDonald, and ripped off plenty of hair from extensions)

Four years later my hair finally grew out to my mid-back and I was so happy! Then, I got that sudden urge we all seem to get once our hair finally grows out, and I cut it.. short. Into an A-Line Bob to be exact. Granted it was longer than your typical A-Line Bob but it was still very short. Although I liked it for the time being, I once again missed my long hair and swore not to cut it short ever again! I went on a quest to find all the possibles ways to grow my hair out in the fastest time possibly, and I did just that!

I buckled down, did my research (lots and lots of research!), set a regimen, and followed it precisely.. and you wanna know what happened? My hair began growing from 1/4 of an inch to a full inch a month! Yup, you read right- a full inch! Hair typically grows about 1/4 of an inch to 1/2 of an inch a month and I was more than doubling that growth! I can't even begin to tell you how ecstatic I was!

So now I'm passing my secrets to you (or maybe not so secretive-secrets). I just want to throw a disclaimer out there and say that although I am a beauty junkie, I am by no means a hair professional, this is simply what has worked for myself and the few others I have advised to do so. Get it? Got it? Good!

Now, without further ado here are my secrets to

How To Grow Long Hair Fast!

1. Single most important step in this hair growing regimen is to take your pills. You will need to take..

-5000mg Biotin (this is the max that your body can absorb)

-Prenatals (yes you read that right, even if you're not preggos.. I promise you it's perfectly safe)

-Multivitamin

-3000mg Fish Oils 
- Optional: Folic Acid (I did not take these with my regimen but I have heard they are great for hair growth)

2. Second most important advice to follow is to not trim your hair so often! Ok, I need to elaborate on this quite a bit so let me try to brake this down for you. If you're following your regimen and your hair starts growing 1inch/month and you get a trim ever 6-8 weeks like recommended, your stylist will more than likely be cutting off that extra inch you just worked so hard to grow. I have yet to meet a hair stylist that will only cut 1/2 an inch when asked to.. we've all been there, we ask for a trim and get inches cut off.. they just can't do it they get too scissor happy! I can assure you, they will be cutting off most, if not all your new hair growth.

Every time I asked friends of mine, "How did you grow out your hair?" I always got the same answer- "I didn't cut my hair." It's that simple. Now, women all over the world will argue that getting frequent trims helps your hair grow but that is a lie that has been fed to us from the get-go! The fact that cutting off our dead ends send some type of "magical signal" to our roots to grow is complete bogus. It does't! What it does do is it promotes healthy hair growth which means that you will be cutting off your split ends so that your hair's not growing all split-endy and ugly whatnot. But, you should be taking care of your hair in the first place to prevent your hair from splitting so that you don't have to get trims as often (I'll be writing a separate post on how to keep your hair healthy while growing it out). I recommend only getting a trim 1-3 times per year, and 3 times is pushing it. So what did we just learn from all my babbling on? Don't cut your hair- that's right.. moving along!

3. Massage your scalp. I'll be quite honest and admit that I didn't do this as much as I should have but I'm sure I would've had even greater results if I had. By massaging your scalp for 3 minutes at a time about twice a day, you're stimulating your blood flow which in return helps your hair grow. You can opt to use your fingertips or a hair brush.

4. Do not wash your hair everyday! I think most of us know the cardinal rule of not washing our hair everyday, but not everyone follows it. The natural oils that our scalp produces are so crucial and nourishing for our both our scalp and hair! If you're not use to it start by washing your hair only every other day, if you want to take it a step further (which is better) than wash your hair every two days. I know some women complain that they simply cannot skip washes because their hair becomes one big oily mess.. trust me, I get it, but you can! You can essentially "train" your hair to not produce as many oils once you start skipping washes. I won't go much into detail on that because I will be writing a second post to go hand-in-hand with this post on how to grow your hair healthy!.. Cuz ya know I gotta do a whole 'nother post on that!

 One last suggestion: Take pictures and measurements of your hair. When I first began growing out my hair it was hard to see if there was any growth at the end of the month until I measured my hair and compared it to the previous month's measurements. At the end of the month I straightened my hair, put on an old t-shirt that I had marked by half an inch, then asked someone to make a line where my hair ended with a marker. Once I took off the t-shirt the measurements showed me how much my hair had grown in a month, that simple!

So I hope this info helped! I know it was very lengthy but I like to give as many details as possible! Like I said, I'm not a professional but this certainly did wonders for me. If you do decide to try it please do let me know how it works out for you! Good luck!