This Pre-Shampoo Hack Will Give You Healthier Hair
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The pursuit of healthier, more luscious hair can often feel like a never-ending winding road. No one ever seems fully happy with the texture or health of their hair, and while it feels like you have no choice but to heat style it to improve its appearance, you're also repeatedly told that heat styling is what's eternally damaging it.
Of course, it doesn't help that it's everyone's favorite topic to chime in on and suggest their own unique hack to achieving healthier hair. People have even resorted to applying strange household ingredients like mayonnaise and purple kool-aid to their hair — anything for healthier hair, per Refinery29. Getting healthier hair has been an especially hot topic on TikTok, the land where tips and tricks come to either go viral or die. Now, TikTok users have actually offered some solid solutions backed by years of use and results. Rinsing your hair with rice water, for example, has proven to yield results despite how stinky of a process it is, per Shape.
You have to do your own research and attempt to decipher if a TikTok life hack is actually legit, or going to do more damage than good. This is especially true when dealing with something as prone to getting damaged as hair is. Well, one specific TikTok hair hack has been backed up time and again by actual professional trichologists.
How the hack went viral
When TikTok finally started circulating a solution for healthier hair that didn't include a 10-step process that involved some questionable home ingredients, everyone listened. An $8 scalp massager went viral after users claimed it stopped their hair from falling out, per Women's Health Magazine. Maxsoft's Hair Scalp Massager became popular due to how affordable it was and its effectiveness, according to its 87,000 4.6 star ratings on Amazon, at the time of this writing.
Users made bold claims such as, "I can tell you right now that my hair has never felt more smoother than after I started using this product." Of course, this isn't the first scalp massager on the market, and the claims are generally about what incorporating a scalp massaging step into your hair care routine can do.
The way a scalp massager can help give you healthier hair is it exfoliates any flakiness while stimulating blood circulation to help your hair grow healthier and faster, per Cosmopolitan. The scalp massager works to remove dead skin and produce buildup on your scalp to encourage healthier hair. But this isn't all according to gospel, the professionals have weighed in as well.
Trichologists weigh in on scalp massaging
"Certainly — a scalp massage using the right technique can help hair growth by stimulating and improving the blood circulation within the hair follicles," trichologist Dr. Nick Fisherman told Woman & Home. Fisherman goes on to explain that it's not the scalp massager alone that miraculously grows your hair, but by exfoliating and stimulating blood circulation in your scalp, you can create the environment for healthier hair to grow.
Dr. Bridgette Hill, also a certified trichologist, shared her own tips with Mind Body Green on how to incorporate this pre-shampoo hack with or without the scalp massaging tool, as she prefers to use her fingers. "I personally begin my scalp massages by giving some attention to my shoulders and neck, working my way up to the base of my head," Hill explained. She also recommended grabbing an oil — you could use this step to incorporate whatever hair growth oil TikTok convinced you to buy.
"The fingertips can be used to apply direct pressure to pressure points. The base of the wrist can be used to loosen and roll out the muscles around the temples," Hill explained as the right way to get maximum results out of your scalp massage. Next, Hill grabbed her scalp massaging tool, "Starting at the nape, use the scalp brush and make semicircle motions moving up and around the head." It's really that simple. A spa-at-home experience could actually be the secret to growing healthier hair.