All of my best hair growth tips

Sigh, hair. Is it not the bane of all our existences.

If like me you have colored and heat styled your strands into oblivion, your obsession with growing new hair (to ruin fresh strands) is constant and some of us even measure our hair growth (I am at 19").

Now my hair naturally grows fairly quickly, about an inch a month, but alas, we always want more don't we? So through my years of obsessive coloring, I've also worked on a definitive guide for encouraging fast healthy growth. Wanna hear it? Here goes:

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Get your vitamins: Making sure you have enough iron, zinc, biotin, and silica will encourage your hair to grow, and grow strong enough to withstand whatever tortures you may inflict. I have noticed a great difference since I started taking these supplements in the quality of hair growth. It's less coarse, frizzy and dry. Embrace your food groups ladies!

Embrace the 100 brush strokes. And make sure you get a brush that mixes boar and plastic bristles (or like Frederic Fekkai's, the base is boar and the tip is plastic, AMAZING for detangling and upshining). There's nothing quite like good old fashioned manual stimulation to get the blood flowing and the hair growing (have you ever wondered why the hair on the legs grows so fast, we're always SCRUBBING it). This also goes for the scalp massages at the salon (I tip the shampoo girl big so that next time she feels extra generous with me) and the kind that you can easily do at home. Heck I do them at my desk, so refreshing!

Essential oils can be a miracle. Stimulating ones like rosemary, cedarwood, lavender et al are also known for increasing hair growth (Neal's yard makes a serum based on them that some people worship like a religion). I am also a big fan of tea tree oil, not only does it control my dandruff (I will never, not for anything use a dandruff shampoo) but again, it's toning and stimulating for the scalp. For those with very little sensitivity, it's ok (and expensive) to apply them straight, however, those who are sensitive, better embrace the watering down (combine it with your hot oil treatment!) because essential oils are POTENT!

Maintain the hair you do have: Do your protein and your hot oil treatments. Be gentle with the brushing and heat styling and make sure you're using heat protectants and detanglers. For god's sakes, dye you hair back to your natural color and give it a break for a while (yes dyeing, especially bleaching and dyes, does stimulate and irritate the scalp into more hair growth, but what does it matter when the hair isn't good quality). Remember, the gentler and more split end proactive you are now, the happier you'll be in the end.

Don't believe the gimmicks, all those hair growth pills, or that cutting the hair makes it grow faster (it makes it break less because you remove split ends, but hair is dead, what you do to it at the end is in no way communicated to the scalp).

When I've implemented all these methods on a regular basis I've noticed my hair grows measurably faster (like twice as fast, literally, in the month of september it increased 2"). So guve them a try. Any methods you know of that I haven't covered? Comment away!



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