Recently, whilst partaking in an online chat room discussion I was asked a familiar question by an older lady in regards to the health of her hair. She wanted to know why it would not grow and why it was falling out.
So, I asked her a string of questions relating to her hair. I started my spiel with the most common questions first.
Do you dye it? Are you using heat to style it? How often do you shampoo?
These questions were followed by the more personal ones.
How’s your health? Taking any medications? What are you eating?
Unfortunately for her, she fobbed most of these questions off as irrelevant, insisting that she just wanted to know what to buy and which are the best brands to use on her hair. She was convinced the solution to her hair problems would be found in a bottle.
This encounter got me thinking about writing this article. You see, in this day and age we seem to be programmed into assuming there is a miracle cure-all for our hair problems, if we just find the right concoction, all our hair problems will just disappear.
Err… wrong. Contrary to popular belief and after reading reams of medical studies and research papers I do not think this is the way to ‘fix your damaged hair’. In fact, I kind of think most of the products on the supermarket and chemist shelves are just band-aid solutions to our hair issues.
What’s even worse is that most of these hair care products don’t prevent or cure any of the issues you have with your hair they’re geared to address; rather, they’re designed to just treat symptoms.
Finding the root cause to ‘bad hair days’ and ‘problem hair’ seems to have fallen off of most people’s radar. There are so many factors that influence the end result that is the state of your hair, and these factors should be taken into account when searching for answers and solutions.
Hair shedding is a perfect example. If your hair is falling out you should start by checking your diet and the side effects of any medications you may be taking. Instead we try various enhanced shampoos, an expensive laser stimulation session and maybe even have some extensions stuck in, but nothing is being corrected or fixed with such regimens.
So, before reaching for the deep conditioner or a protein pack to douse your hair with next weekend, why not think about which hair practises you are doing that are causing damage to your hair.
Allison L Tyson
