How to Grow Healthy Hair and my Inversion Method Results
Hello everyone!
Welcome back to the Quality Girl Blog! I missed you this week! I will say, it was great to have some time for other things and less stress. So, that was great, but I got used to writing everyday in this blog and I felt like a part of me was missing. I am still going to stick with Wednesdays, though.
I have something that I've been looking into lately, which is, growing my hair. I've been growing it for about 3 years now. It was very short when I started. It was in a grown out pixie cut style when I first started and now it's at my shoulder blades! It's very exciting! If you love long hair or want to grow your hair longer then you will appreciate today's blog post.
I even documented an Inversion Method at the end of this post. So if you want to see how that worked out, you'll have to keep reading!
There are several things you can do to help your hair to grow longer:
Get Frequent Trims - This keeps the split ends trimmed off and the hair from breaking, which ultimately, keeps your hair growing instead of appearing to stay the same length. Some people think that their hair has gotten to a point where it won't grow any more. But, the truth is, for most people, you should get trims and see if your hair will start to grow again. Your hair grows about half an inch/month and it you get only a quarter of an inch trimmed off every 6 weeks or so you will start to see your hair growing faster than before.
Consume a Healthy Diet - Drinks lots of water and eat healthy foods, rich in omega 3 fatty acids (Salmon, sardines, and mackerel), Vitamin B5 (Greek Yogurt), Protein ( Greek Yogurt, Eggs Yolks), vitamin A, iron, beta carotene, folate, and vitamin C (Spinach has all of these and helps with brittle hair), Vitamin C (Citrus fruits, Guava), Iron (fortified cereal, grains, and pastas, and in soybeans and lentils, Beef, Liver, Shellfish and dark leafy greens), Zinc (Oysters). Sometimes, when you don't get enough protein, your hair goes into "rest." This can lead to hair loss. To get protein from meat, pick lean options like chicken or turkey, which have less saturated fat than sources like beef and pork.
Avoid Daily Hair Washes - Allow your natural hair oils to condition your hair. Daily shampooing can lead to drying out your hair and can lead to damage. When you wash your hair everyday and dry it out your scalp will produce more oils than it should, leaving your hair feeling greasy. Instead of washing your hair everyday
Switch Up Your Ponytail Placement - Keep things interesting, by not only changing up your ponytail placement but also how you style your hair. Avoid styles that are too tight and can cause your more fragile hairs to break. Try styles that are a bit looser, like a braid or a soft bun or a hair clip. Try to avoid tightening your hair ties that one last time that will feel too tight. Or even try switching to a hair tie that won't break your hair. The trick is, though, if you switch up your style then you won't be damaging the same place on your hair day after day, causing your hair to not grow as fast as it could. In fact, if you have bleached hair, you may want to reconsider putting it up in a ponytail at all. Just one ponytail can give, what stylists call "chemical cut." If you want to keep your hair up and it's bleached, try lightly twisting it up and using a claw clip to hold it out of place
Avoid Bleaching and Coloring - Bleaching our hair and using hair color with ammonia in it can damage our hair over time and is something that should be limited or avoided. Bleaching can dry our your hair and severely damage the ends, causing them to break and split. Continued use of hair color with ammonia can lead to damaged hair, which can lead to breakage and hard to grow hair. So, it's better to use a hair dye without the added ammonia.
Avoid Using Heat - Styles that use heat, like the curling iron, flat iron, curling wand, blow dryer, deep waver, etc. can all cause heat damage, drying, and breakage to your beautiful hair. These tools are great and can make your hair look and feel amazing, but just try to limit them and go for more natural ways to get a similar or same affect.
Doing a Cold Water Rinse - Before you get out of the shower, try doing a cold water rinse over your hair. Doing this for just a few seconds helps to smooth the outer layer of hair more smoothly, preventing moisture loss, snags and heat damage. Doing this small step over time can make a huge difference.
