Hair Matters

Many people are looking for miracle hair products that will revive and fix their damaged, dried-out and fried-out hair. While there are many products out that that will help restore your hair to a healthy state, the best way to have and maintain gorgeous, healthy hair is to Protect Your Hair. Protecting your hair will help prevent damage from occurring in the first place, which will help you avoid hair repair masques and treatments further down the road that can get costly. There are many ways in which we cause damage to our hair, and for everyone of these ways, there's a way to protect your hair and prevent the damage from occurring

Prevention
The best way to protect your hair is to prevent damage from occurring. There are several ways in which damage is inflicted upon your hair; the most troublesome damage comes from chemical processing. All types of chemical processing causes some form of damage to your hair, whether it's dying, highlighting, perming, relaxing, etc. Keeping up with trends and constantly changing your hair color/style by chemical process takes a huge toll on your hair, especially if you try to do it yourself. There's always a slight risk of a chemical treatment going awry at a salon, but that risk, and the damage that can occur to your hair, increases exponentially if you attempt to do the chemical process yourself at home. If you insist on chemically processing your hair, make sure you go to a salon professional, as they always know what's best for your hair.

Coloring/Dying/Highlighting Your Hair
The most common cause of damaged hair is from over processing your hair. The biggest thing that damages color treated hair is the repeated scalp to ends, dump it on in the shower hair color. Whether you're trying to cover-up those stubborn grays or adding highlights to a new cut, even the smallest amount of coloring will cause damage to your hair. If you're dying your hair for the very first time, dying your hair will not totally and completely change the quality of your hair; the real problems occur from continually re-coloring your hair without properly protecting it, dying it one color and then re-dying it because you changed your mind, and attempting to dye it at home and then having to get it fixed, and dumping another bottle of color on the all ready colored hair shaft when trying to touch up the roots.

The very first step in protecting your hair from damage when you color it is to go to a salon professional for your hair color! Your licensed salon stylist formulates and mixes hair dye specifically suited for your hair with the intention of causing as little damage as possible. They take everything about your hair type into consideration, right down to how porous your hair is. The boxes at the grocery store don't do that!

The second step in protecting your hair from damage when you color is to use a color preparation hair treatment. If you regularly dye your hair, about once every month to cover up roots, a color preparation treatment will help remove minerals from the hair that inhibit proper processing of color and extend the life of color to prevent fading, brassiness or discoloration. By using a color preparation treatment, you are taking a step to ensure proper coloring, which means you are less likely to have to undergo color-correction. Our favorite treatment is the EC Mode Color PrePare Treatment. For those who have had their hair colored and the results were less than desirable (maybe orange? pink? too dark? too light?) we recommend the EC Mode Color Correction Treatment before you go into the salon to get your hair color corrected. Lanza offers the Lanza Ultimate Treatment which you can do the day before you go into the salon for a color touch up and then use in-between color appointments to deep condition your hair.

Once you have successfully colored your hair, you need to protect the color. Most people think that using a color safe shampoo and color safe conditioner is all they need to do to prevent their hair color from fading. What these people don't seem to realize is that 80% of hair color protection comes from a color-protection or fade-preventing leave-on spray. Color protecting shampoo and color protecting conditioner don't actually contain any ingredients to protect your hair color, they just contain fewer ingredients that can strip color out of your hair. And hello! You rinse both the shampoo and conditioner out of your hair, so how is that protecting your hair at all? Do yourself and your hair a favor and get a good color protection spray. After spending all that money at the salon to get your hair colored, it's completely worth it to buy a spray to maintain that color. Using a color protection spray means longer lasting color, which means fewer trips to the salon for dye jobs, which means you save money! We recommend the Lanza Fade Protector & Moisturizer. It helps protect your hair color from fading, UV rays, heat styling, and pollution. It's also really affordable.

Heat Styling
Heat styling tools are also a major cause of damage for many people's hair. Blow-driers, flat irons and curling irons wreak havoc on our fragile locks, but we can't seem to stop using them! Many people say to save your damaged hair you must stop using these heat styling tools; not true! You can continue to use the tools as long as you protect your hair from them and learn how to properly use them.

For all types of heat styling, there's a new product called Coppola Keratin Protein Complex. Simply shampoo your hair and condition as usual, then evenly dispense the product onto your damp hair and. When you heat style your hair, after applying the protein complex, the complex not only protects your hair from the heat that would normally damage it, but it is actually activated by the heat and works to heal your hair. For those who blow-dry, flat iron or use a curling iron, this product is a must have.

