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Seriously, a lot of you out there don't know how to do these two things, and you wonder why you have a lot of breakage and split ends. Yeah, it could be your overuse of sulfates and other ingredients, but how you brush and wash is also very crucial to healthy-looking hair.

I want to cover brushing first. You need to find a brush or comb that will not make your hair static or tangle it. Yeah, some brushes/combs just make our hair tangle more, or even break our hair. Next, once you find that brush/comb, do NOT RIP it from scalp to end down your hair. Many of you do this. Have you ever heard that snapping sound when you do that? That's the sound of snapping hair, thus causing split ends and hair loss. DON'T DO IT. -smacks your hands-

...Now, how do you brush your hair? You start from the ends and gently and carefully work your way up to your scalp. If you feel a snarl, stop and brush/comb it out from the bottom again. If that doesn't work too well, go ahead and use your fingers to carefully work out the snarl. Do NOT pull your hair and snap the snarl out. Again: DAMAGE. Work it out, and if it's utterly impossible to get out, then snip it out with hair scissors. Don't worry, no one will notice those few hairs are shorter than the other thousands of hair, I promise.

So that's how you need to brush your hair in order to keep it healthy looking. Simple, and it works for every hair type.

It's an eye-twitching experience when I watch self-proclaimed hair gurus rip their brushes through their hair on videos. I am in no way claiming I'm a guru; I'm not, nor do I think I am. I am just telling you all what I know, and that's it.

Onward to washing. Yeah, some of you don't wash your hair the right way either, and you cause damage that way, too. I only say these things because I love ya, remember that. ♥

Brush/comb your hair before you get in the shower to wash your hair. DO NOT brush your hair in the shower, PLEASE. Your hair is weakest when wet, and it will make the damage worse. If you feel the need to detangle while showering, use a wide-tooth comb only. It's safe for wet hair, and really good for distributing conditioner. Anyway, now you're ready to shampoo or condition. Let's say you're conditioning. Put the conditioner on the places where you want it to be first before working it in; your nape, your length, even on your scalp if you want. Now you want to comb the length of your hair with a wide-tooth comb or your fingers to work in the conditioner. Do this gently, and without tempting yourself to rip through tangles. Don't rub your hair together; how do you think people dread their hair? They tangle it by rubbing it together. So stop doing that, unless you want dreads. Just gently squeeze and comb the hair between your fingers, pulling the conditioner down to your ends.

If you are putting conditioner on your scalp (some people will tell you not to because it makes your scalp oily, but it's different for everyone. Read it from someone who uses conditioner on her scalp ((me)): it works for some people just fine), you want to massage with the pads of your fingertips. Don't scratch your scalp with your nails. That will irritate your scalp in the long run. Just massage firmly, starting at the nape and working your way up. Concentrate on more vigorously in areas you know are more oily or irritated. You should do a scalp massage for no less than two minutes; truthfully, the longer the better. You can't go wrong with a proper scalp massage, and it feels very nice. ^ ^

During this process, don't EVER pile your hair up on top of your head. Bluntly, that's one of the stupidest things you can do with your hair. It causes it to tangle, and it's unnecessary in every way. Let your hair hang over your hands and arms when you massage. It's fine, and it will not panic if you pay extra attention to your scalp. After all, hair is dead once it leaves the roots. Don't let anyone tell you it's alive, because it isn't. Dead things can still react to elements, can they not? There's the rub. If you want to make extra sure your length has enough products, gently squeeze and pull the extra product from the top of your head down your hair. It works good, and it's not damaging. If you feel like that's not enough, then use more product.

At this point you can put your hair in a shower cap, hair band or jaw clip, and carry on with the rest of your showerly duties. You want the conditioner to do its magic, but it can't do much unless you let it sit in your hair for a few minutes. Some people will even leave conditioner on their hair for an hour, but that's up to whoever. I leave mine on for a few minutes. After you're done, take your hair down carefully and you're ready to rinse. The best rinse you can do for your hair after all is finished is a cold rinse. I know, it's winter, but a little sacrifice is not going to hurt you. You don't have to put your hair under ice cold water, but cold water that is bearable and won't make you uncomfortable. Not lukewarm, and not cool, though. It has to be cold.

The reason for cold water is this: You know those little scales you see on hair during advertisements for shampoos and such? Those are called cuticle scales. They open and close according to heat, cold, and other things. Heat makes the cuticle scales stay open, which makes your hair tangle and damage more easily; cold makes the cuticle scales close, which makes your hair less likely to tangle and prevents damage. So cold rinse after conditioning.

After you get out of the shower, it's time to squeeze the excess water out of your hair. Don't wring your hair like a piece of cloth. Just carefully squeeze down the length of your hair. You'll pull less hair out, and you won't snap your wet hair in half. If you want to comb your hair (not brush, but comb), use a wide-tooth comb. You can wrap your hair up in a turban if you want. I use a regular towel to do this, though something soft and cotton is better. Like, an old shirt, or even microfiber towels are good. It really depends what you have handy.

All right. -sigh- ♥
So now that I covered that, I want to also list some very common myths about hair that people will insist to you are true. When they're not, and they really make no sense in the end.

MYTH #1: Trimming your hair every six weeks will make your hair grow longer and faster.

