With great power comes great responsibility.
In this case the great power is your hair care knowledge and the responsibility is to actually keep your hair healthy.
Since summer is winding down quickly, it is the best time to learn some new tips and tricks to keep your hair healthy. Keeping your hair healthy is certainly a challenge because hair is temperamental and super fragile. Plus- it is ever changing.
Your hair is constantly trying to adapt while you’re constantly trying to catch up with it. Just think of your hair like an energized toddler full of candy and you’re the mom trying to figure them out.
With hair, what you eat, how you sleep, how you use accessories, and plenty of other things affect how it looks, feels, and if it’s truly healthy. Having healthy locks is the goal for most of us and knowing your hair type is one of the easiest ways to find hair care routines that work for you.
If you need to buckle up on your hair type knowledge check out our hair type blog. If you are already nearing expert status on your hair type then just keep reading these quick tips.
Before we get into what makes our hair happy and healthy, here are a few things that probably make your hair become unruly.
Things that make your hair unhappy
We all tend to do things that aren’t the greatest for our hair. But these are definitely some things you should try to avoid. If you can’t avoid them, look for healthier alternatives or try to use these methods less frequently.
Using Heat Styling Tools
We discuss this topic a lot, but it honestly is one of the easiest (and quickest) ways for you to damage the hair you work so hard to keep healthy. Part of the reason we exist as a company, is so that the RevAir can allow you to use heat with half the damage of regular styling tools.
Brushing Your Hair When It’s Wet
Your hair is in its most fragile state when it’s wet. Kelsey Osterman, senior stylist at New York City’s Cutler Salon, told InStyle that using a narrow brush on wet hair "can cause major breakage since dampness weakens the hair shaft." Chances are you are better off investing in a wide-tooth comb since it will not pull on your hair like a brush will.
Making Your Hairstyles Too Tight
You know that slicked back, super tight ponytail, the one where when you take it out you feel relaxed and relieved? Well it isn’t the best style for your hair, it can create a lot of tension on your hair.
Wearing a tight ponytail for an extended amount of time can pull your strands at the scalp and damage follicles at the roots. Ouch! You can try using gel or hairspray as a way to get that slicked back look.
Dyeing Your Hair Frequently (Bleaching Especially) u are going to succumb your hair to those chemicals, like most of us do, then you should at least try to make it less frequent.
You should try to let your hair breathe and do repairing treatments to aid it back to health.
Alright enough about the things we shouldn’t do, let’s talk about the exciting stuff: the things you should do to promote happy and healthy hair.
Your Diet Makes a Difference
Is it really that shocking that what you eat affects your hair? It literally affects every other part of your body, so your hair is no different. The food you eat could promote healthy hair growth and could help repair your hair damage.
It all has to do with eating a balanced diet with the right nutrients (the opposite could possibly lead to hair loss).
Since you can change your diet, it is a great way to promote hair growth and overall health.
Here are five foods that you can incorporate into your diet to help your hair stay healthy:
Eggs
Eggs are a great source of biotin and protein, both of which promote hair growth. Protein is important for hair growth because the follicle is made of mostly protein. Biotin is needed to produce keratin which is a hair protein.
Spinach
Spinach is one of those healthy greens. It is loaded with iron and vitamins A and C. Vitamin A helps skin glands produce sebum which helps moisturize the scalp to keep your hair healthy.
Berries
Berries contain a lot of vitamins and antioxidants that can promote hair growth. Antioxidants help to protect hair follicles from damage. Strawberries, as an example, contain Vitamin C which helps produce collagen, another protein that helps to strengthen and prevent it from breaking.
Avocados
In case you didn’t already love avocados, they are a great source of vitamin E. Vitamin E protects skin, like your scalp, from the stress and damage of oxidation.
Beans
Beans are a great source of protein, iron, zinc, and biotin, all are important for hair growth. Plus beans are versatile in how you can eat them and typically very inexpensive.
You can grow your hair even on a budget, which moves us on to DIY hair masks…
Food Doesn’t Only Have to Be Eaten
So the food we buy doesn’t only have to be to eat. You can throw it in your hair! Making a DIY hair mask is a great alternative to buying a bunch of different masks because you can choose what you want the mask to do based on the ingredients.
