How to Grow Your Hair Longer this Year - ready for that summer holiday you missed last time
December 23, 2021
7 Simple Tips
Don’t obsess about the growth. Keep yourself healthy and your body takes care of that, happily pumping out half inch a month, night and day.
99% of achieving longer thicker hair, is about looking after what you have. Stopping the rot, the shrinkage and breakage of the hair-shaft once it’s birthed into daylight and into your care.
1. Stop killing it. Start feeding it.
Once out of the scalp your hair is at its fulsome, supple best. But it’s no longer connected to the body’s metabolism so cannot repair itself.
Look at your daily hair rituals and habits. Avoid anything that dehydrates it. Hair finally breaks because it loses its flexibility and tensile strength. Healthy hair can stretch as much as 50% when wet and return to normal. But repeated dehydration leaves the protein structure brittle and prone to breakdown. As protein molecules leach away, the hairshaft becomes thinner. With less structure it’s unable to hold the 3% water molecules it started out with at the root so becomes less flexible and breaks down quicker. Now it’s much more likely to snap under pressure, or split.
The top 3 hair destroyers are
a) Excessive Colouring
b) Aggressive Heat Styling
c) Dehydrating Products
a) Colour Hair Beautifully
One of the biggest problems I see with new clients is totally unnecessary, excessive colour damage. Either too much colour, or repeated over and over on the same hair. Leaving it thin, fragile and dull. Find a colourist that cares about hair health, and looks beyond just collecting the bill today. One who wants your hair to look its best for as long as possible, rather than making you return asap to spend again. Colour hair beautifully, safely, and keep it healthy.
b) Learn to Style Safely
This image shows a terribly lazy and harmful way to blowdry hair. Too hot, too close, for too long. The nozzle concentrates too much heat on what’s already very damaged bleached and tinted hair, and resting it on the hair like this guarantees over-drying and further damage. Throw away the nozzle and keep a one-inch distance between your hair and the dryer. Heat-style less often. Try airdrying once a week with a gentler finish.
c) Avoid Dehydrating Products
As hair ages and suffers the onslaught of poor haircare, the surface cuticle lifts and the internal structure starts to leech away. This is most easily seen by feeling the hair at the root where it’s full, shiny and supple and then moving your finger and thumb down to the ends of the same hair where it’s less so. Thinner, drier, rougher, and dull; often dramatically so when hair is not well cared for; split and broken too.
Over 95% of hair products use silicone additives to smooth the surface and varnish over the cracks in hair. Despite the manufacturers claims, this isn’t haircare. It’s a cosmetic illusion. Most silicones are hydrophobic so whilst they make hair appear pretty today, they dry it out further tomorrow, so you reach for more silicone laden product. Kerching!
Breaking the cycle can be difficult for people with very damaged hair, in the same way that a green salad doesn’t happily replace the heroine-fix of a drug addict on day one. But persistence pays off as genuine health returns.
Ditch the silicone products – it won’t say silicone on the ingredients list so look out for the scientific names - cyclopentasiloxane, dimethicone, trimethicone, or any …conol or …cone in the ingredients list.
Feed it Regularly
Taking a supplement or putting on a questionable hair mask once a month doesn’t equate to a daily pass for continued hair abuse. Hair needs feeding consistently to prevent the loss of structure that causes shrinking, splitting and breakage.
2. Keep your scalp clean and stimulated for hair growth
Some people think washing their hair is enough to keep the scalp clean, but that 30 second shampoo at home may not have much impact on the build-up of sweat, oils, dead cells, and styling products. Scalps need to breathe easy, free of the suffocating product build up, pollution, excess sebum, oils and dead skin, so periodic exfoliation is necessary to remove this detritus and unclog the pores that are filled with bacteria.
Clogging of the hair follicles can also trigger seborrheic dermatitis which gives angry red patches, itching and flakiness. And over time it can lead to a thinning and loss of the hair. Shampoo ideally at least every other day. Use an Exfoliating Scalp Shampoo once a week. Pair it with Exfoliating Scalp Treatment if your scalp has persistent issues. I don’t like the physically abrasive grit that some exfoliators use as this can damage the scalp, nor microbeads that pollute the oceans. We use premium natural fruit enzymes and their alpha hydroxy acids (AHAs) as our active ingredients. These gently dissolve the build-up of dead cells and detritus.
3. Cut back on heat styling
If your hair is six inches long, the ends have been around for 365 days. Twelve inches long and that’s 730 days, etc. How you habitually treat your hair in those days all adds up. Using a technique that’s less damaging and/or half as often, has a massive impact on hair health.
For example, people ask if shampooing every day is bad for the hair? The answer is no if you are using quality products and airdrying, but over blow-drying or ironing hair with poor technique seven times a week is much worse than twice a week. The difference is burning the same piece of hair an extra 261 times a year. Over a thousand extra times on the ends of long hair!
Using small improvements in different habits will completely transform the condition of your hair over time.
4. Stay Healthy
Keep a healthy diet, take regular exercise and get enough sleep. The body will take care of the rest. Way way way more important in 99% of cases is looking after the hair you have, as this is where the loss occurs, and where you will see dramatic difference with some helpful changes in hair habits. See point 1.
5. Wash carefully
Swirling round and round is going to damage the cuticle, cause breakage and knotting if the hair is already fragile. Squeeze moisture out gently with a towel. Run your hands through, squeeze again. See blog: How to Shampoo Without Ruining Your Hair.
6. Vitamin supplements
These shouldn’t be a substitute for a varied diet, but can help those with an unbalanced regime. Vitamins and minerals are vital for overall health. Biotin is especially important to keep the hair healthy because it functions in the synthesis of hair proteins like keratin.
Lack of biotin has also been associated with hair breakage, hair loss, and brittle nails.
3’’’More Inches PowerShot Nutrients has an award-winning advanced formula of essential vitamins and minerals to support general wellbeing with an emphasis on brighter, stronger, healthy hair and nails. It’s especially suited to vegans as it also provides significant levels of iron and Vitamin B12.
7. Lockdown benefits
Lockdown is a great opportunity to do less bad stuff and apply regular selfcare to hair. You're also outside less, so fewer UV rays are weakening the hair structure, and most of us aren’t swimming in the sea or a chlorinated pool.
Take time to give yourself a daily 5-minute scalp massage. It will relax the scalp and encourage more blood supply, bringing nutrients and removing toxins. Aim to move the scalp with the finger tips. Don’t rub hair around over itself.
Oh and finally, don’t forget to regularly reshape. As the hair grows, all hairstyles become dry at the ends and layered hair changes shape, rather than just becoming a longer version. To keep it looking its best, regular trims help reshape the hair into the newer longer form, which keeps the style looking its best, and you motivated to continue.
Michael Van Clarke