TRUTH: Here's something to think about -- hair grows around 0.5-2.0(though 2 inches a month is very rare) inches every month. If you believe this myth, and you go get an inch trimmed off every six weeks (which is every month and a half), your hair will practically stay the same length it was a month before you trimmed it, and it will stay that length if you keep doing that.

See where that myth is simply illogical?
If you want to grow your hair, trim your hair only when it absolutely needs to be trimmed. If your ends are like Velcro, they are splitting and breaking, then trim them. Trim no more than an inch off, and that's it. Or you can carefully look for ends that are split and just cut those off. It's called "dusting," because when you're done, the split ends you cut off look like dust on the ground. If you follow this technique, you will end up trimming your hair less than a few times a year. Maybe only once a year, if you take care of your hair. See? Myth busted.

MYTH #2: Dying your hair helps to prevent oiliness.

TRUTH: Again, that myth completely defeats the purpose of how our scalp works. Our scalps only overproduce oils when we strip them away in extreme ways, like shampooing every day and dying our hair all the time. It makes our scalps freak out, and they overproduce because they're making up for our mistake of taking away too much oil. So dying makes oily scalps WORSE, worse by keeping that scalp in a state where it will keep overproducing oil. It's an endless cycle that can only be broken by allowing the scalp to transition from overproducing, and the only way to make that happen is by having patience and by knowing what works for your hair.

MYTH #3: Ceramic hair irons seal in moisture because of the steam released when straightening your hair with them.

TRUTH: Just looking at that sentence confuses me. Ceramic is good, don't get me wrong. I have nothing against it. What I am against is this silly steam and moisture bit. What is steam? It's evaporated moisture, right? Well, if moisture from our hair is being evaporated when we straighten it, that means moisture is LEAVING our hair, not being sealed in. That's bad because it means irons, ceramic or not, are making our hair dry, thus causing damage. Don't let anyone try to fool you otherwise.

MYTH #4: Putting certain products on the ends of your hair and then straightening the ends takes away split ends by melding the split ends back to the hair.

TRUTH: I'm sorry, but that's the dumbest thing I've ever heard, but some people really believe that. Read carefully: Once damage is done, IT IS DONE. The only way you can get rid of split ends is by dusting or trimming. That's it. Once the ends are split, they're split forever until you cut them off.

MYTH #5: If you trim your hair every month, your root will react by growing faster.

TRUTH: Your root has no idea what's happening at the end of your hair because hair is DEAD. It cannot feel because it is dead, thus when we cut our hair, it doesn't hurt. That's not saying that anything that doesn't feel on your body must be dead. The brain doesn't feel pain, or else we wouldn't be able to do open-brain surgery while a person is awake, you know? But the hair is dead and that's why the root doesn't react when it's cut.

MYTH #6: Oil is bad for your hair and only makes your hair look gross.

TRUTH: If you put too much oil on your hair, then yeah... it will look gross, but then again it could be an excuse to do a nice overnight oil treatment. ♥ Oil is very good for hair; it helps to bring what lost oil washing might have taken away. Everyone uses a different oil according to what their hair likes. The most common oil people use, though, is coconut oil. I, however, can't use it because my hair hates it. It just sits on my hair, doesn't do anything, and it makes my ends crunchy and like wire. So I use extra virgin olive oil, cold pressed, and cocoa butter. My hair loves both. Some people use almond oil, jojoba oil, even safflower oil. Just experiment and pay attention to the response of your hair.

Also pay attention to how much you can use without your hair looking oily. Use very little and work your way up until you think your hair is at its limit. You don't need to put oil on your scalp; it has its own oil called sebum. Don't rub the oil into your hair, but brush it through with your fingers and palms. Boar bristle brushes help most, but for some they only cause static (like with my hair).

People tend to relate oiliness to dirtiness, when that's not the case. Oil is good, and it's not dirty. It would make no sense to say it's dirty, or else why would we eat it? Why would we put it in everyday products we use on our bodies? Why would our body benefit from it if it was dirty? Because it's not dirty. Dirty is dirty, but dirt is not oil.

MYTH #7: Long hair is too hard to take care of.

TRUTH: Says the girls who spends 1+ hour(s) dirtying (putting products on), blow drying, straightening, and styling their hair. Tch. I've seen women with hair down to their knees put their hair up in an elegant bun in less than three minutes. What now? And their washing routine? Less than thirty minutes, including shaving and washing the rest of their bodies. If anything, shorter hair is harder to take care of in order to make it look nice and not like a mop. Not saying short is ugly; some people look better with short hair, but ladies... sue me, we are meant to have long, glorious hair. I understand some women can't grow long hair because of excessive damage or illness. That's all right; a woman who has cancer or takes medication that causes hair loss is not at fault. Though I have to say that a woman who damaged her hair so much that it barely grows is at fault.

MYTH #8: You must wash your hair every day with shampoo and conditioner.

TRUTH: No, you don't. Shampoo has only been around for about seventy years. What does that say about the necessity of shampoo? If we MUST do it, don't you think shampoo would have been around from the beginning? There is no logic to that myth. The same with conditioner. I don't C.O. wash every day, but every other day. Eventually I want to get to a point where I C.O. wash every 3-5 days! Because I can, if I let my scalp transition to that point! What a concept. You know what? Some people don't use ANYTHING but water on their hair? And that works for them. Their is clean, it doesn't stink, and it's not oily and gross. Proof that at the end of the day, we don't really need much of anything if we try hard enough. Well, at least for a good amount of people.