This is a favorite topic of mine because I have fine hair that is nat­u­rally curly, and I’ve always been inter­ested in mak­ing my hair longer and thicker. This is all the infor­ma­tion I have gath­ered for the last sev­eral years. I also just dis­cov­ered an awe­some YouTube chan­nel yes­ter­day called YouTips4U, with some great infor­ma­tion on grow­ing and car­ing for long hair, so def­i­nitely check her out when you get a chance.

Here’s the YouTube video if you want to watch:

{A LITTLE FACT}

Everyone’s hair is dif­fer­ent, and the fol­low­ing tips will sim­ply help you to max­i­mize your hair growth poten­tial. The aver­age hair growth per month is 1/2″ though some peo­ple may grow 3/4″ or 1″ per month. Don’t stress if your hair grows the aver­age of 1/2″ — this is genet­i­cally pre­de­ter­mined, but you can do a lot to pre­vent break­age and stim­u­late healthy, thicker hair growth.

{TIP #1}

Get your pro­tein. Your hair ker­atin grows from the inside out, so your pro­tein and over­all nutri­tion intake is of utmost impor­tance. After much trial and error with my diet, I dis­cov­ered that with­out a doubt, includ­ing some grass-fed ani­mal prod­ucts gives me thicker, health­ier, shinier hair. On the other hand, I have one friend in par­tic­u­lar that was com­pletely vegan for sev­eral years and still grew a thick mop of hair. Pay atten­tion to your indi­vid­ual needs — one size does not fit all!

I com­piled the fol­low­ing list of protein-rich foods for you (I pur­posely excluded protein-rich foods that are unfriendly to our hor­mones, weight, and skin), which you should feel free to edit depend­ing on your per­sonal pref­er­ences. Remem­ber, always go organic, grass-fed, wild-caught, etc. as much as possible.

• Grass-fed, truly free-range turkey, beef, buf­falo, lamb
• Wild-caught fish
• Scal­lops
• Yogurt
• Kefir
• Leafy greens
• Almonds
• Tem­peh, miso, natto
• Vegan pro­tein pow­ders like rice and pea pro­tein (not soy or flax)

{TIP #2}

Avoid stress, as it will cause hair to thin, fall out, and break eas­ily. There’s no need to stress about that either. Just give your­self some much-deserved “me time” where you can rest and relax. Lis­ten to some calm­ing music, def­i­nitely try yoga, watch a com­edy (laugh!), take a B com­plex vit­a­min sup­ple­ment (stress depletes our B vit­a­mins, the one I take is from Gar­den of Life). For more tips, you can read my arti­cle from Decem­ber, which has some great anti-stress ideas.

{TIP #3}

No smok­ing and no caf­feine. Both of these sub­stances are dry­ing and aging for your skin and hair. If you want to look good, be healthy, and have healthy long hair, quit these two habits right now.

{TIP #4}

No refined sugar or excess sodium. Use raw honey, ste­via, xyl­i­tol, or even unsul­phured black­strap molasses (very nutri­tious, a by-product of the sugar man­u­fac­tur­ing process) instead of white sugar, cane sugar, or brown sugar. Refined sugar is very harm­ful to your health, so it’s best to eat it only on very rare occa­sions. Instead of table salt, iodized salt, or Kosher salt, use unbleached sea salt (I like Celtic sea salt). Use it spar­ingly and replace salt in recipes with salt-free spice blends.

{TIP #5}

Don’t over­wash your hair, which will make it dry, stripped, and more prone to break­age. If you have a very oily scalp, wash you hair every other day. If you keep wash­ing it daily, your scalp will only get oilier. For nor­mal and dry scalps, sham­poo every 2–4 days. Remem­ber to mas­sage your scalp gen­tly every time you sham­poo! This will boost cir­cu­la­tion and help the sham­poo remove all block­ages from your scalp (health­ier, clean scalp = health­ier, longer hair).

{TIP #6}

Be care­ful when you brush your hair. A stan­dard rule to live by is never to brush or comb wet hair. This leaves the hair more sus­cep­ti­ble to break­age, so even if your con­di­tioner bot­tle says to comb the con­di­tioner through the hair in the shower, don’t do it! If you have straight hair of medium or thick den­sity, use a nat­ural boar bris­tle brush. For curly, wavy, and/or fine hair, use a wide tooth comb with no seams (lit­tle plas­tic seams along the comb’s teeth could snag your hair and break it).

