Hey all, I just joined and was pretty amazed to find all but one of the answers to my questions in this message board.  So yall don't need to answer another vitamins question.  :)  My hair is about 5 inches long right now and I just cannot wait for it to grow out long again.  It grows SO SLOW.  I think maybe the fact that my hair is ridiculously thick has something to do with that, my body spends all the energy making my hair thick instead of long...literally every single time I used to go to the salon the stylist would say something like, "Oh my gosh everyone come and look at this girl's hair!  I have never seen hair this thick!"  And they would all ohh and ahh and I would turn red.  But anyway, I'll tell yall what happened with my hair since it seems to amuse some people (lol).  I had my hair black (below shoulder length) and decided I wanted it blonde.  I've had my hair stripped before so figured my hair could handle 2 applications of 30-volume bleach.  Wrong!  My hair melted off starting 4 inches from my scalp.   :o And the 4 inches left were about 3 different colors so I tried to dye it back to brown and it turned green.  At this point I was so upset with my hair that I didnt care what happened to it so i shaved my head and here I am a year later with hair that's just beginning to look normal again!   ::)  My mom has always said the grass on the other side is greener and after having my hair practically every color in the rainbow and every texture possible, I agree with her and I just want my wavy auburn hair back!!!  So anyway, my question.
I absolutely *love* the faded hair look where the hair is really long and gets lighter and lighter as it gets longer.  I'm guessing this is due to sun exposure, am I right?  My hair naturally fades to strawberry blonde, so it's like dark brown at the roots, medium auburn halfway down and then strawberry blonde from there, and I love that look so my question is, how damaging is exposing your hair to sun enough for it to lighten like that?  Is that a really bad thing to do?  Will hair naturally lighten as it grows without being exposed to sunlight?  
And I guess I have another question.  When you CO, do you put the conditioner on the roots too?
Thank you in advance to anyone who responds!

Welcome to Longlocks and nice to meet you ;)

Sunlight does fade hair color, whether natural or artificial color. UV light also breaks down the bonds in proteins, so too much is never a good thing. I think normal daily exposure, when out and about, should be enough to get you the effect that you want.
With CO, you do put conditioner on your scalp and roots. At first I was skeptical about that, thinking it might clog pores and cause breakouts, but apparently it depends on the type of conditioner. A conditioner, if you put it on the scalp, should not have silicones or other plastics such as PVP and CVP, nor mineral oil or lanolin.

HTH :-*
Anais

hello!!! your natural hair sounds fabulous ... keep it away from all those chemicals this time (i should speak: been dying mine dark brown for ten years, i just can't live with my natural non-color medium gray brown ugh).
if your hair growed 5 inches over the last year, i don't think that it's radically slower than the average of 6 inches/year.

keep on growing  8)

i like co washing ... it's just that my hair seems even to get this smooth (and that's just after barely two weeks) that it seems to become as straight it was before i started dying it. so i have the impression these days of having less hair lol (you know bye bye dryness/frizz volume).

Welcome!  Glad you were able to find answers to lots of your questions.

As another response to your question on the the natural lightening of hair - The lighter your natural hair color is, the more prone you are to your hair getting lighter when left in the sun.  If you take care of your hair in other ways (conditioning, moisturizing, gentle combing and detangling), your hair should be able to tolerate the lightening effects.  My hair is almost classic length (to the bottom of my rear), and the ends are much lighter than at the roots.  I have to be extra careful with my hair ends because of this, but I too like the look.

What about rinsing with lemon juice near the ends?  Wouldn't that help lighten, as well?

Don't know, just wondering.  Somebody bail me out here!!! ???

strawberryfine

Lemon juice will lighten the ends if you put it in and then spend some time in the sun.  But.. I heard the acidity of the lemon juice isn't exactly great on your hair so take care to use a deep conditioner treatment after your fun in the sun with the lemon juice.

I am new here and my hair is above my shoulders, i was letting it grow but it seemed like a very long time, it was at a stopping point for some reason, and my hair is thick, it would look ragged it was so weighed down, so i cut it and of course my waves now show and has more volume.   My question is what supplements do you take to help it grow fast??

Before I got pregnant, I was regularly taking Horsetail, Biotin, Folic Acid, B-12, Pantothenic Acid and Niacin. (All except the horsetail can be purchased in one pill as a B-Complex Multiple Vitamin - but if you want higher potency you'll have to buy them seperate.)

There was a recent thread on this board where members were discussing GNCs Ultra Nourishair here:
http://www.longlocks.com/cgi-bin/yabb/YaBB.cgi?board=products;action=display;num=1078001756;start=

I personally haven't tried this as we don't have a GNC out here, but it seems to have gotten some good reviews. Hope this helps you!  ;)

Don't forget a proper diet and exercise for healthy hair (and overall good health too!)  

A diet rich in all the food groups plus the essential fatty acids oils (such as olive oil)  are VERY beneficial to healthy hair growth!  I don't take supplements at all--some of the MUST HAVE nutrient-rich foods I eat every single day include:   milk, yogurt, calcium-fortified orange juice, V-8, whole wheat bread, NATURAL (unprocessed) peanut butter,  tea, and olive oil.  

Exercise:  this stimulates circulation and gets the blood flowing, and this nourishes hair growth.  I just turn on the radio and dance for about half and hour a day--this is a great blood circulator!!!  (Not much else to do here in the frozen midwest at present--I guess I could ice skate on the sidewalks...)


Annelise

wrote on Jan 13^th, 2005 at 8:59pm:

A diet rich in all the food groups plus the essential fatty acids oils (such as olive oil)  are VERY beneficial to healthy hair growth!

i am not sure olive oil is an essential one ... it's mainly omega 9 which is neither "bad" nor "good". it's neutral. essential ones would be omega 6 and most of all omega 3. a good diet has a balanced intake of 1/3  omega 3/omega 6. for many americans this ratio is however closer to 1/10 to even 1/25 (i don't have numbers for the rest of the world but do you care ;)  ). which means a great lack of omega 3 which is found in fat fish and many vegetal oils. i think the highest concentrations are found in flaxseed oil and hemp seed oil. other ones are borage and evening primrose.

Thanks, styg, you're right--I don't know what I was thinking!

Annelise