Hair Force One - 10,000HEADS - Yearly revisions

Steps 3 Flat Iron Addiction-Free  + Step 4 : Exercise

The next 2 Steps are equally important as all of them, it is so  hard for me to narrow 10,000HEADS to only 13 Steps. Any more than that and no one would pay attention - it becomes too complicated for people. There are so many things you learn when you have so many eager clients to experiment with, so be sure to read all the older posts many of the points I would have liked to incorporate as steps, are instead Posts on Killer Strands!
Step 3 > FIA : Flat Iron & Hot Tool Addiction-free

The number one most destructive force to the hair  - - is HEAT. So taking 2 flat pieces of metal cranking the heat up to 400 degrees PLUS smashing those very fine strands of hair together,  with loads of pressure - in between the very hot metal plates, seems rather ridiculous, doesn't it?  With some of you flat ironing over and over again on the same section, I want to cry when I see people doing that. One swipe is enough boys and girls -- one swipe.
I've had a Flat Iron for 16 years, I was the first one to get one when I was in the Academy - I ordered it from England and boy did I think I was cool at the time. Every one borrowed it, the teachers, the administration, the cute guy I liked - everyone! We used Kera Care Silken Seal spray serum - still my fav' silicone  serum,
PURCHASE KERA CARE SILKEN SEAL
$17.95 + 7.95 Shipping within the continental USA ........click on button

to protect the hair and never ever had the damage I see everywhere now. Doing anything to the extreme is detrimental, and Flat Ironing your hair to death is a sure fire way to burn it right off your head.  
I have had many clients and many Killer stranders finally break down to me and reveal their addiction to the Flat Iron. They say they can't stop, that they feel horrible if they are not straightening their hair all the time.  Even when they smell it burning, so this is a very serious problem, in my eyes. 
There are addictions to everything I'm sure you all know. Its hard to find one person without an addiction to something, whether it be coffee, sodas, drugs, alcohol, cigarettes, Pot, running, cleaning, chocolate, exercise . . . there are just so damn many - my life is surrounded with people addicted to different things, how about yours ??  It makes total sense to me that, what I have called FIA Flat Iron Addiction, would hit our youth ( guys too) like a bull dozer. I've helped a lot of people get over this problem and if you are out there and have this issue, email me .  I have some great suggestions and help for those of you with this issue. I kind of put FIA together with my other term: Hair OCD. Hair OCD > the urge to color - condition - style their hair constantly, they can barely go 2 weeks without doing something radical to their hair. If they are not actually doing something to it they are thinking about what they want to do with it next. I have written about this before, they have control over their hair - many times when they have ZERO control in their life. We all handle things differently and thank the Lord this one is not detrimental to your 'life'.

The same goes true with Curling Irons, Crimping Irons, Marcel irons, wave irons,blow dryers . . . same exact issues. 2 metal plates and lots of heat = a recipe for disaster. Therefore with all those hot tools you have shoved in the drawer, remember to use them the way they were made to - 2-4 times per week, with only 1 pass over a section - spraying the hair with a good silicone serum spray to protect it.
I fully realize that very few of us can realistically go out without some sort of "heat" tool to do our hair so it looks nice and stylish. the number 1 method used to style your hair should be a brush and blow dryer. Blow dryers are the least harmful to your hair - - the air that is blown onto the hair prevents it from getting near as much heat as any of the irons - - so instead of going forward and looking for bigger better Flat Irons we need to pull back the reigns, do a 180 and go back to our trusty Blow Dryers. Along with that move to blow dryers the blow dryer industry has developed a new type of dryer that actually does what it says it does. Almost every LA stylist I know uses a T3, I know many other brands are out there, but I have never tested any of them, so will not recommend them.
  All the new rage in England and Europe is "Blow Dry Bars" - - Salon owners are opening mini salons and the only service they offer is Blow Dry's - they have had Flat Irons 10 years longer than we have - they know the damage they produce. I think 1 or 2 have popped up in Boston and New York, most of you have to admit, a well done blow dry is about as fine as your hair will look. So your best investment should be on one of the IONIC hair dryers, where they dry cooler and quicker than the old type. . . with the type of brush that suits your style.
Step 4 - Exercise

Exercise - exercise ....we all know its good for us, doing it, is a whole other ball game. But its just plain and simple, exercise is good for everything in your body. I'm from the school that feels Lance Armstrong beat his cancer because of his exercise, I honestly and deeply feel if you exercise using 45 minutes of cardio 4 of those days + various other forms -- 6 days a week - you can fight off just about anything - including hair loss.
Within 10,000HEADS I will almost always find a persons "trigger-point", I call it. Which means there is one action within these 13 steps that is, unique to you and is your reason for the thinning. It is your particular catalyst to thinning or thrashed hair. It's going to be very difficult for me to find out what everyone out there in web - land's trigger point is, but I would encourage you all that are on 10,000HEADS just know that is a part of the protocol , so maybe you can figure out which step is your-own trigger point.
 
