My Hair Routine: Keep it Simple, Sister

Every now and then, I'll see a post on one of the various long hair care boards on LiveJournal where the poster asks what she can do to help her hair grow, or proposes a new hair care regime to do so.

Almost invariably, the post will include a proposed new regime consisting of thirteen hot oil and deep conditioning treatments, a pound and a half of daily supplements, six leave-ins, various pomades and butters, and about thirty-seven herbal concoctions that each take six parts and must be made at the crossroads under a full Moon.

Well, okay. Maybe not that last. But nevertheless, the list of things that the poster wants to do or feels the need to do to get her hair to grow can often exhaust me just reading it. (It's an even money bet as to whether the same poster admits that she bleaches and flatirons her hair, but insists that that can't possibly be the reason why it's not growing.) Often, I feel like taking her by the shoulders and telling her, "Put down the shopping basket and back away slowly." Given the barrage of products being hurled at it, and the implied impatience on the part of the poster, it's no wonder her poor hair has given up the ghost. I imagine it groaning under the weight of all these treatments, knowing that as soon as Hot Oil Treatment #4,112 fails to result in hair just like Angelina Jolie's, Deep Conditioning Treatment #377 and Hair Mask #1,019 are going to be thrown at it five minutes later, resulting in the same disappointment -- and often frustration that will result in the person storming off to the stylist to get a short cut.

So here's the first bit of advice I have for you: Take it easy.

Want it long? Handle it gently, put it up every day, and ignore it.

By way of illustration, I'll list my own hair routine here. I don't promise a thing if you follow this course. My hair may be very different from yours, and anyway I'm not trying to give you a list of exact directives to follow but am only including my own routine in order to show you just how uncomplicated long hair care can be. But you shouldn't read this and try it, and then conclude that it "doesn't work" even after you've spent five months braiding your hair the exact same way she did!!!!! and it's not down to your thighs yet!!!!!!!!! :-)

I also feel that I need to address a disturbing question that sometimes pops up on long-hair care boards from time to time: No, eating a ton of vitamin supplements and drinking gallons of water a day will not offset the damage of extreme dieting. If you are dieting like crazy to maintain a very low weight, your hair will reflect it by becoming brittle, thin, and even falling out. There just isn't a cheater's way to eat almost nothing and keep your hair shiny, thick, and healthy. I don't care what your online friends who live on extremely low-calorie, low-fat diets have told you. No amount of dietary supplements will offset the damage of unhealthy dieting, on either your hair or your body in general.

I've just seen this pop up from time to time, and I can always tell that someone is not eating a healthy diet when they specify that their hair is falling out by the handfuls, even though they takes tons of supplements and drink tons of water. No amount of supplements and water will undo the damage to your hair or your general health of dieting to an extreme degree. It breaks my heart to have to say this, but there is just no clever, cheater's way to starve yourself and remain healthy in any way, shape, or form.

The Basic Routine -- Quick and Easy

• I wash my hair every week or so. Yep. You heard that. It's not greasy, it's not oily, it doesn't smell. And I'm certainly not saying that I wash the rest of me as infrequently! But my hair gets thoroughly soaked through and shampooed/conditioned once every week or so. If your hair is finer or sleeker than mine, you may not be able to go that long -- but it's a lead-pipe cinch that you should wash it as infrequently as you can manage. Wet hair is weak hair.
  
  Also, I do not pile my hair on top of my head, but leave it hanging down my back while washing it. I shampoo with whatever Pantene I got last time, working it through the roots only and squishing the suds through the length, but not scrubbing it at all. I then rinse it out thoroughly and squirt a glop of conditioner into my hand the size of a small lime, and work that through the length. (Shampoo the roots, condition the ends.) I leave that in my hair while I wash the rest of me (and my hair is still hanging down my back during this), and when I finish washing me, I rinse the conditioner out of my hair thoroughly. And yes, I do take special care to make sure that I don't end up with a sticky film of conditioner down my back.
  
