Hair Care
10 Busted Myths About Home Remedies For Hair
You’ve heard them all: 100 brush strokes every night, shampoo every
day but condition the ends only, use lemon juice to get fabulous high
lights. But how many home remedies for hair are really true?
- Brushing your hair 100 strokes every night makes it grow and adds shine.
Excessive or overly vigorous brushing can lead to breakage or tearing.
Avoid this by using a boar’s bristle brush and never brush hair when
it’s wet. The nightly 100 strokes notion originated in the Middle Ages
and the idea was to redistribute scalp oils. Gentle brushing can do this
but since most people shampoo daily, oil redistribution is no longer an
issue.
- Comb through lemon juice, sit in the sun and get great high lights.
Lemon juice lightens hair in the worst way possible. It’s as drying and
damaging as pouring bleach on your hair, Plus, you have no control over
how much your hair lightens or where high lights appear. White, fried
and dried blotches are the more likely result. Don’t fool with Mother
Nature.
- Split ends can be repaired. Despite hair care
products that claim to do this, all they really do is seal the splits,
making them less visible temporarily. Cutting them off is the only
solution.
- Hair acclimates to products, and they become less effective.
This is a marketing ploy of competing manufacturers. If a product works
different, it’s because of changes in your scalp and serum production,
or seasonal, hormonal or chemical changes. Prescription medications can
change your hormonal balance, body, scalp and hair. Pregnancy causes
these changes, too. One caveat: If you color your hair,
change to a shampoo for chemically treated hair, Hair doesn’t develop a
resistance to anything; it can only be weakened by chemicals and poor
treatment.
- Trimming or thinning hair makes it grow faster or thicker. Your
hair growth rate alters with seasons and hormonal changes, but it’s
basically the same for everyone: about half an inch a month. Also, the
cycles of growth and shedding are consistent in most healthy people.
Hair grows for four to five years, rests for two to four months, and
then sheds, Normal hair loss is 50 to 100 strands a day; abnormal loss
is over 150 strands a day for more than a month.
- Blow-drying dries out your hair and damages it. Another insidious
myth is that blow-dry damage occurs only if you use excessive heat,
fail to continually move the blower and fail to seat in moisture by
using a thermal protector.
- Vitamins help hair grow faster. We’ve all seen the
ads for hair vitamins that claim to help your hair grow 6 inches in a
month. Like all things, if it sounds too good to be true, it is. Biotin,
vitamin B complexes and folio acid are all touted as hair-growth
miracle workers. While they contribute to the overall health of the
body’s systems, they cannot grow hair any faster than is genetically
determined in healthy people, and true vitamin deficiencies that are so
extreme they inhibit hair growth are rare in modernized nations.
- Natural products are better for your hair. Almost
no “natural” product is 100 percent natural, and even most so-called
natural ingredients are actually chemically synthesized molecules that
mimic nature. Chemicals can be your hair’s best friends. For one thing,
they have molecular sizes that are engineered to get into the hair’s
cortex. Kitchen ingredients like avocado and mayo might seal your hair’s
cuticle, making it look shiny, but so will a dab of motor oil.
Synthetic ingredients may not sound sexy, but they have been thoroughly
tested and they work. That said, many natural ingredients have also been
tested and proven efficacious; it all depends on amounts used and how
they work in a final formulation. Don’t assume all chemicals are bad and
all natural ingredients are good.
- Some hair care products cause breakouts. If you are
using petroleum-based products at the hairline, it’s possible to effect
the skin’s oil production. But even “blocking pores” is an unproven
concept that dermatologists argue about. Hair and scalp purification and
control over oil or sebum production matter most.
- You should shampoo every day. Daily shampooing is
not necessary, and if you use water that’s too hot, it can dry out your
scalp and skin, which brings home the point that many “hair” problems
are really scalp problems. Shampooing every other day is fine for most
people and even advantageous to some, including those with fine hair and
hairs chemically treated with hair color, relaxers or straighteners.
The No Shampoo experiments have proven this to be another home remedies
for hair myth busted.
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