Hair Care & More

 At the risk of sounding clichéd, your hair is your crowning glory, apart from its beauty aspect, it is also a reflection of your general health – so if your hair is dull, lifeless or rough you should be doing something about it.

Some Suggestions:-

Daily Care
While you don’t need to shampoo your hair everyday (in fact for some hair types daily shampoo could dry out your hair), you should of course make sure it clean – excessive oil build-up and dirt can lead to dandruff and lice. Make sure you use a mild shampoo. Experts also recommend conditioners that are mild so that no soap residue is left after shampooing. Make sure you wash your scalp, not just your hair. Washing only your hair strips the sebum, or oil, from
the hair and creates fly-away hair that is dull and coarse.

Brush your carefully every day - 100 brush strokes, standing with head bent forward, bending your torso from the waist to achieve maximum amount of blood circulation to the hair roots. If your hair is over ten inches long, you should use a flat or elongated base, held firmly at the base, so that it doesn't flip over and get tangled in your hair. You should begin brushing with 20 strokes and gradually build up to 100, adding ten strokes a day till you reach your goal.

Hair care in your youth
As you grow older, your body tends not to be able to replace damaged hair. This coupled with natural thinning and reduced growth can result in unhealthy hair in the older years – which is why it is most important to take care of your hair in your 20s and 30s. Hair loss that occurs from continual hair breakage over the years is a serious cosmetic concern for many women, so the key is to prevent this damage by stopping the cycle of over-processing and over-grooming your hair and selecting hair care products with proven hair-health benefits.

Some Cardinal Rules

• Limited blow drying
• Less use of cosmetic hair care products like dyes, etc.
• Gentle brushing
• Oil your hair not more twice or thrice a week

Eating Right
For hair to be healthy, it needs nourishment in the form of protein, vitamins and minerals from the foods we eat.

Vitamins: Vitamin A helps stimulate the scalp and improve blood flow. B complex vitamins keep hair moisturized by regulating the amount of oil produced in the hair. Hair loss often results from biotin deficiencies (one of the B vitamins). Most B vitamins work best in conjunction with one another. You can take a supplement or eat foods like cauliflower, yogurt, eggs, green vegetables and bran products.

Minerals: These include zinc, iron and copper. You can get most of the minerals you need from animal proteins, seeds and green leafy vegetables.

Proteins: Meat and milk products are excellent sources of whole proteins (whole proteins are those that contain all of the essential amino acids for the dietary needs of humans)

Pregnancy and Hair Loss

Pregnancy produces widespread changes in a woman's physiology. Scalp hair is very sensitive to these changes and the hair is affected to some degree in all women.
Normally 85% of hair in humans is in a growing or ‘anagen' phase of 24-48 months. The remaining 15% is in a random falling or ‘telogen' phase of 2-3 months. In late pregnancy however, anagen may increase to 95% and telogen drop down to 5%; indicating only one-third the normal number of hairs being shed. Following childbirth the telogen count begins to rise, and by nine weeks postpartum (childbirth) 30-35% of scalp hairs are in the telogen phase. As a result, hair begins to fall excessively for about three months, and may continue for as long as a year. Not to worry though, majority of women return to normal hair density by 12 months postpartum.

Hairy Facts

• Hair grows from the follicles in your scalp - there are about 120,000 of them altogether.

• The colour of your hair determines the number of follicles you have; redheads have the most.

• Hair grows not in a continuous process but in a random pattern. At any one time there will be hairs growing, lying dormant and falling out.

• It is estimated that the average life of a single hair is between four and ten years and it grows at the approximate rate of half an inch a month or six inches in the year.