Reblog: 5 Health Habits that Lead to Stronger, Longer Hair

Thought I'd share this with you guys.

See original post here. 

5 Health Habits that Lead to Stronger, Longer Hair

By Christina of The Mane Objective
It’s almost the end of 2012 and everywhere you turn, people are once again drawing up laundry lists of resolutions for the new year. According to statistics from the Journal of Clinical Psychology, at least 45% of people make New Year’s resolutions. Some of the top ten resolutions include losing weight, getting or staying fit/healthy, and quitting smoking. Interesting that many resolutions revolve around health, right? With rates for (largely) preventable diseases on the rise, there is no wonder that folks are hopping on the health bandwagon in record numbers.
Beyond that, there is an undoubtedly strong connection between our overall health and the health of our hair. There is only so much that conditioners, oils, and other products can do when it comes to growing and maintaining our manes. There are five essential areas of our health that we need to get a grip on if we want a healthy body that will grow healthy hair.

1. Reducing Stress

I’m sure one way or another, you’ve heard that stress can cause premature hair loss. Certainly, external stressors can make you want to yank the hairs off your head. But emotional and physiological stress can and does cause hair loss for any number of reasons. Being depressed or stressed for one day isn’t going to cause major trauma per-se, but long-term behaviors that impact your body’s internal balance is what causes hair loss. For example, if you are going through a bad breakup or job loss, that may spurn you into behaviors like not eating well, or losing sleep. Your emotional response triggers a physiological imbalance, which manifests itself in hair loss. No, you won’t lose hair because you hate your Ex. But losing sleep over him long-term may cause your resting hairs to shed prematurely. Other stressors that aren’t necessarily emotional but can cause physiological imbalance and hair-loss are: a strict low-calorie diet, severe illness or infection, low estrogen levels after childbirth, major surgery, and switching on and off oral contraceptives.

2. Getting Enough Sleep

Beyond relaxation, sleep is a restorative, repairative, and rejuvenating process for our bodies. While we’re in la-la land, our bodies are fast at work — repairing muscles, tissues, and sending growth hormones (HGH) throughout our system. The same growth hormones that are responsible for repairing muscles and tissues that we use and abuse throughout our busy day, are responsible for stimulating your hair growth. Although growth hormones are released in small doses throughout the day, more are released at night. If you are losing sleep (or your sleep pattern is erratic/disrupted by apnea or other causes), you’re hurting your hair’s chances to be stimulated to growth internally. In fact, if you aren’t getting proper rest, you may notice that your hair is drier, more brittle, and breakage-prone than normal. So before you switch your sealing products, check your sleeping patterns.

3. Exercise

Another internal growth mechanism is kicked into high gear when you get moving. Heart-pumping exercise gets your blood circulating like none other. When blood is moving through your body, it carries nutrients and oxygen to your scalp — stimulating growth. Sure, you could achieve this by massaging your scalp with a good oil. But the hands down best way to stimulate the blood flow throughout your body is exercise. Cardiovascular exercises like running, walking, dancing, kickboxing, elliptical, biking, and more are great ways to get your heart pumping. Weight lifting and resistance training are awesome as well. Aside from feeding your hair, regular exercise supports weight loss/healthy weight maintenance, decreased risk of hypertension, diabetes, and everything else under the sun. Do you really need another reason to get moving?

4. Good Nutrition

As it was mentioned under physiological stress, super calorie-restrictive diets are one of the triggers that can cause hair loss. Typically, nutrition plans where under 1,000 calories per day are consumed place you in the danger zone for hair loss and more (I’m looking at you, Master Cleanse). Simply put, our bodies need fuel to function. When our bodies are deprived of fuel, functions begin to slow or shut down entirely. Because we are survivalists by intelligent design, whatever our bodies don’t get in food, we get by breaking down fat and muscle. Don’t start jumping for joy thinking starvation will cause weight loss and keep your body going. Only essential functions will continue in the state of starvation — and let’s face it: hair growth is not an essential function when compared to keeping your heart and lungs pumping. On the flip side of that coin is our rapidly growing over-dependence on heavily processed pseudo and fast foods. As a general rule of thumb, the more processed a food is (meaning it has less real food ingredients, and more chemicals and junk that you can’t pronounce or don’t readily have available in your house), the less beneficial it is nutritionally. The converse also applies. When less whole food ingredients are present, our bodies are deprived of essential nutrients that help us function optimally, and consequently, that stimulate hair growth. To maximize your health and hair growth, make it a point to include more whole foods into your diet.

