The best tips for how to grow long, healthy hair fast

I LOVE long hair. I have had hair down to my waist a few times in my life and I have only had it shorter than my shoulder blades three times. My hair is naturally pretty healthy and usually grows fast. The last year or so I have started to have more breakage. That combined with a botched hair cut has left me with shoulder blade length hair that I intend to grow out ASAP. 

I have done quite a bit of research lately and I wanted to share it and my own experience with other long hair addicts and dreamers out there.

Welcome to hair school!

First you want to encourage growth and secondly you want to prevent breakage. (Duh, right?) But seriously all tips fit into one of these two.

Encourage growth:

1.  Healthy diet:

  Lots of fruits and veggies

  Whole grains

  Healthy fats and proteins (fish, legumes, yogurt, eggs, avocados, etc.)

2.  Biotin/hair and skin vitamins

3.  Exercise

4.  Enough sleep

5.  Scalp stimulation:

  Brush/comb from scalp

  Scalp massage

  Part hair in different spots to style and also to brush/comb (putting your head       upside down and brushing your hair out feels sooo good on your scalp)

Preventing breakage:

6.  Use good MOISTURIZING shampoo and conditioner (choose moisturizing over volumizing, etc.)

7.  Deep condition every week or every other week (can do this with coconut oil, tutorial here)

8.  Wash hair every other day at the most

9.  Lather shampoo in hands before shampooing roots (if your shampoo lathers)

10.  Shampoo roots only

11.  Condition all of your hair, start at the roots and scalp and work to ends (use the conditioner to massage your scalp for about two minutes after you've coated all of your hair)

12.  Don't brush through wet hair

13.  Satin or silk pillow case

14.  Braid hair before going to bed

15.  Don't pull hair up into a bun or pony tail every day (I have been guilty of this and think it's the cause of a lot of my breakage)

16.  Use bobby pins, clips and barrettes more than pony tail bands to prevent breaking hair

17.  Trim broken and split ends when you notice them (great tutorial here)

18.  Only trim breakage don't get trims just "to keep hair healthy" or "to help it grow."   Your hair is dead and has no way of even knowing it has been trimmed. It will not make it grow faster, but breakage needs to be removed as splits and breaks will continue up the hair shaft and will also contribute to tangles and more breakage

19.  Avoid heat styling: do bun curls, sock bun curls, braids, etc. to get body and different styles.

20.  Air dry hair, if you have to use a blow dryer, let your hair dry almost all of the way and then use blow dryer, don't towel dry hair.



So I had a really, really bad hair trim in January.  I finally had the courage to go in and get it fixed last weekend.  I knew I was going to lose a lot of length, but it was so uneven that I couldn't even wear my hair down.  Here's the before and after of my "fix it" cut.

Do you have any good tips I left out?  Share them below, pretty please!  :)