Coconut oil and biotin: Hair edition

Since I purchased the biotin and coconut oil for my peeling nails, I looked into other uses for them too. You can view that post to see specifics on brand and cost.

The biotin supports not only nail growth, but hair and skin as well. My hair grows faster than average, so it's not anything I'm too concerned about, but I thought it might be interesting to sort of track it and see if this seems to give any additional boost. I'm sure a lot of other factors are going to play in like how much you use heat on your hair and what sort of product your use (shampoo, hair spray, gels etc).

The coconut oil can also be used as a deep hair conditioning treatment. It apparently can penetrate the hair shaft, unlike your store bought conditioners, and repair from the inside out. You can put some in your hair and put on a shower cap and blast with heat for a hot oil treatment, or just put it on and leave it there for awhile. I opted for the second option. I put some on and ran a rat tail comb through it to make sure the oil was evenly distributed. Then wrapped my hair up in a bun, and left it sit for hours. We weren't going anywhere, so it wasn't a big deal. Someone, of course, had to stop by and I hope I didn't look completely disgusting. It also smells nice and some of it melted down onto my forehead and neck, so they got a nice moisturizer too. Don't forget to just rub the extra into your hands instead of washing it off!

Doesn't look too bad. Just like you've got your wet hair pull up.

Then you just wash and condition like you usually would. Make sure you wash it all out. The first treatment, I had a section that I didn't get out with the first wash and had to do it again because it looked like I had one extremely dirty chunk of hair over my ear. My hair looked and felt a lot smoother just with one application. The little fly away frizzy looking hairs were tamed too. I've got some fine baby like hair around my temples that likes to get a little crazy now and then, but this seemed to help tame it.

I've done the conditioning treatment twice now. I think 2 times a week is good until you get it where you want. Then once every 1-2 weeks (or as needed) to maintain. I don't use much product or heat and my hair is all virgin, undyed hair right now. Our water is very hard though and I've struggled with my hair since moving here.

It also is antimicrobial, and can help with dandruff. If that is an issue for you, make sure to really massage it into your scalp too. It would also help with a dry, itchy scalp not related to dandruff.

There looks to be a ton of uses for the coconut oil. What do you use it for? Some I ran across were makeup remover, lotion, cloth diaper cream and even as a diet. The people were eating nothing but the oil to perform a cleanse, and the process didn't sound pleasant.

Not the best photo since it was just iPad, but gives good idea of the length.  It's also just air dried here . NO product/straightening. Just natural after washing it from the oil treatment. 

My hair measures 17" root to longest tip (about 14" root to tip of a single strand). Then I had some side swept bangs, but they hang to my chin now. Need to go get a trim to get rid of any split ends so it can grow healthily. I'm aiming to grow it out again, so hoping this helps speed up the process just a tad bit.