5. Moderating Alcohol Consumption

Drank. Shots. Booze. The elephant in the room that nobody wants to discuss. I’m not here to crash your party, or encourage you to pour your margarita down the drain. However with the exception of wine, alcohol consumption has little to no benefit to the body, except for loosening inhibitions and making us believe we are having a great time. In moderation, alcohol consumption has virtually no impact on the body. But when done in excess, alcohol consumption can lead to weight gain, liver damage, heart disease, diabetes, cancer, and hair loss. Yes, getting wasted every weekend can cost you your precious mane. Frequent or excessive alcohol consumption can lead to increased estrogen levels (hello, hormone imbalance) and spur a condition known as Telogen effluvium into high gear. Telogen effluvium is a temporary hair loss condition that can be curbed when the body’s balance is returned. In addition to the aforementioned condition, alcohol consumption decreases the levels of important nutrients in the body, such as zinc and iron. Decreased levels of zinc result in dry, brittle hair that can break easily at the roots, while decreased levels of iron prevent hair follicles from receiving important nutrients that are needed for hair health and growth.

How do your health habits affect your hair?


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Happy reading.

-AF 

I just cant....

-____-

I have no words for this. I don't even know why I'm sharing this. But if you ignore the blog itself and read the comments section you will see little rays of light and hope. That despite what she is doing (with or with out a real purpose) there are those that understand the greater ramifications of it (black, white, blue, green etc). And there are some great conversations and sharing of knowledge.

Anyway here is the link to the orginal post and a link to the blog (Before and Afro: which would be an AWESOME natural hair blog site name)

Beauty,Diversity,Fashion,Hair Oct, 18 2012 8:59 am

White Woman Rocks an Afro in Attempts to ‘Find Herself’…Harmless Fun or Offensive?

by Jihan

Michelle Lapidos (@michellejoni) is a white, blonde woman on an Eat, Pray, Love-type journey of self-discovery. And thanks to her Afro wig, she’s learning a lot about self-liberation, but sadly, little about self-awareness.

 Lapidos started a blog, Before and Afro, chronicling her exploits roaming around New York City in a cartoonish afro wig she bought to wear at a ’70′s-themed office party. She says, “The afro changed my perspective; it made me think, walk, see and experience life differently. I wear it often. It’s not about feeling black… what I actually feel like is ME, understood more clearly. It’s not an alter ego. It’s an amplified ego.”

Lapidos only wears her ‘fro to events where there are sure to be a high concentration of black people, so she might take photos with said black folks. She even wore her wig to a Fried Chicken Extravaganza (what the…?), which she claims “was obviously an occasion to wear the fro.” (duh! because black people like fried chicken, amiright?)

 

Several people, including some of Lapidos’s phantom ‘black friends‘ have told her that donning the ‘fro as a white woman might be a little problematic or even hurtful to some people of color. Even though this issue has been brought to her attention, she still insists that the people of color (and white folks) advising her to cease and desist just don’t understand her innocent little experiment.

Yet in each of her posts, Lapidos fails to explain how her “perspective” (her word) has changed, what about her life is different, or how she better understands herself. Her body language, however, says it all. In her first photoshoot with the ‘fro, she poses in a “gangsta” stance. In another photo, she is growling.

Ugh. Curly Nikki perfectly sums up why Lapidos’s actions are troublesome:

Why is her behavior offensive? Because it ignores why natural hair is such a big deal in the Black community. Her behavior has no regard for the cultural traditions of caring for Black hair. It is akin to wearing Blackface and then exercising the luxury of removing it at will. Yes, a white woman by virtue of white privilege can walk around with an afro and think it’s cute to experiment. Meanwhile, Black women around the world, are forced to consider straightening our hair for job interviews because we know how negatively our hair can be viewed. We know what it’s like to hear people remark on how ‘professional’ we look only when we are not wearing our hair out in its natural state. @michellejoni just doesn’t get it, nor does it appear she has any intention of sincerely attempting to understand.

