Dry, damaged hair is one of my pet peeves as a hair stylist. More often than not is simply due to my client not understanding what causes the condition and that total rectification means that the damaged hair must be grown out and cut off.

You cannot restore you damaged hair. Despite what products say, you can only help its appearance but this should just be done while you are in the process of growing the damaged hair out. I speak from personal experience as well as from experiences with my clients.

Before you can grow your hair out into a healthy state, you need to understand what causes damage in the first place. If you do not, you will just damage the new hair before you can get rid of the already damaged hair.

The number one ways that hair is seriously damaged is through chemical processing. I am not saying that you cannot have highlights, colors, straighteners, or perms applied to your hair. If you do choose to alter you hair chemically, it is best to stick with only one process. Of these processes, the best to choose are the ones that can have future chemicals applied to new hair growth only.

Colors and highlights are best for this. If you are currently perming your hair to help with control, you will probably find that highlights give you quite a bit of control over your hair.

With color and highlights, you will be able to have your stylist apply future chemical treatments to the new growth only. This is also true of straightening processes, but the chemicals involved in straightening are generally harsher overall.

This determination is argued by some because highlighting is essentially a bleaching process, which can be very damaging. However, highlights do not affect every hair on your head, leaving a vast amount of healthy, unprocessed hair. Straightening affects every hair with the chemicals used.

What you must understand about chemical processes and damage is that repeatedly putting chemicals on the same part of your hair creates a vicious cycle of chronic damage. This is compounded by the various heated tools that you use to style your hair, harsh shampoos and styling products, and a multitude of environmental factors.

Now that you understand the importance very discriminating about chemical processes, you need to know some of the ways you can protect your hair on a regular basis. Following is a variety of ways that you can help prevent further damage to your hair, not all of then will apply to you, so use as many as you can.

Do not blow dry your hair any more than absolutely necessary. If you can let it air dry completely, do it. If you do have to blow dry, use a thermal protector prior to blow drying. Use the coolest setting possible to achieve your style.

Use pH balanced shampoos and conditioners that are very moisturizing; for conditioners, also look for one with UV protection.

Use a pH balanced leave in conditioner, preferably with UV protection.

Eat foods that are rich in protein and omega 3 fatty acids (the good fat), choose organically grown and raised products, and eat less processed food.

Using a natural boar hair brush, brush your hair thoroughly every evening, brushing the scalp well while you do this. Brushing like this distributes the natural oils along the hair and massages the scalp.

If your hair is wet (or damp), only use a wide toothed comb on it. Brushes and combs with thin, narrow teeth cause serious breakage, especially in damaged hair.

Now that you know the things you have to do in order to truly have healthier hair once you have the damaged hair grown out, you can use the following tips to attempt to camouflage the current damaged hair. I sat attempt because extremely damaged hair cannot be camouflaged; it will look damaged no matter what you try.

Take a tiny amount of your pH balanced moisturizing conditioner in the palm of your hand, run water into your cupped hand and vigorously rub the conditioner, mixing it with the water. Keeping this thoroughly wet, scrunch it onto the ends of very wet hair. Then scrunch a spray styling product designed to smooth curls into the hair. Allow to air dry.

Less effective, but still useful are the glossers which are actually a very light oil sprayed through an extremely fine mist. These should be applied to dry hair as a general rule. Do not believe marketing ploys that claim that these products restore or repair your hair. All they do is camouflage the damage.