sade087

What can I eat or supplement to make my hair grow (fill in the blank) thicker, longer, stronger? There is no one answer for that question. First, you need a varied, nutritious diet, exercise, enough sleep - a healthy lifestyle. But there are some assists... ©Science-y Hair Blog 2013 Silica (silicon dioxide) is a necessary nutrient – particularly for your skin, hair, fingernails, bones, and joints. It makes all of the above stronger when it is abundant in your diet. You get the silica in your body from plants, from the soil they are grown in, and from water. Plants take orthosilicic acid from the soil (this is the form which is soluble in water). Silica is deposited in various parts of plants. Some plants like grasses (grains), cucumbers, beans, take up more silica than others. Silica inclusion from a grass leaf. Silica in various forms has been demonstrated to make hair stronger and possibly thicken hair shafts, to make fingernails stronger, and to improve elasticity and smoothness of ...

I've been working on this post for a while, my research has answered a lot of my questions and I hope it does for you too. While this post is about curling, it's also about how hair kinks because the structural foundation is probably the same. Curling or coiling hair is when hair curves around a "center" which is larger than the actual hair shaft. Imagine your hair curling around a toothpick, a pencil, a magic marker... Kinking is when hair twists on it's own axis . Kinking hair almost always curls or waves too. Which gives you the 1) hair twisting on its own axis, superimposed by 2) hair rotating around an imaginary axis. Pretty cool! The same research I'm using for curling applies to kinking hair. Wavy, curly, and tightly curled/coiled hair may or may not have kinking - but all these curl patterns can include some form of kinking. ©Science-y Hair Blog 2013 The cortex of the hair is where curliness is determined. “Cortex” comprises 75% of what you see as “hai...

If you make your own skin or hair products, re-bottle products, or refill bottles from large (gallon/liter) containers, chances are your bottles will, at some time, become contaminated. You may never notice. For at-home decontamination, you can wash bottles with hot, soapy water and run the liquid through their caps if you have a flip-cap. Then use a bleach solution, isopropyl (rubbing) alcohol, or vinegar to kill bacteria by pouring some in the bottle, shaking it vigorously now and then over the course of about 20 minutes. Run that through the cap too. For a final rinse, use water you have boiled and cooled (cool enough so it won't melt the bottle), and rinse several times. Air dry. ©Science-y Hair Blog 2013 Plaque: a bacterial biofilm But there's a sneaky little trick some bacteria have to stick to the bottle, presenting a possible source of contamination for your product. It's the same trick bacteria use to stick to your teeth, creating plaque: BIOFILMS. ©Science-y Hair ...

Got hard water? Water that comes from limestone or sandstone aquifers in particular tends to contain minerals which cause it to be "hard." Primarily calcium and magnesium. These minerals interfere with many detergents, including soap. They can deposit on your skin, your shower, in plumbing. People with itchy skin or eczema and dermatitis often try (or at least wonder about) water softeners to relieve their symptoms. First off, a shower-head water filter does nothing to remove minerals from water. These filters can remove chlorine and some "heavy" metals, but do not soften. That's another story. ©Science-y Hair Blog 2013 A study in England tested 336 children, ages 6 to 16 years of age. All had eczema. All were treated for eczema with medication, but half were also given an ion-exchange water softener to test for 12 weeks. Nurses evaluated the physical eczema symptoms and found no difference in measurable indicators of disease  between the group which used soften...

This is one of those posts which makes me I think,  "I can't believe I actually think about these sorts of things."  ©Science-y Hair Blog 2013 What do you dry your hair with? Initially, right when you step out of the shower or bathtub? Can what you dry your hair with cause or reduce frizz in wavy and curly hair? Microfiber towels are popular for cleaning eyeglasses and windows without streaking or scratching, and microfiber fabrics provide moisture-management for clothing. You know the “moisture-wicking” winter clothing? That’s usually microfiber. Microfiber is made of spun-together fibers (usually polyester) which are individually extremely fine in diameter – about 1/100 th the thickness of a hair strand. When you dry your hair with a cotton (terrycloth) towel, it absorbs moisture quickly because the towel is dry and your hair is wet – but also because the shaggy texture of the towel creates far more surface area to come into contact with your hair. Rather than absorbin...