  Another big no-no is wringing water out of your hair like you're wringing out a dishtowel. I brutalized my hair for years doing that. Just squeeze the water out of your hair, and don't be too aggressive about it.


• I do not blow dry it, but instead comb it out gently starting at the ends* with a wide-tined detangling rake, and braid it in one long nape braid. I then either put it up with a Ficcare clip or a pinless braided bun (both of which styles can be found on the Styles page). And I forget about it. It's up, just as it is when dry. QED.


• I let the braid down at night, but do not unbraid it. It's left in a long nape braid while I sleep. I wake up the next day, unbraid and rebraid the still-damp hair without combing it out (it doesn't generally need it, and I just redo it to tighten up the braid and make it neat from having been slept on for a night), and then it goes back up in either the Ficcare braid or pinless bun.


• After it is dry (and it may be damp for days), I comb it thoroughly and then can style it however I want -- Gibraltar bun, Figure-8, pinless bun, high braided bun, whatever appeals from the Styles page. Under no circumstances do I brush it. I comb it in the morning, style it, take the style out at night upon which point I comb it again to remove the day's shed hairs, and then braid it for sleep.
  
  I should specify that I do not put an elastic in my hair for sleep, and that its texture is such that about two-thirds of the length will stay braided until I get up. If your hair is sleeker than mine, you may not be able to do this and may have to use a very gentle scrunchy or ouchless elastic to keep the braid in place overnight.


• I may (or may not) use a nickel-sized blob of silicone serum once a week or so worked through the length and scented from a collection of essential oils that I have, before putting my hair up as normal. Failing that, it's a fingernail's worth of coconut oil.


• From then, it's another week to wash day! And if I push it to the next weekend, I don't really stress about it.

That's it. No herbal infusions, no hot oils. No deep treatments, no moisture packs or hair masks or beaten eggs or mayonnaise. Almost nothing. Wash every week or so, style wet as dry, comb twice a day, braid for sleep. Very little product. (Like I said, it's handling that counts, not products.)

I admit that this may be a bit low-maintenance for some people. There are people who like doing all the fussy stuff and consider it pampering. There are also people (often very young but not always) who are just impatient, and even if they say that they aren't expecting Gisele's hair to sprout out of their head, they nevertheless get very disappointed if they don't have supermodel bombshell hair in a week's time. And other people just like complexity and find buying and collecting tons of different kinds of products to be fun.

There's the opposite extreme as well -- people who go water-only or get a crew cut so that they can use soap and water and wash their hair just like they wash any other part of themselves. De gustibus and all that.

I'm somewhere in the middle -- liking the extreme simplicity of long hair, but not wanting to go quite so low-tech as not shampoo it at all. After all, hair, like nails, is not generally meant to grow to extreme lengths in nature -- that's why evolution decided to make it grow continuously, because there's an unstated assumption that it will break off with daily wear and tear. To get it to mid-thigh, it generally takes a bit of artificial post-Industrial-Revolution care. As a consequence, totally water-only isn't my thing, and all-natural shampoos and conditioners aren't, either. While I've found coconut oil to be very good, most of the other hair oils like jojoba don't do boo for me or else actually make my hair harder to handle. For the most part, it's the all-chemical-all-the-time Pantene that does me fine -- in sparing quantities.

General Hair Safety

I feel the need to bring this up; there's also another good reason to wear your hair up when aiming for super-lengths, especially when you start to achieve them: safety.

Long hair is a nice, convenient handle on the back of your head which is hard to keep track of and control when it's down. You've probably neglected to realize that your hair was caught on a button or doorknob a few times in your life. You may have even stepped or knelt on your own hair when bending over. Ever failed to realize that your finger was caught in a car door or being knelt on? Probably not. For that reason alone, if your hair is unusually long, you must keep it up and out of the way in many situations. In fact, I'd say most.

And a ponytail or braid doesn't count as "up." It could in fact be worse, as the hair is then concentrated in an incredibly strong and easily grabbable rope that will not give out before your skin does. Stories pop up on occasion of people having been scalped by heavy machinery after their hair has been caught in it, and a ponytail or braid only allows the machine to catch every single hair on your head and tug forcefully and suddenly on all of them. While it may not seem to make sense, it's true: skin will tear away before hair will under those circumstances.

