One of my passions within the curly hair care sector is hair growth. Hair growth is a slow and natural process but certain factors like genetics, age, and your health can affect it. During my natural hair journey, I’ve tried a variety of methods and through trial and error, these were the main ways I’ve been able to speed up hair growth.
How to Speed Up Hair Growth From Within
Maintain a healthy diet: By eating a more balanced diet, I’ve noticed an improvement in hair growth. The vitamins and minerals from foods like leafy greens, fatty fish, eggs, and nuts are known to improve the health of your hair. By making the switch from fast foods to healthier options not only has my overall health improved but my hair. I also include supplements to my daily regimen. After finding out I had a vitamin D deficiency, I made sure to include that supplement to help improve my levels and the health of my hair. Biotin and vitamin C has also helped strengthen and speed up hair my growth. If you’re not getting enough of these nutrients from your diet, consider taking a hair supplement to help promote healthy hair growth.
Stay hydrated: We all know that water is the key to life and makes up a large majority of our bodies. Without an adequate amount of water we can experience dehydration. How this relates to hair is that dehydration can also cause the hair to become dry and brittle. In turn, you can experience breakage and slower growth. So, it’s important to drink plenty of water to also keep you hair healthy.
Get some rest: Getting enough sleep is not only essential for health but for hair growth. A lack of sleep can cause things like stress and hormonal imbalances, which can have a negative effect on hair growth.
External Methods for Growth
Get regular trims: This is definitely a necessity in my book. Regular trims help keep split ends at bay and helps to reduce breakage. Maintaining my trims a few times per year keep my hair looking healthy and promote growth.
Limit heat styling: Using heat styling tools like flat irons and blow dryers can cause significant damage to hair. Especially if you are doing it often and without a heat-protectant. I understand the excitement of switching up from curly to straight but doing it a lot can cause irreversible damage. I have first-hand experience in this unfortunately. My hair became brittle, was thinning, and I had to wait for it to grow out to see my natural curl pattern.
Massage your scalp: This is one of my favorite ways to speed up hair growth. Massaging your scalp helps stimulate the scalp and improve blood flow. I like to do this every evening (when I remember) with a tiny bit of growth oil for a few minutes.
Use natural oils: As I mentioned before, using certain oils can help keep the scalp nourished and promotes growth. I love making my own mixtures with a carrier and essential oil. One of my favorite blends uses jojoba oil, peppermint essential oil, and tea tree for scalp massages. I also like to use tiny amounts of castor oil just on my edges to promote growth.
Limit chemical treatments: Using chemical treatments on the hair like certain dyes, relaxers, keratin treatments can cause major damage to the hair. With curly hair the curl pattern can especially take a hit. There was a time when I bleached & relaxed my hair (insert face palm), big mistake! I had so much breakage, my curls were permanently wavy, and it took years to grow back.
Long story short, although hair growth is a slow and natural process, there are several things you can do to promote healthy hair. By eating a balanced diet, limiting heat styling, getting regular trims, and more you can help to support your hair growth goals.