Personally, I find Lapidos’s clueless act more irritating than I do offensive. We get it. Black hair is *mysterious* and *fascinating* to some. But it’s not the minstrelsy of it that particularly bothers me–it’s her sanctimonious inability to see it as exactly that after several people have brought it to her attention.

What do you think? Is Michelle’s “Before and Afro” blog offensive, or just harmless fun?

Yeah...that's all.
Fembot

Real Goes Right- 10 Things I Learned After Law School

My bad it's been a while since I've posted anything. BUUUUUT school is my priority at the moment no worries though I'm still here.

I've been following this blog for a year or two now, not really sure why it's taken me this long to share it with you guys. But this post below touched on a lot of my feelings now, especially as a post grad, and more importantly as a post grad trying to get into professional school.

I thought it was kind of an encouraging post in a round about way. I felt that I wasn't the only one feeling the way I did about school (and life), being able to see others struggle and still know its going to eventually be worth it. Especially if I had an outlet in the mean time, creativity (in my case sewing, designing and art in general).

Via When Keeping it Real Goes Right

 Life after graduation has taught me a few things…namely:

1. Job Searching Sucks.
I wrote about this a couple of weeks ago (insert link).  It’s actually pretty damn tedious and it makes me upset. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, after I receive my first job I have no intentions on ever applying for another job again. Every subsequent needs to come by way of recommendation.

2. Financial Aid Gives False Hope.
I started college when I was 17. I graduated from law school at 26. In those nine years, I only spent TWO years outside of school. It’s such an odd feeling to realize five digit sums of money will not be hitting my bank account three weeks after school starts. There should be a weening process. You can’t just cut me off the titty like that.

3. Staying Home Is Awesome…
As long as you can afford to.  The one month after bar prep and the exam where I stayed home and did nothing was the most relaxing month of my life. I slept all day. Played video games all night. Money was always an issue, but I bought myself some time. You know what staying home proved? I really need to make sure I save money so I can do that more often.

4. Nobody Does This Alone.
I don’t think I fully understood the purpose of networking until I finished with school. Networking has always been a dirty word to me. Whenever I hear network, I think “people I don’t really want to be friends with who I need something from who will only talk to me because they need something from me.” I learned a network can be filled with family. Friends. Supervisors. And more importantly, it can be filled with people you respect and have a relationship with OUTSIDE of just the situation I just listed before.

 5. Life Will Break You If You Let It.
This is an old lesson, but becoming more relevant by the day. Bad things will happen at the worst possible times. And just when it seems like you’re getting ready to climb out of the hole, quicksand will rain from the sky and you’ll fall even farther than you did before.  Not to be overly optimistic, but Finding Nemo’s “just keep swimming” has this nailed perfectly. All you can do is move forward and tackle one problem at a time.

6. There’s No Such Thing As “Regular” Qualified.
This, is a bit harder to swallow. My education is both a gift and a curse. I can’t work at certain places anymore because, well, they know I’d leave the first time I got a better opportunity. Conversely, the places where my degree DOES qualify me for the job, the lack of experience kills me.
It’s an odd position to be in. I’ll never be qualified if I don’t get the opportunity to work. I’ll never get the opportunity to work, if I’m not qualified. And I can’t even support myself with a lesser position until I CAN get an opportunity to work, because…they’d rather hire someone who isn’t as qualified as I am to work there. Insane.

 7. Failure Is Not An Option…It’s Mandatory.
Successful people will tell you they learned far more in failure than they did in success. I see this mentality a lot…failure “not being an option.” I’ve learned to treat failure as a necessary part of my growth.
In order to learn things I must do, it’s only fitting to learn about the things I shouldn’t do. Success breeds safety, stale ideas, and stagnation. Failure is where all the fun is. I no longer perceive failure as me losing something. I just look at it as another opportunity to learn.

