We’re not sure about you, but we don’t think damaged and unhealthy hair is on anyone’s wish list – it certainly isn’t on ours! It is normal for you to lose 50 to 100 strands of hair per day - with that ratio, the idea of having long hair cascading down your back may seem difficult. While wishing for Rapunzel-like hair overnight is unrealistic given that your hair grows merely half an inch per month on average, there are a few simple things you can do to help your hair be stronger, healthier, and grow longer.
1. Maintain a Healthy Diet
A hair-healthy diet is a key to permanent, glowing hair. Maintaining a balanced diet filled with leafy green vegetables can help to boost your hair health.
Your hair is made up of Keratin, a unique protein that acts as the building block of healthy hair. A diet containing abundant protein, like eggs, milk, cottage cheese, yogurt, fish, beans, nuts, and seeds, makes your hair grow quicker and thicker.
2. Take a Vitamin Supplement
If you feel your hair is not growing despite having balanced meals, a vitamin supplement (with your doctor's advice) is a good idea. Vitamins A and C soften your hair cuticle and add to its shiny appearance. Vitamin B complex (Biotin) also strengthens your hair. If you want a more simple approach, find a multi-vitamin that states its use for hair and nail health, as it likely contains an appropriate combination of all your daily doses of hair supplements.
3. Get Frequent Trims
It may seem strange to talk about cutting your hair often when you wish to have longer hair. However, trimming your hair regularly eliminates split ends that cause your hair to break farther upon the strand. These broken, dead ends prevent your hair from growing beyond a certain point and make the hair above more vulnerable.
Frequent trims (snipping just a tiny bit off every six or eight weeks) will help to prevent split ends before they appear. They maintain hair length and stop the damage to hair follicles, causing smoother, healthier, and fuller hair.
4. Avoid Washing Your Hair Daily
While we can understand you might love the feeling of clean hair each day, you could actually be making your hair susceptible to becoming dirtier, quicker with daily washes. Daily washing can strip your hair of its natural oils that can be beneficial for hair growth and scalp health and create a dry hair texture. Make the switch to washing your hair two to three times a week.
Skipping the daily shampoo will allow your natural oils to penetrate your hair strands, moisten your scalp, and hydrate the hair itself, meaning less damage and healthier hair!
5. Use a Detangling Brush
Brushing or combing your hair should always be a delicate process. If your hairbrush is rough on your hair, even if you aren’t deliberately being rough, you could be causing further damage without knowing it. Excessive tugging and pulling against the hair to remove knots and tangles can damage your hair, while a gentle detangling or soft wig brush can help you maintain sleek and smooth locks without the trauma. Simply divide your hair into sections, start brushing from the bottom and then work your way up. It decreases the amount of pressure applied to hair and scalp, minimizing hair damage and hair loss.
6. Try Hair Masks
Make hair masks a regular part of your beauty regime! From homemade to store bought, you can see benefits like retaining hair health, adding smoothness and a glow to your strands and helping to prevent hair damage. Hair masks, made up of ingredients like bananas, eggs, honey, lemon, coconut oil, and olive oil, provide extra nutrition and moisture to your hair which over time can help the strength of your hair and promote growth. That’s a yes from us!
7. Change to a Silk Pillowcase
It is by far the easiest and yet an incredibly effective way to get smoother, longer, and healthier hair. The larger and rougher fibers of materials like cotton in a regular pillowcase can cause your hair to tangle as you turn in the night, causing knots, and breakage and leaving you looking disheveled when you wake up. The ultra fine and soft silk fibers in a Mulberry Silk Pillowcase helps your hair glide across the surface of the fabric, reducing knotting and hair breakage, helping your hair stay healthy and grow longer. With its low absorbency, a silk pillowcase helps your hair maintain it’s natural moisture levels, while the thermoregulating properties of the fabric is great for hot sleepers and can help prevent overheating. With the added benefit of a silk. You can check out our range of 100% Mulberry Silk Pillowcases here.
8. Avoid Excessive Heat Styling
Regularly exposing your hair to straightening and curling irons, as well has hair dryers and even chemical relaxing, highlighting and other heat styling techniques can harm your hair, contributing to breakage and preventing growth. If you are styling using heat, reduce the temperature where possible and be sure to use a heat protectant.
9. Have Cooler Showers
We get it – there’s nothing like a nice warm shower! Although while it may seem nice to your body at the time, the hot water can dehydrate your skin and hair, leading to roughness. That’s not to say your whole shower has to be freezing cold though! At the end of your shower after you have washed your hair, quickly rinse your hair with cold water. This will help prevent heat penetration in the hair cuticle and is optimal for hair health.
10. Stop Using Regular Hair Elastics
Tying your hair up tightly with traditional hair elastics can cause your hair to break off at the region of stress, where the elastic hair tie stretches your hair follicles and creates irreparable damage. You can use silk hair ties, bobby pins, or claw clips instead of these regular hair elastics to minimize breakage. A silk hair tie is different to regular elastics in that the silk fabric exterior helps the elastic glide against the strand, causing less stress to your hair and reducing damage. Silk scrunchies often have a reputation for stretching quickly, which is why its important to find silk scrunchies designed to be stretch resistant. Our range of silk scrunchies is just that, so if you’re looking for a silk hair tie that doesn’t stretch easily, you can check out our range here.