I have seen YOGA work for the most people, which is great because everyone can do YOGA. You can buy a DVD for $10.00, a mat, then start off - at home. which is how I started a way back when I did - I had heard that Cher & Madonna were practicing YOGA (10 years ago) and I knew that Cher had been sick for a couple years with one of the auto-immune diseases. . and YOGA helped with her health while battling it. The girl next to me in the Salon did her hair, she started her on the protocol and she was thrilled at what it did for her hair. Many times with auto immune diseases your hair is one of the first things to start deteriorating. How cruel. 
Once I started it was crystal clear to me what was the biggest advantage . . .being upside down a great deal of the time. The blood rushes to your head, and ( for lack of a better work) 'fertilizes' the hair bulb which is where the "new growth" stems from, remember? When I was practicing YOGA 6 days a week my hair was never better, I have had quite a few professional surfers take it up YOGA for their hair, and that was all they needed. I realize Yoga is not for everyone, if that is your case, then you need to find something  to get your body upside down. I know this sounds weird. . .BUT, it will help more than you can imagine. Some have discovered if they lay on the couch and hang their head over the side, they can read a book with not too much trouble. ( yoga is easier). Some have invested in Gravity Boots or a Gravity Board, remember those? Its a board that can flip you upside down, the boots are the same theory only you clamp them onto a pole in between a doorway (yoga is easier). Pilates, also has some inversions - there are 2 types of Pilates - either a floor version or the machine.
If you really want the most simplest of simple ways, Yoga Journal(magazine) has an excellent section that describes and shows you some of the poses. Don't panic, I'm just asking you to look at one,and only one! Its the most popular and I would say the basis for all yoga poses so its super easy and everyone can do it. It will get your head upside down and that is all we are looking for. Ever heard of DOWNWARD DOG ? Well, that's the only pose you need, just do this pose for your "upside-down-time"requirements.  This is what it looks like > > >
http://www.yogajournal.com/poses/491   you should be able to start with 3 minutes in it, move up to 5, then 7 then 10 and so on at your own rate of course.  You will get other benefits out of this as well, some say their skin benefits, some say they have more energy. The way this photo is taken is about as advanced as you can get, so don't think you have to stretch out nearly as far as she is. Just do it at your own rate. I do know for sure that your hair and its strength and shine will benefit greatly from this one simple pose.
Within the category of exercise I also want to stress you must include a walk, 3-4  times a week. The requirement is that it is at least 30 but prefer 45 minutes and you are not allowed to take anything electrical with you. No phones, no i-pods, no cameras, no nothing. Hair Nazi - - - right? I told you. I feel the walk hits 2 categories stress & exercise, and people never walk anywhere anymore to clear their head. I have a couple dozen people that swear this is their trigger point! So don't make fun of it until you've tried it .............for 90 days!

HAIR FORCE ONE - 10,000 HEADS Regimen:Hair Strengthening System

Revised and Updated 2009

This is the time of year I add or detract to 10,000 HEADS, the program I started over 8 years ago on my clients in the Malibu Salon. I will take 2 steps per day this next week and add or detract from a notebook I keep from letters, emails, and responses I get from clients all year long.  It's so nice having hundreds of people who are just as eager as I am to come up with a hair strengthening system that truly works on all types of hair loss, hair damage & thinning for women. Many of my clients would go to their dermatologist with their worries of hair loss or more specifically "hair thinning" and would be told "oh you look great - - - you are stressing over nothing, my dear, just go home have a glass of wine and be glad you aren't bald." If really pressed the doctors would give them women's Rogaine, and send them on their way. That type of attitude is not met well by women from the entertainment industry, they are a bit more demanding than that. That is when they all started to open up to me at their appointments.

  I had many girls and women finally opening up to me . . . which was not at all a surprise to me, I noticed the thinning myself, I know my clients hair well enough that I could bust them for using the wrong shampoo or a hot tub without treating it when they came in for their appointments. Some called me the Hair Nazi . . . but it was all done in fun. What happened took place over a few years it began with a few women per year, and what was different was that the women were younger - under 40 - under 30 and soon under 20! (men have always had this problem it is new for women) When the problem progressed to a few people every 3-4 month's -- then every month - - every week. . .and when I began having 1 woman per day every few days per week from the age of 17 up to 50... ( I would do 15-25 people per day) is when I put my foot down, 20 year olds with hair thinning ? ? ?

That is just WRONG, and something needed to be done.

