words Alexa Wang
Some of us don’t invest too much in how we look, and that’s fine for some lifestyles. Others would rather just keep a weekly salon appointment, find somebody they trust, and use whatever they recommend. That’s the low-maintenance end of caring about your appearance. For the rest of us, we’re out to maximize what nature gave us for our best look, and we’re out here on our own dealing with endless brands of personal care products that all make the same claims.
For people who want to avoid harsh and abrasive chemicals, the supermarket shampoo aisle is out of the question. The best-case scenario is to find a resource that caters to natural hair care solutions and read up. We went to https://cel.md and consulted their blog to assemble some general hair care tips while sticking to natural solutions.
There’s no one-size-fits-all solution
Everyone is different, and hair shows the most variation from one person to another. The Andre Walker Hair Typing System, originated by the celebrity hairstylist of the same name, lists four general categories of hair texture: Straight, wavy, curly, and kinky. Within those four categories, there’s also fine, medium, and coarse hair. More genetics come into play to determine your scalp type, how much natural oil your skin produces, hair porosity, and so on.
Then there are different needs depending on your local climate. Your ideal hair care needs might change with the seasons. For instance, humid weather may make your hair frizzy, while hot, dry weather will make it thinner and brittle. This explains how you can try a new shampoo and find it works great for two weeks, then stops working. What might have changed is the climate.
One more variable is age. As we age, our bodies change, and hair especially is impacted once you cross the 30-year threshold. So what worked in your 20s may not be best in your 40s.
Good hair starts with good nutrition
The skin and hair are organs unto themselves, and essential nutrients in your diet control their health. Among the many nutrients affecting hair health, there are:
- Iodine
- Niacin (vitamin B3)
- Riboflavin (vitamin B2)
- Zinc
- Magnesium
- Silica
- Potassium
- Biotin (vitamin B7 AKA vitamin H)
- Copper
- Calcium
If you’re getting a well-balanced diet, you should have all of these covered. But if you’re deficient in some of these nutrients, you’ll be struggling to control your hair health using only external remedies.
Another dietary factor impacting hair health is simply hydration. If you’re not getting enough water, that slows down the body’s natural regenerative process. It leaves your hair and skin fragile and washed-out in color, subjecting you to rashes and other breakouts.
Bottom line: Supplements and good dietary decisions can be the best things you ever did for your hair.
Read the ingredients
Natural personal care products are all about using nature’s own compounds for their inherent benefits. Some of these aspects, like plant stem cells, we’re only just getting to know. Others we’ve known about for hundreds of years, including essential oils, peptides, terpenes, and organic compounds. The rule of thumb in hair care ingredients is to pay attention to the first five listed because those are the most abundant ingredients in that product.
Get to know what ingredients work best for your hair type. This will simplify matters immensely over trying to keep track of all the different brands.
Experimenting through trial and error is usually necessary. If you’re really serious about the best hair look, Instagram-level models swear by keeping a “hair diary.” You take a selfie once per day with your hair showing and note the products you used most recently. Over time you have a record of which hair care method gave you the look you’re going for.