8. Life Doesn’t Stop.
Another obvious one, but also relevant to my current situation. In my mind, I always go back in time and think about what I could’ve done differently. The networking events I could’ve gone to. The ass-kissing that probably would’ve served me some good. How good life was BEFORE I came to law school.
Pointless thoughts. My mind is living in the past, but my body is in the present. No matter how much I lament for not making different decisions in the past, life keeps moving forward

9. My Life Is A Movie. I’m the Producer/(Casting) Director/and Starring Actor.
I’m 26. I’ve been in school for 19 years. Eliminate the first four years of my life (when I wasn’t school age), the two year break in between FSU and NCCU, and I’ve spent my whole life planned around school. Finally being out of it was a bit of a shock. I’m finally holding the paintbrush to my life and I can paint this picture in whichever manner I’d like. I can go anywhere. Do anything. Be whoever I want. School no longer defines my life.

I do.

10. Writing Is the Most Important Thing In The World to Me.
I won’t tell you that I couldn’t care less about passing the bar. It just doesn’t matter as much as writing does. Writing is what I do.

It’s who I am.

It’s how I live.

It’s what defines me.

It occupies the most space in my mind.

I express myself with written word in a way I don’t think I’ll ever be able to express myself verbally. It consumes. It drives me. I’d love to get paid to do this, but I’d do it for free for the rest of my life. Writing is what God put me on this Earth to do. It’s my gift to the world. And I’d be a fool not to share it.

Peace.

Thanks for stopping by and definitely check out RGR's blog. LOTS of pearls of wisdom to be gleaned.

AF

It's Fine, Really

Came across a positive spin on having fine hair. And though it didn't really help or improve my feelings on having such fine hair I thought I'd share it. There's nothing I'd like more than to have fuller hair and thicker strands but c'est la vie. Hope this helps someone out there.

Happy Monday

7 Advantages of Fine Natural Hair.
(via Black Girl with Long Hair)

06 August 2012 ~ 59 Comments

7 Advantages of Fine Natural Hair

Natural Hair Care

Fine hair almost always gets a bad rap. We’re all familiar with its downsides — scalpy twists, fros that flop and susceptibility to breakage — but we don’t always discuss the benefits of having fine natural hair. Here are 7 unique advantages of fine natural hair. For the purposes of this article, fine hair refers to thin strand and low density hair.

1. Less Products

With fine hair, a dime-sized amount of product goes a very, very long way! Thicker haired naturals require more product to coat and seal their strands, plus they often require heavier products — like shea-based butters and creams — that tend to be more expensive. Many fine haired naturals can skip heavy butters and seal with lighter, cheaper products like coconut oil or aloe gel.

2. Easier and Faster Hair Straightening

While coarse strands and thick hair take more coaxing to loosen their curl pattern, fine hair tends to take to heat more easily and requires less of it to straighten out. On the flip side, you have to be careful not to burn fine strands. Keep your blowdryer at medium to low temperatures, and don’t keep the flat iron on for long!

3. Easier Bunning

Thick hair can look a bit bulky when pulled into a bun or a single braid and can put a strain on hair ties and bobby pins. Fine hair is easier to pull into one, and can look a bit more effortless

4. Hot Weather Friendly

There’s nothing hotter in the summer time than a mass of thick, heavy strands. The “scalpiness” of fine haired styles is actually a plus in the summer time, providing a way for heat to escape the body.

5. Shorter wash day

While thicker haired naturals have to divide their strands into several sections and cleanse and condition each one individually, fine haired naturals can get away with fewer section and, in some cases, not sectioning at all. Plus, fine haired section take less time to work through and air dry much faster.

6. Easier Detangling

When you have less strands to detangle, the process is much quicker. Plus, fine haired naturals can get away with finger detangling only, while many thicker haired naturals must also incorporate hair tools like Denman brushes and wide toothed combs.

7. Faster Styling

When there’s less hair to get through, styling tends to go faster. On fine hair a set of twists or box braids can take less than 2 hours, while thick hair styling often take 4 hours of more. Plus, thick hair can be a downside at the salon, with many stylists charging extra cash for clients with a lot of hair to get through.

Fine haired ladies, tell us, what are the benefits of your hair type?