Stop Brushing, Start Combing - If you're using a brush to de-tangle your hair, you may want to reconsider. Switching to a wide toothed comb or a de-tangler comb can also help. The trick is to start combing through the ends of your hair and keep moving up until you reach the root. For some reason it's instinct to start out combing or brushing at your roots and bring the brush to the ends. But when we do that it will actually bring those tangles to the ends of our hair and cause the hair to break. You should also wait to brush your hair until it's dry. Wet hair is at it's most vulnerable state and when you brush it while wet it can lead to extra damage. This goes for any kind of tight styling and also for sleeping on your wet hair. If you go to bed with wet or damp hair, just clip it lightly out of the way, don't sleep on it or bind it in a tight hair tie.
Consider Taking a Hair Growth Supplement - If you want to boost your hair growth you can try a Biotin supplement, Hair Skin and Nails Vitamins, or several other options for helping your hair to grow. These can be great hair growth boosters if you're eating healthy but not getting everything you want from just your food. These are nice to not only grow your hair but help it to be healthy as soon as it comes out of the follicle.
Hair Inversion Method - Use oils, like coconut, avocado, olive, argan, grapeseed, castor, jojoba, rosemary, and almond oil and warm them up, either singly or in combination with each other. While holding your head upside down for a short time you massage your scalp to encourage blood flow to your scalp which helps your hair grow. If you let the oil sit on your hair for an hour before washing it out and then apply another oil and leave that on over night with a plastic bag covering your hair. Having a towel over the bag helps too, to keep the oil from getting on your clothes and bedding.
By using the inversion method only once a month your hair can actually grow quite a bit faster than it normally would. Hair typically grows about half an inch in one month. By using this method some people will see a 1/4 of an inch to an inch of growth overnight. Some people choose to do this method for one week out of the month, but you shouldn't do this for more than that. Your hair gets used to how you treat it and if you would keep using this method too often it won't have any affects. There are other ways to help keep your hair healthy, but these are some great ways to not only keep it healthy and growing but also shiny and soft.
I have tried and continue to use all of these methods to encourage my hair to keep growing and I decided that I would use the inversion method to show you how it can work, firsthand. I took pictures of my own inversion results in case you are wondering if it really works. I had watched some videos on Youtube of other people's results and they were very good but, since they were a video, I wasn't sure if I could believe them or not. Anyone can say or do anything they want in a video and make it look real. So, these were my results:
INVERSION METHOD RESULTS:
I can't tell if anything happened from this picture. I was measuring my side bangs. But I didn't have a line drawn on my face, so I couldn't really measure.
I can see a tiny bit of growth from the front view. But not much growth looks like it happened.
This was the most growth that I had seen from my results. I can see a difference for sure though. I kept my shirt straight on me the whole time in all of my before and after photos and tried to keep my hair at the same consistency and my head straight. So, for me, the first couple of pictures was hard to tell but the last one is better.
I used olive oil and two eggs, slightly warmed and applied all over my scalp to the ends of my hair. I tied a plastic bag over my hair and let it sit for an hour before using shampoo to wash it out. I warmed up coconut oil and again applied it to my scalp and ends of the hair. Again I wrapped my hair in a plastic bag and a turban and went to bed. The next morning I washed out the coconut oil with shampoo again and poured a bit of white vinegar over my hair and scalp. I did this last step because I heard that vinegar is a great way to thoroughly clean your scalp and hair and it helps to restore shine and clean the build up of other products still in your hair and help with dandruff. I thought it might get rid of any extra oil buildup left in my hair from the coconut oil because I was going to work afterwards and didn't want to fully style it. I didn't want to look like my hair was wet all day and greasy. Over all, everything worked great.
So, these were my results and I hope you try them for yourself as well. It takes a long time to grow your hair, so patience is key. Even if you're not looking to grow your hair very long but want to keep your hair healthy these tips also work. This really is overall healthy tips for having and maintaining your hair and especially if you plan on growing it.
I'll see you next Wednesday!