In many situations (and in my opinion, driving is one of them), your hair must not only be tied back away from your face but confined as well. A bun or a completely clipped-up braid is hands-down the safest way to wear hair of any extreme length. Keep a hairstick with you at all times. If you don't have one with you and still want to ride that rollercoaster, braid it in one long nape braid and then tuck it completely into your clothing. Like I said, it's a rope and an easily grabbable one -- and moreover, it's hooked up to your head!

It's also important to realize that children are not mature enough to take these safety considerations into account as often as they should. (Indeed, adults sometimes fail to do so.) If you have a little daughter with knee-length hair, please consider cutting it. A small child simply doesn't have the maturity to be aware of these sorts of considerations.

Products: `Cones, Sulfates, and PFEs

I've heard a great deal about the evils of SLS or ALS shampoos and cone-laden conditioners, meaning shampoos that contain sodium (or ammonium) lauryl sulfate and conditioners that contain silicone or silicone-like materials like dimethicone or other long chemical names that end in -cone. If you believe the hype, they will destroy your hair, cause it to fall out, shrivel up, turn frog-green, accelerate global warming and cellulite formation, cause ebola outbreaks, kill baby seals, and let the terrorists win. Many people insist that they are the most damaging thing you could put on your hair, while other use them without concern. I have to say that I fall into the latter group. I see nothing wrong with SLS/ALS shampoos and cones as long as they are used sparingly. All products should be used sparingly. And while many people aren't fond of them, they simply won't cause your hair to turn into flaming cottage cheese or fall out. As with anything, moderation is key, and used at reasonable levels, silicone-based conditioners rinse out quite easily with common shampoos.

I freely admit to some skepticism about the complaint that cones "cause" and then "mask" damage. It sounds too much to me like a slightly more faux-science-flavored version of the ridiculous but persistent urban myth that Carmex puts ground glass into their lip balm so that your lips get drier and you use more of it, which is clearly bunk. Can you imagine being told that rubbing your forehead with sandpaper will make your skin smoother, doing so, and then saying to yourself, "It didn't work! I'd better do more of it!" And as far as masking damage goes ... well, life damages hair. Even with the best and gentlest possible handling, your hair will sustain at least a bit of damage just from age. Masking that damage and enabling your hair to be strong, smooth, and easy to handle despite damage is the whole point of any product, after all. If you don't want to "mask damage," then use nothing.

In truth, poor handling and treatment do a lot more damage to hair than products, with some exceptions (bleach and relaxers are bad, as they cause permanent, definite chemical destruction). Cones make combing, detangling, and styling your hair go much more easily and smoothly; they do no permanent damage to the hair whatsoever, and rinse off with shampoo. Any hypothetical damage that cones supposedly cause is nothing compared to the brutal detangling, rough combing, and flatironing ("Just a little!") to deal with the resulting frizz that cones help you avoid when used sparingly. Some people even insist that cones make your hair fall out, but it's worth remembering that your scalp naturally sheds around 100-150 individual hairs each day. Cones help those shed hairs slide out during washing and gentle combing, so that they get away from your scalp and don't tangle with the hairs that are still attached and growing.

Sulfates are found in shampoos. They are detergents and generally come in two types -- lauryl sulfate and laureth sulfate. Many people claim that the first is harsher in the hair and prefer shampoos that use the second instead. Again, I'm a skeptic on this, but as long as you accept that the laureth sulfate shampoos won't clean quite as well, it won't hurt to try them.

A very, very general summary is:

Common Silicones:

Dimethicone: The heaviest and least water-soluble of the cones. Great for thick, wavy/curly hair. Does not evaporate, washes out with most shampoos. A good leave-in, but don't keep reapplying it every day.

Cyclomethicone: The lightest of the cones, good for lighter, thinner hair. Evaporates just like water, so it will be good for detangling in the shower and then go away when your hair dries.