I met with my assistants to brainstorm - they agreed with me > and we began with our surveys and trying to figure out what in the world was going on. Every rear end that sat in our chairs would fill out a survey... in our attempt to find a common denominator. I've told bits and pieces of this story throughout the Blog, as I will continue to but this is how the story BEGAN.  In my opinion the answer is in the 13 steps above - follow them all for 1 year. If you follow all 13 steps - ( which I understand, is very difficult to accomplish) -  I have yet to find anyone male or female that has not improved their hair to their own satisfaction. I realize that is a big...no, HUGE statement . . .  but not a whole lot of people have truly tried the entire program. That is a whole lot of discipline, but damn it  - - it works! Most do bits and pieces of it and I tell people to get the best results follow the last 4 Steps religiously . . . and do the best you can on the other 9.

SLS Sodium Lauryl Sulfate in the shampoo as most of you know ended up being the one true common denominator in all of my clients and now readers. So this is a mandatory step you MUST follow, I have a number of SLS-FREE POSTS you can review .  But through that survey and the next couple years work and research trying to figure out what was going on with my own clients hair, I began work on 10,000HEADS - without even realizing what I was doing. My assistants figured out at one point that I had done over 10,000 heads of hair, which was years ago...so you now have the birth of this very successful system.

Many people have ordered THRIVEN this week, so I am hopeful that many of you are looking forward to developing healthy hair. The 2 Steps for today - Steps 1 & 2

Step 1 ; NO SMOKING (of anything)

I must get at least a dozen people a year that ask me to prove to them that POT is bad for them. Now I laugh, I used to get bent out of shape. I'm a child of the seventies, we were the ones who gave birth to the drug scene in America, so I am not the one who has never tried anything, nope I was right in there with the best of them. When I became pregnant, was when everything STOPPED for me. Completely stopped.  But you cannot tell me that when you take a hit of weed, and its all you can do to hold the sucker in your lungs, it burns so bad, hurts so much, that puff of sweet smoke is not tearing your lungs, your skin, your organs and your hair apart.  With every puff you undoubtedly end up coughing it out in a huge belch of smoke, cough and laugh....AM I RIGHT > ?  Sure that shit is fine for your body. Get real boys. 

I have a relative that died a very very sad and much too early death because of lung cancer, this man was a great athlete, had absolutely no stress in his life, was a very talented artist, but smoked weed religiously from 1950 to 2000 (when he died)  50 years of smoking weed almost every single day. No its not the strength of the stuff today which I hear is like smoking an atomic bomb, but it was clean,clear and the amount they smoked was just a lot more. But this lovely man came down with lung cancer, and they did everything in the world to try to save him . . . they even gave him a lung transplant. Now I remind you, he was a health food fanatic, did his daily exercises, did EVERYTHING right  . . .he actually had a great head of hair till he was about 65 and then the thinning started. He simply could not quit his pot addiction. It was a very very sad loss and no one will ever convince me that pot was not the single cause of his death.

Some facts:

FPHL = Female Pattern Hair Loss is what they technically call it when the thinning starts, I will use those initials throughout. The cause of the failure to grow new hair in female pattern baldness is not well understood, but it is associated with genetics, aging, sulfates in shampoo and levels of hormones (especially androgens, the male sex hormones) . Why, the pharmaceuticals do not have more research going into this area - I truly, do not know.

A hair grows from its follicle at an average rate of about 1/2 inch per month. Each hair grows for 2 to 6 years, then rests, and then falls out. A new hair soon begins growing in its place. At any time, about 85% of the hair is growing and 15% is resting.  Baldness occurs when hair falls out but new hair does not grow in its place. This is the simplified and EXACT reason for thinning or balding. Therefore the goal is to figure out a way to continue that cycle of hair growth on every single hair on your head and then you will have solved the problem of hair thinning. Now, every single step of the 10,000HEADS regimen deals with the many reasons that will prevent each and every hair from continuing that cycle of re-growth, which is why if you follow them all you will have a wonderful head of hair. With smoking at the very top of the list.

Pot or Cigarettes are a sure fire way to wreck your hair... smoking constricts your blood vessels, thereby restricting blood flow to the hair follicle, slowing cell turnover, which holds back new hair growth.

Remember my best advice to you is to dust off that "common sense" shelf and begin using it. If smoking KILLS, which we all know - can you imagine what it does to the poor little hair strand that is so tiny and defenseless against the big bad meany - NICOTINE, Formaldehyde, and God knows what other chemicals are in those death sticks. I know its hard, I smoked when I went through my divorce - years ago - it was so hard I chose to quit when I went in for knee surgery and I couldn't walk ! I used the patch as well which I felt worked wonderfully - but I see they have all sorts of tricks now. Just try something. Replace smoking with exercise, it is the perfect pacifier - and you will be knocking 2 of the Steps off the list with one stone! I promise!