Blow-Driers: Blow-driers are a necessary evil for lots of people. For those who don't have time to wait for their thick hair to dry naturally, for those who live in a colder climate and don't want to get sick by going out with their wet hair, for those who use a drier to style their hair, parting ways with a blow-drier is a near impossibility. The solution for this sticky situation: get a blow-dry cream or heat protecting spray. Apply a blow-dry cream before you switch the drier on. Not only do these creams help protect your hair from the heat damage, but they can also help add volume and sexy bounce to your beautiful hair. Heat protecting sprays can be applied before blow-drying and are more ideal for those who plan on continuing with heat styling after they finishing drying their hair. Paul Brown Hawaii Thermal Power is a good spray to try.

Blow-Drying Tips: Blow Dry in one direction with the Blow-Drier pointing down at your head at a 45 degree angle. Don't hang upside down, don't move the drier back and forth. By pointing the stream of air down, you are directing the hair all in the same direction. This helps tame frizzies and fly aways and helps cut down on breakage. When you blow dry up, or in several directions, the hair doesn't know which way to go; this can cause frizziness, flyaways and breakage. If the hot air is burning your hand/scalp/other skin, you are either holding the drier too close to your head (it should be 12 inches away at least) or it is too hot. Switch to a cooler setting if possible

Flat Irons & Curling Irons: Hot irons are a great way to tame and style your hair. Girls with curly hair can have straight hair, girls with straight hair can have curly hair, and you don't use any chemicals so you're not damaging your hair! Right? Wrong! Heat is very damaging to your hair! Have you ever slipped or been startled while ironing your hair and touched your skin with the iron? The results are not pretty and they don't feel very good either. That same amount of blistering heat is attacking your hair as well. If you have to use a hot iron to style your hair, you have to use a heat protectant spray to protect your hair from damage. It is essential. Lanza makes a great heat protectant spray called Art Elements Reflex. You spray this on your dry hair and then proceed with heat styling. The spray not only protects your hair from the heat of the iron, but also helps hold your style (so curl doesn't die and straight hair doesn't poof half-way through the day).

Flat Iron & Curling Iron Tips: Don't leave the iron on one section of hair for too long. The longer you leave the iron on your hair, the more damage it can cause. Try to purchase a quality, ceramic iron that gets really hot. When we say really hot, we mean really hot. Salon stylists prefer irons that get as hot as 400 degrees Fahrenheit! Yikes! But you know how your hair always looks amazing after you leave the salon? And you never seem to get your hair just right like your stylist does? That's the power of heat. If that scorching temperature freaks you (and probably your wallet) out, opt for a cooler flat iron. Irons that get up to 250 degrees Fahrenheit can be just as effective for most hair types, and are, generally, more affordable. Never hot iron your hair while it is wet! Ever! Yes, we've heard of those wet-to-dry straight irons that claim to dry your hair and straighten it at the same time, but, quite frankly, these frighten us. The idea clamping a an electronic device around wet hair, while the device is plugged in seems just plain ludicrous; not to mention the extra amount of damage this can do to your hair without you even noticing!

Protecting Your Long Hair
If you have long hair, hair that falls past your shoulders, you need to take extra steps to protect and keep it healthy. If you don't have long hair, but want your hair to grow, the same protective steps should be taken to achieve the longer length of hair you want. Hair takes a long time to grow. The average human's hair grows only half an inch every month. People are always searching for a miracle cream, lotion, oil, or pill to make their hair grow faster and longer. The sad reality of this is that there is no such cream, lotion, oil, or pill that will make your hair grow faster. The best way to ensure hair growth is to protect your hair from damage and to keep it as healthy as possible. Dying, processing, and heat styling your hair as little as possible is the biggest way to ensure your hair is not getting damaged. Damaged hair equals breaking hair. Hair that breaks, is shorter. Follow some of the methods mentioned above to protect your hair from color processing and heat styling. For all types of hair, we recommend using a weekly Conditioning Masque. For daily protect for your long hair, we recommend a leave-in conditioning detangler. Spray on a conditioning detangler, like Lanza's Noni Fruit Detangler & Moisturizer or Jingles Spray Protein Extra, then gentle pick through your long hair with a wide tooth comb. Avoid brushing your hair, as this causes damage.