10 Bad Habits That Sabotage Your Hair Goals

Charles Baker Strahan, Los Angeles-based Celebrity Hairstylist

“One of the most complicated things I encounter with female clients - especially new ones - has to do with expectations around hair growth and length. This relates to habits as well as expectations and understanding.

I think it’s important to mention that your hair will grow as long as your body’s cellular regenerative process will allow it to. The average length of this process is around seven years but some regenerate as often as four years. If your hair has never passed a certain length, this is most often the reason.

The habits that work against your biologically determined hair length are really care and styling practices, particularly the overuse of flat irons and dry shampoo. Using this tool daily, especially on bleached or color-treated hair color, unproperly cleansed and coated with layers of dry shampoo (which can dry out already-dry ends) is a certain recipe for breakage and damaged split ends, which will result in a haircut because this kind of damage causes your hair to be prone to frizz and generally makes it unruly.

You can break the cycle with regular use of shampoo and conditioner to properly cleanse and hydrate hair. Also, if you’re working with second- or third-day hair, use a boar-bristle brush at night before bed to smooth any natural oils away from the scalp and towards the ends of the hair, which desperately need it, then repeat in the morning and use your blow dryer to smooth out any kinks or additional frizz instead of your flat iron. Finally, proper nutrition and vitamin supplements like Nutrafol, $88, can help.