How To Get Hair To Grow Longer & Stronger

According to Dr. Zoe Diana Draelos in "Hair Care: An Illustrated Dermatologic Handbook," your hair grows approximately 1.5 inches a month. If you want your hair to grow long and beautiful, you need to keep every one of those inches moisturized and damage-free. This means you need to protect your hair from the damage that often is caused by excessive use of flatirons, curling irons, blow dryers and a barrage of styling products.

Step 1

Let your hair air dry. According to Draelos, your hair is made up of layers, including an interior cortex and exterior cuticle. When you subject the cuticle to the blow dryer or stretch it 30 percent past its original length, the cuticle can become permanently damaged.

Step 2

Brush your scalp to stimulate blood flow. Corey Powell, a Beverly Hills hair stylist, says that scalp health and hair health are inextricably linked. A healthy scalp produces healthy hair, and Powell suggests brushing for five minutes to get the blood flowing beneath the skin, improving overall scalp health and hair growth.

Step 3

Condition your ends regardless of whether you shampoo or condition the rest of your hair. "Hair Rules!" author and celebrity hair stylist A. Dickey says that your ends are especially vulnerable to length-destroying damage because they're so far from your scalp, so they don't get the same amount of scalp oil and sebum, your body's natural moisturizer. Moisturize your ends by using a leave-in conditioner or rubbing them with a dollop of your regular conditioner.

Step 4

Take a daily multivitamin. According to "Allure" magazine, the nutrients biotin and niacin can add strength to thin, weak hair. To help avoid split ends, the bane of long-haired women, you should take 1,000mcg of biotin and 500mg of niacin every day, according to "Allure."

Step 5

Treat dry hair with a weekly dose of hair oil. In "Every Woman's Guide to Beautiful Hair at Any Age," Lisa Akbari says shampoos with a high pH strip your scalp of its natural oils. Even if you don't have dandruff, chances are your scalp is still dry. Similarly, oil-based styling products can cause a moisture-blocking buildup over your hair strands, which are naturally composed of 97 percent protein and 3 percent water. Akbari suggests rubbing oil into your scalp after you wash your hair but before you style it.