Beauty Quick Tip: A Key in Healing Dry or Damaged Hair (And an Insight into Our Body's Power)

My friend and I were talking the other day, and she was relating to me her story of recovering from bleaching her hair for a Halloween costume a year ago. She had shared with me a few products she tried-- from premade hair oils from various to just using basic olive and castor seed oil straight-- and nothing seemed to be healing it from its frazzled state in neither look nor tactile feel. But was the he magic bullet in her recovery? Washing her hair less.

She used to wash her hair every day or at least every other. Now, she washes her hair usually once per week, and her hair's natural silkiness has improved. She had only been using this new washing schedule for a few weeks when she made her discovery and was sharing with me how impressed she was at what a difference just this simple change made. She did say that her scalp did produce a little too much excess oil for her liking when she first started, but that leveled off (I think most people will experience some of this for a couple of weeks when reducing their hairwashing amount) . Now her hair is back to being full, shiny, and strong after being so stripped for so long... and with very little product intervention. She only uses a nonstripping, lather-free shampoo when she does wash and brushes with a boar bristle brush, which are known for really being helpful at distributing hair's natural oil from the scalp down through the strands as you brush.

What struck me the most about her comments was not the routine she has adopted in and of itself, nor its simplicity, but the reminder of how resilient our body's actually are in how to repair itself and give us the things we need to thrive the most. From the fats and lipids we consume in our diets our body develops its own cushioning system of oil and water which help to lubricate and flush everything from our eyes to our kidneys to our skin and hair. This is not to say that topical products are not good or can never help, but it does call into question whether sometimes their "necessity", in so many words, gets overstated while our own body's natural healing can get dismissed.

In my own case, I have extremely naturally low oil production in my scalp and hair and in my skin, and I struggle famously with hair breakage and split ends, washing my hair less has also proved a key part in keeping my hair as healthy as can be as well as using the most gentle products I can possibly find and not so many of them. It doesn't totally solve all of these issues for me, but it does help and enables my body the time to try and produce more of its own oil as much as possible. Also, likewise, nutrition plays a role in this for me as well. I have been making efforts to include more healthy fats in my diet with greater consistency, and I am noticing more body slowly but surely come into my hair and some improvements in the dry, flaky skin on my body too.

If you struggle with dry hair or scalp or skin or are recovering from hair damage, I hope you find the simple tip of trying to go longer between your washes as beneficial as my friend and I have. However, on a larger note, whatever your beauty concern, if you have been trying to remedy it for awhile with product upon product, maybe the solution you need is to pare it down and keep things simple and maybe have some days where you do nothing at all beauty-wise. Instead, trust your body to do its own work and feed and treat it well to help you get back into balance and radiate resilience.