Hair care tips Wednesday, October 12, 2011

Genral detals !!
A healthy lifestyle will mean healthier hair for you. Excessive stress, smoking, not exercising and not eating nutritiously are not healthy for your hair. (Gel, mouse, hair spary...)

Avoid using hair styling products with alcohol which dries out hair. Avoid puting hair styling products directly on your scalp; if you put it on your scalp you'll clog the pores on your head.

Hot air can be damaging to your hair so when using a hair dryer use the cool setting.

Before entering a pool, wet your hair so your hair will soak up the initial water instead of the chlorinated water.

When swimming where a cap to protect your hair from chlorinated water, if you choose not to wear a cap make sure you shampoo and condition your hair right after you are done swimming.

What is Dandruff?
Dandruff is simply dead skin shedding from your head at a fast rate. Almost everyone has had dandruff at some point to one degree or another. People with a strong degree of dandruff will experience an itchy scalp.
The following are items that may cause dandruff:
Hormone imbalance.
Excessive perspiration
Allergic reactions
Excessive stress
Poor hygene
Poor nutritioin/health
Lack of sleep
Inherited genetic trait
Lack of sleep
Inherited genetic trait
Inadequete shampooing and rinsing of the hair.
Tight fitting hats.
Excessive use of hair styling products (gel, mouse, hair dye, hair curler...)
Cold weather
Dry enviroment.
Excessive Heat

Dandruff Treatment
Unfortunately there is no cure for dandruff yet (once you get it you may continue to have it), but there are ways that you can control and limit dandruff.

If you have only a mild case of dandruff, shampooing your hair with a regular shampoo daily or twice a day will usually do the trick.

Start out by trying a mild shampoo. Stronger shampoos can irritate and dry out your hair making dandruff flaking worst.

If your standard shampoo doesn't get rid of your dandruff, buy an anti-dandruff shampoo and your dandruff condition should improve signifigantly in a couple of weeks.

Head Lice
The head louse is a tiny parasitic insect that lives in human hair and subsists on small amounts of blood drawn from the scalp. Head lice are host specific. Neither able to fly nor jump, head lice are unlikely to leave a host and most often hatch and spend their entire lives on a single individual.

Head lice are common worldwide. Infestation isn’t an indication of poor hygiene. Head lice are acquired from other infested people. In North America and Europe, children are more frequently infested than are adults, females more often than males, and caucasians more frequently than other ethnic groups.

Generally, a host has fewer than a dozen active lice on the scalp, but may have dozens of viable eggs. Head lice neither cause nor transmit infections or diseases.

What Head Lice Look Like
There are three forms of lice: the nit or egg, the nymph, and the adult.

Nits are very small and easily confused for dandruff or dried drops of hair spray. They are oval in shape and usually yellow to white in color. Without magnification it is difficult to determine whether nits are viable (fertilized and under development) or just the remaining shells of hatched nymphs.

Symptoms of Head Lice
Head lice are most commonly found on the scalp, behind the ears and near the neckline at the base of the head. Unless seen, symptoms of infestation are easy to miss:

Tickling sensation or feeling something move through the hair.

Allergic reaction to the bites, which causes itching.

Scratching the itch can result in sores, which lead to infection and general irritability.

Viable eggs are usually located within 1/4 inch of the scalp. Normal hair growth transports the nits away from the scalp. Eggs more than one-half an inch away from the scalp are usually not viable.

Don’t Flip Out - Flip Under!
When your hair is rubbing you the wrong way, don’t flip out. Use your styling brush or vented brush to flip hair into a hair styling classic, the pageboy. Dry hair to about ¾ and then apply a working spray to the ends of your hair. Turn your dryer to hot. Then just as you would with hot rollers, use your styling brush or a vented brush to roll your hair under. Blow dry for about 15 seconds. Let the curl cool for about 10 seconds; then carefully remove your styling appliance.

Grounding Fly-Away Hair
The reason hair doesn’t fly away everyday is because hair follicles naturally attract and retain moisture. However, it takes moisture to attract moisture; when conditions are dry, you need to provide your hair with some supplementary help. Although the better commercial moisturizers contain “humectants” to assist in moisture attraction and retention, you can find one inexpensive yet effective alternative right in your kitchen! The safflower oil you use for cooking is one of the beauty industry’s best-kept secrets for treating dryness in hair due to weather, perms, hair coloring, and hair relaxation techniques...