Step 2; Nutrition

Ahhh nutrition . . . I have battled and fought this one my entire life. I am always - ALWAYS trying to eat better. How about - YOU?

I cannot tell you the amount of times that a diet change has helped one of my clients, but I think deep down we all know this. I can tell when one of my strict clients has changed her diet . This is the person that eats the proper amount of protein every day, the proper amount of vege's, and fruit and the whole 9 yards, I can tell when she has gone off and eaten junk for a week, so it is that apparent!

2008 is when I have truly tried to get more people eating vegetables and most specifically broccoli.  I am of the belief that eating broccoli everyday will help everyone in many different aspects, so if you can - follow me and begin eating at least 1 serving of either steamed or crisp fresh broccoli every single day, I feel it is the one perfect food for your hair.

I have read just so much good about it.      Here is a short piece from a gentlemen that claims to have kept his hair through many years and a multi-pronged approach - kind of like mine - only geared at men. His name is Thomas Haggerty and his web site is http://www.hairloss-reversible.com.  In this year alone I will bet I have read well over 200 articles that give broccoli the heads up for improving health in dozens of different areas. Everyone needs to add this to their diet, and especially if you are dealing with hair loss, or thinning, it just HAS to be mandatory. Vegetables such as broccoli, Brussels sprouts, and cauliflower produce a chemical when being digested that inhibits the action of dihydrotestosterone DHT. Leonard Bjeldanes, professor of nutritional science at UC Berkeley, and Gary Firestone, professor of molecular biology at the same institution, have been researching the anti-cancer properties of plant chemicals (phytochemicals). They found that vegetables such as broccoli and Brussels sprouts are rich in an indole called I3C. I really don't find it necessary to go in the whole technical who-ha, so this is an abbreviated version of his story.

Further research confirmed that this DIM inhibits the action of DHT. It does this by binding to the same receptors within the cell that DHT uses. DHT, is involved in baldness. The research that Bjeldanes and Firestone are doing is mostly centered on prostate cancer and the proliferation of cancer cells, but Dr. Bjeldanes in an email to Haggerty wrote that he is now requesting funding to do research on baldness.

The reason that I stress the importance of getting nutrients from real food instead of from pills is that there are many unidentified nutritional factors in food, especially in fruits and vegetables. These phytochemicals that one doesn’t get in pills may provide a great health benefit.

There is nothing conclusive yet in the research of Bjeldanes and Firestone indicating that broccoli and other vegetables will benefit the hair follicles, but I loaded up on broccoli at the market today just in case. By the way, the best way to cook broccoli and other vegetables is to steam them. Boiling vegetables destroys over half the nutrients; steaming destroys hardly any. Just purchase one of those little racks at Target for $3.00 that sits in a regular sized pot , you put an inch of water  in. . . and you're good to go.

 

Just a quick paragraph on PROTEIN. Protein is a must for good hair, if you are a Vegetarian, or vegan you seriously need to think about quitting that protocol - Hair is made up of protein and hair LOVES protein coming in the body. The more the better. There are some dynamite protein bars out there. . .be sure they are at least 15 Grams or above and devour one or 2 of those every day just to be sure you get some of the required 50-75 grams of protein daily. Nothing will replace the whole foods themselves, but in reality who can eat that well every single day. You would have to give up the rest of your life to "eat correctly" ! But I do know that revamping your diet  to getting close to what you should eat for your hair every day is not that hard. . . . so just start making the changes. 

Breakfast is the most important meal for your hair so DON'T skip it! Your energy levels to your hair follicles are at their lowest first thing in the morning, and they need a boost so skipping this meal would be your first mistake. Find something that has protein in it you like and begin making that you healthy hair breakfast from now on.

Lunch is the 2nd most important, remember salads have no protein in them unless you add chicken or tuna or turkey to them.  Protein is what will turn your slim salad into a healthy hair meal.

When eating throughout the day it will benefit your hair to eat many small meals or as I call it  . . ."grazing". Eat many little meals all day long, its better for your body as well as your hair.  You know how if you wait more than 4 hours between your meals you get a little giddy or lethargic ? That is the same thing that happens to your hair follicles, so you will want to grab a little snack like a vegetable or fruit ( carrot, or apple) . . . just enough to boost your hair follicles energy levels until your next meal. Remember when that one hair falls out and the next one is supposed to begin growing. . . is involved with your nutrition, you do not want that new one growing in to be starved because you are improperly dieting. That is why you will see almost EVERY anorexic/bulimic with such horrible thin hair.

DON'T STARVE YOUR HAIR.