There isn’t any miracle pill which can be taken to help your hair grow. When you see someone with long, shiny locks, you probably consider them to be exceptionally lucky if your hair has never grown past your shoulders. However, the only reason they’ve managed to grow their hair to such a length, in such a great condition, is because they’ve spent years caring for it in order to avoid any damage.
Long hair doesn’t necessarily mean healthy hair. In fact, the majority of the time long hair isn’t healthy at all and there’s no reason to be envious. A lot of people who have long hair will suffer the same split ends and breakages as you and the only way for them to put the problem right is by having it cut and then treating it properly as it regrows.
Growing your hair while also maintaining its health requires a lot of commitment and patience, along with a few lifestyle changes in a lot of cases. If your hair has never grown past a relatively short length, then the likelihood is that there are some exceptionally good reasons for this.
Magic
A lot of people treat growing their hair like weight loss and think that taking a few miracle pills and extra vitamins will solve the problem and that their hair will reach their waist within a week. Obviously, this isn’t going to work. Vitamins and nutrients are essential to your hair and by making sure you get the correct ones, it’ll certainly aid your cause, but the effects won’t be instant if the hair is already damaged.
The truth is, growing long, luscious healthy hair isn’t easy for anyone, and if you manage to get your hair to a length you love, it may not be easy to maintain and will continue to take a lot of effort and commitment. If long, healthy hair is something you strive for though, here are some tips that should help you achieve it.
Heated appliances
Everyone knows that heated appliances – curlers, straighteners, hair dryers and the like – aren’t good for the hair. It’s purely common sense. However, a lot of people don’t pay any attention to that as their perfect appearance is too important to them. The truth is, it’s perfectly possible to make yourself presentable enough to leave the house without using a multitude of heated styling products. Using hot styling products on your hair causes irreversible damage and as soon as it occurs, it’ll be almost impossible to grow your hair without having a significant length cut off it first.
The best way to dry your hair is to let it air dry naturally. However, if you have somewhere to be, this is not always possible. If this is the case then use a hood dryer set, which dries your hair much more quickly than leaving it to dry naturally but causes nowhere near as much damage as a blow dryer. If you can’t go a day without styling your hair then consider ways in which you can achieve great styles without using heat. For example, if you like wavy hair then after washing it, put it into several plaits and leave it in this style overnight while it dries. When you take them out the next day, you’ll find you have beautiful waves. Alternatively you could use wet curlers which will help to curl your hair as it dries.
Hair extensions
Although hair extensions will instantly give you the length that you’ve been trying so hard to achieve, fusion, semi-permanent and clip-on extensions will all cause damage to your hair because they add a lot of pressure – although clip-on ones will cause significantly less. Fusion extensions in particular put a lot of pressure on the hair’s roots and significantly slow and sometimes even prevent growth. If you want to grow naturally long, luscious tresses, it’s time to give up the hair extensions in order to give your hair a rest.
Salon visits
For a lot of women, trips to the hair salon are pretty regular as their colour and style needs to be tweaked, changed or somehow perfected. Although having a haircut is essential if you are to maintain a healthy head of hair, having it coloured, bleached, highlighted, lowlighted, chemically straightened, curled or smoothed will compromise its strength and overall health.
Although it’s probably not possible to stop all hair treatments straight away – because this would mean that you’d have to wait for your current colour to grow out naturally, which is likely to take a long time – there are ways you can improve the condition of your hair by altering the treatments that you have. By speaking to your hairdresser and explaining the fact that you’re trying to let your hair grow, they should be able to advise you on how you can alter your treatments in order to bring your hair back to your natural colour while also slowly improving its condition. Eventually, by reducing your treatments at the hair salon, you’ll be able to go once every few months for nothing more than a haircut.
Existing damage
Before you start trying to grow your hair, you need a blank canvas which means that any damage which already exists needs to be addressed. If you’re starting with long hair and you’re attempting to make it more luscious, shiny and thicker, then this could be a little traumatic as you might find that you need to have several inches chopped off in order to have a chance of growing thick, beautiful hair.
Nutrition
Eating healthily is certainly a good start when it comes to giving your hair the nutrition it needs. However, it’s unlikely to be enough. Nowadays you can get special hair care products that are full of the essential vitamins, minerals and other nutrients which your hair needs in order to stay healthy. The length of time it takes to see any improvement in your hair will depend entirely on the condition of it before you start, so the healthier it is to begin with, the quicker you’ll see results.