The little things we do to torture our hair

Our hair problems are not strictly from bad styling, instruments that are too hot, or products that strip our hair instead of helping it, there are so many things that can affect your hair's health.

One such example is something I'm very guilty of: pulling our hair back in ponytails.  When we put our hair up in elastic, we tend to make it too tight to keep our hair in place.

What does that do to our hair?

1. The tension created by pulling our hair back like this causes hair damage.  It makes your hair shed faster. Notice all the hair that comes out with the elastics?  
2. Pulling our hair back like this also can lead to a receding hairline, which for women that's not good!
3. The tension from pulling your hair back also causes scalp fatigue and headaches.  I never knew why my head would hurt so much at the end of the day.
4. Tightening our ponytails by dividing our hair in two and pulling each in an opposite direction causes breakage too.

But we must pull our hair back!  We'll go nuts with it in our faces all day!!  What are our options?

If you insist on elastic, I'd recommend the ouch-less plastic ponytail holders.  They don't do as much damage as ones with metal in the middle to hold the two sides together.  The metal just slices through your hair!

My biggest recommendation is to use Lilla Rose Flexi-Clips.  The Clips allow you to a multitude of hair styles, and can accommodate baby fine hair to long thick hair.  I've worn clips all day, they haven't fell out once, and it's so comfortable you forget you have it in.

The clip comes in 7 sizes, and I'll help you figure out what size is right for you.  Just shoot me an email and we can work together.   

Tips for Hair Restoration

I found an article today on Hair Restoration Ideas.

As someone who suffers from hair loss, I read anything I can.  My hope that is that maybe something you read on my blog will help you.

From all the articles I have read, there seems to be some common denominators.

1. Stress.  If you suffer from stress, it's causing your hair follicles to go into "resting phase," which ultimately will cause that hair to fall out.

2.  Sickness or surgery.  I've had surgery a few times, and stress of the body from these surgeries causes my hair to fall out.  You should already be familiar that when your sick, you hair loses its luster and shine, and falls out easily.

I'm particularly reminded of this is with my 12 year old cat.  A month ago, she lost her 11 year old "sister."  Since that time, she has lost ALOT of her hair on her back.  It's from stress.  Stress also causes her to over-bathe herself, but she started steadily losing her hair when her sister died.

When I was working at a job where I was under a tremendous amount of stress.  I lost weight, and lost hair in clumps.  Alot of the loss is from stress, but it also leads into a third common denominator for hair loss.

4.  Nutrition.  If you aren't eating well, your hair becomes damaged.  If you're not eating the proper foods, you're not getting the proper vitamins, and this causes more hair to go into the resting phase and start falling out.

Notice the common threads throughout the articles?

What do you think?

Hokey suggestions to improve your hair

I was just reading an article in India Times today, where they discussed recommendations for hair care.

The first suggestion, I agree with, that you should do Hot Oil Treatments on your hair.   I used to do this religiously  They state that you should take these hot oils and put on a shower cap and leave it on for an hour, then shampoo your hair.

Once again, I digress to an earlier post of how realistic this is.  I would do it in the shower, but the oil only stayed in my hair for about 5 minutes.

Another suggestion is to rub your scalp with either garlic juice, onion juice or ginger juice; leave it on overnight and wash it thoroughly in the morning.  Again, how realistic is that?

The third suggestion is getting a scalp massage.  The thought is that massage keeps the hair follicle stimulated.

Here's one that I never heard before "Apply warm green tea (two bags brewed in one cup of water) on your scalp and leave this mixture on for an hour and then rinse."  They suggest that tea has antioxidants that will increase hair growth, but again, how realistic is to keep it on for an hour?

And the fifth suggestion is to practice meditation.  Because the biggest reasons people lose hair is stress and tension, it's believed that meditating will help reduce stress, and therefore help in keeping your hair.

This one seems hokey, but if meditation works for you, why not try it.  

Maybe you can meditate while food sits on your head for an hour?

What do you think of these suggestions?  

Have you tried any?  

Have they worked?

The basics of hair loss

One of the biggest problems for me is my hair.  It's baby-fine, and any chemicals at all cause it to weigh down and look ten times worse.

I just heard something very interesting today.  The normal cycle for hair growth is 2 to 3 years.  Not months, years.  It's said that hair grows approximately 1 centimeter a month.  As a mom who has to get the boys' hair cut every month or they turn into Shaggy from Scooby Doo, I find that hard to believe.

At any given time, only 90 percent of your hair is growing and 10% is just hanging out in a "resting" phase.  After about three or four months, the resting hair falls out and new hair starts growing.

According to familydoctor.org, this explains why typically three to four months after surgery, people are warned their hair will fall out in great quantities.  What also causes hair to fall out?  Stress and hormonal problems.

In the past, I've experienced hair loss after surgery, so this was always expected.  I also went through a period of time that my life was so stressful, I was losing hair in clumps.  While it always seemed to happen about a month out, losing your hair can continue for 3-4 months!

Have you noticed around the time you're pregnant and for a few months thereafter you're losing hair?  That's due to the hormone changes in your body.

And something I had never even thought about affects hair loss.  Medication. Did you know that daily aspirin you take could cause hair loss?  What about Vitamin A or anti-depressants.  It's something you might certainly want to discuss with your doctor if you notice after being put on a new medication that for the next 3-4 months, you're losing more hair than normal.

What can be done about it?  We'll talk about that in another blog post.