{TIP #7}

Exer­cise daily to stim­u­late cir­cu­la­tion, which brings more nutri­tion to the scalp and stim­u­lates hair growth. Try yoga, run­ning, spin­ning (bicyling), and cir­cuit train­ing. My favorite work­outs to do daily are the 14–30 minute cir­cuit train­ing rou­tines from BodyRock.tv.

{TIP #8}

Stay hydrated. I men­tion this all the time because it’s vital for healthy skin and healthy hair. Drink 1/2 to 1 gal­lon (2–4 liters) of fil­tered water per day. My favorite water fil­ter is Envi­ron­men­tal Water Sys­tems.

{TIP #9}

Feed your hair with essen­tial fatty acids, vit­a­mins and min­er­als. You can do this by eat­ing wild-caught fish, a lot of fresh fruit and veg­eta­bles, leafy greens like spinach and swiss chard, brown rice, cucum­bers, almonds, and goat milk yogurt. Those foods will pro­vide you with hair-growing nutri­ents like biotin, vit­a­min E, vit­a­min C, and sil­ica (plus they all con­tain vary­ing amounts of pro­tein). You can also take an omega 3 fish oil sup­ple­ment (I take Carl­son Labs liq­uid cod liver oil in lemon), Biosil liq­uid sil­ica, and whole food sup­ple­ments like Gar­den of Life Vit­a­min Code B Com­plex to ensure your hair is get­ting enough nutri­ti­tion. Remem­ber that your hair and nails are the last thing your body nour­ishes — so if you’re not get­ting enough nutri­ents, there may not be enough left for your hair.

{TIP #10}

It’s called beauty sleep for a rea­son. Get at least 7–8 hours of sleep every night, and try to go to bed by 10 pm. It has been sug­gested that 11 pm to 1 am is a crit­i­cal repair time for your adrenal glands, gall­blad­der, and liver, so it is impor­tant to be asleep dur­ing this time so your body can do its repairs. Inter­rupt­ing this process by stay­ing awake can dis­rupt the health and beauty of your skin and hair. For a better-looking morn­ing, try sleep­ing on silk pil­low­cases (mine are from Dream­sacks, I’ve been using them for years). I always rec­om­mend this because silk is extremely gen­tle on your skin and hair, and you won’t wake up with tan­gled bed head and dry cheeks. For addi­tional hair pro­tec­tion, you can use soft, fab­ric hair scrunchies to secure your hair into a pony­tail or loose braid at night.

{TIP #11}

You won’t need to trim your hair if you’re not get­ting split ends, so min­i­mize the break­age by con­di­tion­ing reg­u­larly. Con­di­tion your hair every time you sham­poo it, and use a deep con­di­tion­ing treat­ment every 7–10 days.

{TIP #12}

Don’t pick your split ends. It’s nat­ural to have a few of them, so just snip them off with a lit­tle pair of sharp scis­sors or cuti­cle cutter.

{TIP #13}

Buy 2–3 dif­fer­ent sham­poos and con­di­tion­ers, and use a dif­fer­ent one every time you sham­poo, or rotate them once per week. This keeps your hair from becom­ing “immune” to the prod­uct and you’ll be far less likely to have a bad hair day.

{TIP #14}

Wash your hair gen­tly, and never pile it on top of your head. This will keep your hair from break­ing and ensure it gets cleansed and con­di­tioned prop­erly. Here is a great video on wash­ing long hair with­out caus­ing break­age and dry­ness.

{TIP #15}

If you fol­low tip 11–14 on avoid­ing breakage/split ends, then you can get away with hav­ing a trim every 3–4 months (or longer). Only trim 1/2″. If you want to trim your hair your­self, here is a great instruc­tional video.

{BONUS TIP}

Don’t use a blowdryer, flat iron, curl­ing iron, or other heated styling tools every day. Instead, air dry and use non-heat styling meth­ods. YouTube has a ton of videos for styling your hair with­out heat.