Common Shampoo Detergents:

Sodium or ammonium lauryl sulfate: The most common one, slightly harsher than:

Sodium or ammonium laureth sulfate: Another common one, slightly less harsh than the first one. If you don't do a later-rinse-repeat, you should be fine with either, depending on how frequently you wash. At once a week, I'm fine with the first one.

Common Natural Leave-Ins:

Coconut oil: Chemically similar to sebum in ways that allow it to penetrate the hair and keep the hair shaft supple. Smells great when you use the unrefined stuff. Is just barely a solid at room temperature, mixes well with the occasional drop of scented oil.

Olive oil: Also chemically similar to sebum, generally considered superior to coconut oil for hair but the smell isn't nearly as nice. Extra-virgin smells the least like a pizza, so that's the best to use.

In general, if you're concerned about using less harsh shampoos, then give shampoos with sodium or ammonium laureth sulfate a try. If cones offend your philosophy for some reason, then try shampoos with few or no silicone derivatives in them, or ones with water-soluble ones like cyclomethicone instead. For a leave-in, give coconut or extra-virgin olive oil a go. Other than that, don't stress out. I've said it a dozen times so far, but it bears repeating: handling matters more than product. As long as your hair is kept up and whatever leave-in or conditioner you use sparingly leaves it smooth enough to handle without too much friction, you'll be fine.

I also tend to think that one should match one's conditioner to one's hair. If your individual hairs are thin and lightweight, then a thin, lightweight conditioner is probably best. If your individual hairs are heavy and thick, then use a heavy and thick conditioner. Also, straighter hair tends to do better with lighter conditioners, while increasing waves and curls demand a heavier one. Play around a bit to find what works best for you.

A little addition here on polyfluoroesters, like the sort used in the latest interesting hair product, No Frizz, by Living Proof. I'm unfamiliar with the technology, although it sounds fascinating and even effective. I haven't used it at this point, though. I'm a skeptic, and I've only gotten my hair to this point by being extremely protective of it, so I'm less than willing to experiment on it. I'm unsure of whether or not this product will work well for me since, on a first pass, most of the marketing and research seems to indicate that it would work best for shorter, more classically "white" hair in a humid environment for women who blow-dry their hair straight-ish. My hair is very much ethnic-white, I live in a dry area, and I don't heat style, so I don't see as much benefit for myself in No Frizz. Most of the models they use in their marketing seem to be women with classically white or straightened African hair, and given that silicones work so well for me, I'm not entirely willing to use a product that may not play well with them.

The product labeling also seems to indicate that it has been formulated for finer, straighter hair than mine. The hold-free formula is called "straight-making," and of course the only kind of hair that is straight without hold is naturally straight hair or barely wavy hair that has been blown straight. The formula with a holding gel in it is called "wave-shaping," and similarly, a holding agent is only a "wave-shaping" agent for women with relatively straight hair who wish to curl it artificially. All of that leaves me pretty firmly out. (To be honest, some of the women I've seen online who talk about how "curly" their hair is appear to have hair that I would personally classify as next door to bone-straight. For these women, this product may be a godsend.)

The major downsides that the Living Proof website ascribes to silicone -- that it weighs hair down and makes it flat and limp -- are much less true if at all for coarse, very lively wavy/curly hair, which is not only much harder to "weigh down," but which may even benefit from being weighed down. The last thing I'd want to use on my hair is something that will cause it to be even less coherent than it already is, and the small amount of silicone that may linger in my hair from my conditioner or serum helps to give weight and cohesion to my otherwise somewhat pushy waves while simultaneously requiring no styling at all.

Finally, I'm also a little leery of it since, unlike silicones, the user is directed to use no small amount of it and the product is not cheap. At $24 for a 4oz bottle, I could go broke rapidly if I used this product that directs me to saturate my hair, even if it is effective.