Here are some foods that are good to use in your hair: avocados, honey, yogurt, eggs, apple cider vinegar, and plenty more. Want to try a DIY hair mask with food ingredients?
Well we have collected a few:
Honey Yogurt Mask
This mask is a combo of honey, yogurt, and olive oil. It is great for all hair types and works well for dry damaged hair. The olive oil promotes a healthy scalp and hair growth while the honey helps with moisture and the vitamins in greek yogurt help to repair and strengthen your hair.
Coconut Mask
This mask is just coconut milk and olive oil. This is perfect for hair that tends to be on the dry side. Both coconut milk and olive oil soften and condition hair. This combo also can give body to waves and curls.
Choosing the Right Products
So we are not not going to go too in depth about this because we have an entire blog post (yay!) about how to choose the right products for your hair type. In this blog we go over how to assess what your hair needs and how to give it these needs.
With choosing products it is a lot of trial and error, because you won’t know what your hair likes or doesn’t like until you actually use the product. Products can make or break your hair care routine, and in turn could not be helping your hair stay healthy at all.
With your hair care products you want to avoid things like silicones, sulfates, and alcohols, especially in your shampoo and conditioner. It is also beneficial to rinse your hair in cold water because when the water is cold, the hair shaft closes retaining any product or moisture you added to your hair.
You should also be aware that your hair care routine, especially the products, can change frequently. Products typically change with the change in weather things your hair needs in the summer may not be what it needs in the fall.
Regardless, to keep your hair happy you have to continuously update your routine and attempt to choose the right products.
Haircuts & Protective Styling
Another great way to keep your hair healthy is to maintain it through haircuts or protect it with protective styles.
Regular haircuts are important! If you have a hairstyle or shape, they are important because styles have to be maintained. But more importantly, regular haircuts are the only way to get rid of those pesky split ends that are causing your ends to be fragile and frizz.
If you do not get a regular haircut to chop off your split ends your hair will not grow the way you want it to. Plus, if you feel like your hair looks frizzy or damaged, getting a haircut can help restore your healthy shine.
Protective styles can be a great way to let your hair grow after getting a haircut or just as a way to protect your hair from the elements (like the humidity of the summer). These styles include things like wigs, box braids, two-strand twists, and so many more.
Protective hairstyles aim to limit the stress of environmental factors on natural hair by keeping the ends of hair tucked away in order to discourage tugging, pulling, and manipulation. If you want to learn more about which protective style is right for you or what they are, check out our blog post.
Simple things to add to your hair care routine
Use a silk / satin pillowcase
Trade your old worn out pillowcase for a new natural silk or satin silk pillowcase. Using a silk or satin pillowcase is the first step to combating bedhead. The benefit of silk is that it is not as absorbent as other materials so it keeps your hair’s moisture intact.
Bobby Eliot, a hairstylist, said, “The benefit of having a good silk pillowcase is that it creates less friction on the hair and allows the hair a gentle surface," said Eliot. "Friction can disrupt the cuticle layer of the hair, which causes bed head and frizzy hair.”
Try silk / satin scrunchies
Pretty much for the same reason you would want to use a silk pillowcase you should try to switch to silk / satin hair ties. These hair ties create less friction on your hair when you throw it up and they do not leave an indentation on your hair.
Silk scrunchies also cut down on tension which makes them gentle to use on dry, damaged, and weak hair to reduce breakage. Plus they are super cute!
Use an atomizer spray bottle
This is a really simple way to wet your hair for styling or refreshing a style when you don’t feel like jumping into the shower or dunking your whole head under the sink.
An atomizer spray bottle is pretty cool because it has an ultra-fine continuous mist. The continuous mist makes it easy to wet your head without pumping the bottle a hundred times. And if you really want to optimize a spray bottle then you can mix it with other things besides water.
For example maybe a water + rose water mixture, which is a great treatment for damaged hair.
Knowledge is Power
The only way to have shiny and healthy hair is to make sure you know as much as you can about your hair and the way it reacts to different things.
Hair adapts and you should adapt with it so you can maintain your luscious locks. Keeping small tips in mind is a great way to do that. If you have any questions or concerns, contact us.
Our dedicated team of advisors love to talk and educate people on how to best take care of their hair.
