Hotel Bliss Guest Blog

Natural Beauty: Hair Series - The first step to healthy hair!

I have a confession. Until relatively recently, I have been absolutely murderous on my hair. Anything you shouldn’t do to your hair, I did on a regular basis. Blow drying, curling irons, ponytails, coloring, over washing, over brushing… Guilty. I did it because I could. I was blessed with naturally very healthy hair, and it seemed indestructible.

That is until awhile back when decided to take accutane for my acne. Accutane is a very powerful drug. While I still do not regret taking it, even on my low dosage there were some side effects that I wish I had been better prepared for. Namely how severely it weakened my hair. What had once been full and lustrous and smooth, soon became thin, dry and fragile. In a matter of a few months, I didn’t even recognize the hair that was on my head. I didn’t know what to do with it. It had become so weak, I was afraid to do anything with it for fear it would fall out entirely!

I had to retrain myself to work with my hair. I began looking into natural products to help get back the healthy hair I once had. Thankfully I found some amazing natural treatments that slowly but surely got me back to where I started. In the next few blogs I’d like to share how you can naturally begin to repair damaged hair, or add extra umph to already luscious locks.

The first place to start is with the right tools

As I struggled to get my healthy hair back, I used all the tricks I could think of. Reduced washing, gentler natural shampoos, hair masks, scalp oils. And all of it definitely helped, but after months of trying, it seemed I had reached the plateau of my repairs, with hair that still didn’t look entirely healthy. I comment about this to one of my friends and she told me how much healthier her hair was after her stylist convinced her to buy a wooden comb. I figured it couldn’t hurt, so I began to look into it.

As I said, I never gave much thought to what I did to my hair before. That meant most of my tools like brushes and combs were cheap plastic. For all my efforts to repair my hair, the tools I used on a daily basis were undoing some of my progress. I quickly learned what a difference the right tools can make. The best thing I ever did was buy a good wooden comb and a natural bristle brush.

You see, plastic combs have seams along the teeth. These are caused when the two sides of the mold are pressed together and released. The seams may look miniscule and harmless, but it’s like running a razor blade across each hair strand. They rip and tear at the shafts, and can leave you with damaged hair.

Wooden combs are seamless and much gentler on your hair. They are especially helpful if your hair is weak, thin or fragile. These combs can come in almost all the same shapes and sizes of plastic and metal combs, so it’s easy to find one suitable for you. I have very fine hair, so I can use a thinner tooth comb, but thick coarse hair will do best with wide tooth combs.

As for brushes, I now use a natural boar bristle brush. It gently spreads sebum from the scalp throughout the hair as you brush. This gives your hair a protective layer and keeps your hair shiny and smooth. The first time I used this brush, I flipped my hair upside down, brushed, then flipped back up. My hair instantly looked and felt fuller than it ever had when I did this trick with my other brush. And it left my hair so soft!

(Vegans may be wary of boar bristle brushes, as it is indeed hair from boars. You can use synthetic nylon brushes, but they may be damaging to thin hair.)

Boar bristle brushes may not come in all the shapes you use to style your hair, but you will find them for most. Also, I have noticed that if I’m using mine to style my hair with a blow dryer, my hair has much more static, so I do use my older brush for this. But since I use my dryer less often and use my natural brush on a regular basis, I find it hasn’t been a problem.

Finding the right tools

You can easily find natural combs and brushes. You can look online for several options, or take a visit to your hair salon or a department store. Just make sure the brush is 100% natural (they often are a combination of nylon and boar bristle). You can easily pay upwards of $100 for a good brush and comb set, but I don’t think that is necessary. I got mine from a Target. The bristle brush and wooden comb together cost less than $30. You can also find some very pretty wooden combs, which I’ve found to be excellent gifts!

Hope you’ve found this helpful. In the next blog I’ll share the hair mask recipe that I attribute to saving my hair!