As a result, although this seems like it would be a lovely and potentially revolutionary product for straight or only mildly wavy haired women in damp environments with more reasonable amounts of hair who blow-dry, I'm probably going to take a wait-and-see attitude toward it myself as an ethnic white woman with nearly knee-length hair in a dry climate who does not heat-style. It doesn't seem to be directed toward solving any of the problems I'm familiar with, and indeed seems directed at the exact opposite types of hair and styling habits. If you have that type of hair and have complained in the past that silicone-based products weigh your hair down or make it look greasy, you may want to give this stuff a go and see how it works. Could be the miracle you've been waiting for.

The D-Word: Dandruff

I've got it, I hate it. My hair is the hair I've wanted all my life, but left to its own devices, my scalp will scare Genghis Khan.

Now, I'm not a dermatologist, so I can't diagnose or make individualized recommendations. What I can do is tell you what's worked for me and what hasn't.

I've come to the conclusion, based on the way my skin behaves otherwise, that thanks to my DNA, I simply exfoliate with great enthusiasm. I always have, and I always will. This isn't necessarily a bad thing since my skin also doesn't wrinkle easily and isn't dry at all. As a result, I've stopped trying to prevent my body from shedding its dead skin cells with quite so much verve, and have instead focused on just making the stuff go away once it's been shed. If your dandruff is also stubborn and refuses to budge no matter what you do, you may feel the same way. If it can't be cured, then how can it simply be dealt with? Accepting that my skin is oily and will exfoliate at the drop of a hat, how can I make the stuff just go away?

This turns it from a chemical or medical problem into a mechanical one -- and the solution is mechanical. What's needed is something that simply carries the dandruff away. This puts us on the lookout for things that can be mooshed into the hair, that do not damage it or the scalp but nonetheless scrub up the flakes and carry them off.

I've found one thing that works beautifully well and is cheap as anything and easy to do: salt scrubs.

Get coconut oil; you can find it online and often in a Whole Foods or some natural food store if WF aren't in your area. I tend to like unrefined since it smells so nice. Get about a tablespoon of it rounded, and add table salt. Don't use sea salt -- the grain size is too large and the grains are too jagged. You're looking just to scrub the dandruff up from your scalp and rinse it away, not grind granite. We don't care about the chemical or mineral make-up of the salt here; all we want is a dissolvable, cheap granular stuff to physically scrub up the dandruff. I imagine sugar would work as well, but I haven't tried it and have heard that it dissolves a bit too quickly to be useful.

At any rate, get a nice rounded tablespoon of coconut oil, the pure stuff that comes in tubs and is just barely a solid at room temperature. (You'll want it in a fairly creamy solid state when you do this, so if it's gone liquid in your bedroom or bathroom, stick it in the fridge for a bit.) Pour a few tablespoons of salt into it, one at a time until you have as much salt as possible in it while still maintaining a somewhat creamy texture that you can pick up with your fingers. (The first time I did this, I added a drop of tea tree oil, but woke up the next morning viciously stuffed up, which has never happened to me before. I never added tea tree oil again, and never had that problem again. YMMV.)

While in the shower, lift up your hair and work this gunk into the roots. The scrubbing isn't the most wonderful sensation while you're doing it (it feels like sand), but just scrub gently for what seems like a reasonable amount of time -- you aren't polishing granite, so don't overdo it, and you can always just scrub for more or less time as you see how it works for you. The coconut oil will not only condition your hair but it will also protect the salt from dissolving too quickly in the water. If you scrub too hard, you'll know it; the warm water of the shower will sting a bit. Don't worry ... but go more gently next time.

Now ultimately, you do want the salt to dissolve and rinse away completely, so you'll have to do a lather-rinse-repeat with your shampoo when you're done. The shampoo must break up the coconut oil to allow the salt to rinse away, so the double-lather that you usually ignore when it's written on the label is actually necessary here. Keep going until you feel no grit in your hair whatsoever; rinse as thoroughly as possible. I also worked conditioner into my hair at the roots afterwards, which I typically don't do. (I usually only condition the ends.)

You'll want to experiment a bit to see what works in terms of time of scrubbing; always err on the side of scrubbing for too little time and too gently, because scrubbing too harshly or too long could scratch up your hair or scalp. But you should see a difference immediately.

