December Hair Tip!
We’ve all heard over the years that one important point to achieving beautiful hair is daily brushing, but from my experience I have found most people don’t really understand the significance and benefits of this important ritual, especially to those with longer hair.
To begin with, your bloodstream delivers all the nutrients to the scalp necessary to grow healthy hair. As your scalp is considered to be one large muscle it is important that you attain a good circulation of blood to that muscle. But unlike other muscles in the body, including facial muscles, your scalp cannot exercise itself. It is an unusual individual indeed who has the muscle control to wiggle ones own scalp, try it now!
Didn’t budge! , right?
That means that you need to manually exercise your scalp muscles to keep them loose, flexible and with good blood circulation, see where I’m going with this? Regular brushing, the one hundred strokes per night as your Grandmother may have recommended, goes a very long way to giving your scalp the kind of workout it not only needs, but craves!
Those with really long hair will receive the other secondary benefit of brushing, namely the distribution of the hair’s natural conditioner, sebum (natural scalp oil)from the root area where it’s produced to the mid lengths and ends of the hair shaft where it’s often greatly lacking and missed. On top of daily brushing, a good strong rub of the scalp during shampooing and a deep firm massage during the conditioner stage of washing, can really increase blood circulation and suppleness if your scalp is tight.
Tight scalp?
what’s that?, some of you may be asking.Do this little test right now, Put your hands into your h! air from either side above your ears till your fingertips meet on top of your head. Pressing down firmly on your scalp, can you easily move your scalp back and forth and side to side? A loose, flexible, healthy scalp will have plenty of movement.Just as stress tends to concentrate in the shoulders it also regularly lodges itself in the scalp muscle.
But unlike stiff shoulders, a tight scalp often goes largely unnoticed leading to headaches and poor circulation directly effecting nutrient delivery to new hairs forming inside your scalp. poor blood circulation to the scalp = poor quality hair. It’s that simple!
Regular use of a natural bristle brush, coupled with increased massage can lead to a much healthier, nourished scalp and markedly better quality hair in general. And for those of you concerned that all this increased activity may actually pull hair out and lead to hair loss please remember this important point, you are meant to loose around 100~120 hairs per day, that is totally natural. Hair loss is the direct result of hair not regrowing in the scalp rather than any observation of hairs that have fallen out as a result of a natural growth cycle. Much more can be explained on this point but I’ll need to save that for another post.
Daily brushing, might make a useful New Year’s resolution??
Gold Salon, Tokyo’s No1 English speaking Hair Salon.