Now, this won't make the dandruff go away permanently, and frankly I'm not sure that's possible for people like me, who have oily skin and who exfoliate a lot. What I want is to be able to wear a black top or go to the Renaissance Faire and get a crown braid without cringing at what will be revealed when my hair is lifted up. If that's all you're after, this works a treat; you'll have to do it every two months or so depending on when you peer into the mirror and notice that the flakes are starting to reappear. I went from cringing at the amount of gross white stuff on my pillowcase every morning and having to remove large flakes one by one to nothing there at all. Gone. Entirely. Hallelujah.

What hasn't worked for me is the following:

Going coneless.

I haven't found that any single product is responsible for my dandruff. My scalp is not inflamed or sensitive; it simply exfoliates like mad, and given that my hair is wavy/curly and a bit grabby, the flakes don't just slide out. *shrug* I don't use much product anyway, so the standard advice -- no mousse, no gels, no hairspray, yadda yadda -- doesn't apply to me. If you, like me, have dandruff that simply will not quit, then switching away from commonly used products may not help. Give it a try, but if it doesn't give you the result you want, you may have to just let your body work by its own rules and deal with it rather than cure it.

Washing with even less frequency.

A lot of people swear by this, but I've found that it doesn't work for me. Many people who say that less washing helps are talking about washing "only" every three days or so. I'm already at a week or more between washings, so that doesn't help me. Indeed, when I push it to two weeks, it appears to make things worse, and for a very simple reason. If my body is going to exfoliate, and the dandruff is going to happen -- which it will -- I simply have to get rid of it. Not washing will only allow it to build up on my scalp instead of being removed. Not showering or not using soap won't stop the rest of your skin from exfoliating; why would you expect it to work for your scalp?

You're welcome to give these sorts of things a try -- everyone's different and what works for one person may not work for the other. But again, if your dandruff is also just stubborn and won't go away, be prepared to let it happen and just scrub the blasted stuff up from time to time. I'm happy with that solution personally. And like I said above, it works beautifully.

In Summary -- the Wrap-Up

So after that little digression, I've settled on the following routine, which works well for my coarse, dry, thick, wavy hair:

• Wash and condition every week with cone-laden shampoo and conditioner. Wash the roots, condition the ends.
• No heat treatment at all.
• Daily bunning or braids.
• Daily combing with a wide-tined detanging rake. No brushing at all.
• Maybe a nickel-sized dollop of silicone serum scented with an EO or a smidge of coconut oil once or twice a week at most -- more often not at all.
• Sleep with it braided but not tied off.
• Use the occasional coconut oil/salt scrub to remove dandruff when needed.

If your hair is sleeker or thinner than mine, you may have to wash more frequently and use an elastic to keep it in a sleep braid.

Again, it's close to extreme simplicity but not all the way there. If you enjoy a bit more fussiness and product than I (very likely), this may not interest you. In that case, I'd encourage you to do whatever you enjoy; long hair isn't worth it if you don't find it fun, and many people find the avoidance of product, fuss, and wearing it up all the time to be annoying.

I would still encourage you not to carpet-bomb your hair with a different treatment every night and then be disappointed when supermodel hair doesn't materialize instantly on your head. Never forget: Photoshop does wonders, and even the supermodels don't look like their photos. Love your hair and treat it gently, and it'll love you back and grow.

* What on Earth does that mean? Am I talking about combing upwards, like teasing? Nope -- what I mean is don't park the comb at your part and then yank it downward and expect it to do anything but stop dead about three inches down. Take a section of your hair and start at the bottom, near the ends, and just comb through the ends. Then, do it again, but start the comb a few inches higher. Then again, with the comb a few inches higher. Keep going until you're starting out at or near your scalp and combing all the way down. (If your hair is extremely curly, you may never be able to do this; don't worry about it. Very curly hair has different handling needs.) Never just plunk the comb at your part and start combing from there unless your hair is very straight and sleek. It'll cause any tangles to pile up near the ends, causing major splits when you try to tear through them.