Episode 83 - 3 Ways to Lose Your Hair in the Salon You Didn't Know!

Hi, everybody, and welcome back to the Alopecia Angel podcast: Awaken to Hair Growth.

Today, we're going to be talking about three causes of hair loss that could be happening to you, to a loved one, or that you can actually stop in the process before it actually happens and mitigate it while you're at the salon. And being in the salon I love going to the salon, I love, love, love getting my hair done. It's a great time for me, and recently I found my latest and greatest stylist. I've just recently moved back to the US and getting my stylist here in my town is really, really exciting for me, and she was a godsend, she really was.

She killed it in my hair, she's has so much experience, she has over 12 years experience, which is something I look for, right? It's something I look for in, in a stylist. And if you want to understand exactly what I look for in a stylist, go back to a previous podcast where I talk about having moved so many times and having to look for and trust a new stylist each time.

Now granted, a situation has happened, which I will talk about here shortly, but going back to this great stylist, Brittany, is amazing and I'm really, really happy that I met her. And she comes from a lot of experience and she conquers my grays really well and has formulated a strategy to really keep my hair to where it is, keeping the integrity of it and allowing the color to naturally really shine. And so I'm really excited to have a new colorist in my new hometown and state. So it's really exciting.

Going back to causes of hair loss in the salon, this has come about. A because I've had a couple of clients experience this. And then recently I've also experienced this myself, not with Brittany, but with the person in Japan, actually. So I'll go into that here shortly. And I didn't know these things caused hair loss and apparently they do.

And so this is why I wanted to bring it to your attention, cause maybe you've had this experience and you didn't know why. And so now I'm telling you exactly why. And what I've been told from multiple stylists who do right, who get their cosmetology license is that when you have, for example, when you dye your hair from a box, the stuff that you get at the drugstore at the pharmacy or at the supermarket, that dye is going to be different than the dye that they use at the hair salon, especially the black dye or darker dyes, because the salts and the chemicals are very, very different. And they're very reactive. So if we go back to chemistry class, there's a reaction that happens when we mix the box dye to the professional dye.

This is a problem because many times we go to a new stylist or we go to a regular stylist, and we don't even tell them what we did during the last three months or during the last six weeks or during the last six months that we haven't seen them, or even in the last year. We don't tell them exactly what happened. And many times that goes for any service provider. We don't really tell them and maybe we don't even know what happened or what things we've used in our hair. And so this is sometimes an issue and it has been an issue for clients and one client in particular, she lost over 60% of her hair at the hair salon. And it could have been a multitude of reasons, but a guaranteed reason to lose hair at the hair salon is when you're mixing the box dye from the pharmacy, from the supermarket with the professional hair dye. Those two dyes do not talk to each other correctly. And on top of it, they create like an atomic bomb of sorts. And this is when your hair just starts breaking off and just coming apart essentially.

This is one reason to avoid if you are using any type of box dye, ensure that your hair stylist knows this and ensure that they are aware so that they can avoid the areas, or maybe just focus on the roots because you have to be very specific because if not that chemical reaction, even if it's been six months, that dye is still there, even if it's like now a shade orange instead of. I don't know maroon or whatever, it's still there.

And so those chemicals are still there and they can react just like, you know, if I were to put bleach on a wall and then all of a sudden I want to add something else, even if it's like three weeks later, that bleach is still there. It's been seeped in into the wall and it could give me a chemical reaction. And in this case it does with hair.

You want to be very mindful of that, that the box stuff can have a reaction to the professional dyes and can create hair loss immediately and can create, you know a chemical reaction. So that's first and foremost.

The second is another client that I had. She got a perm done and I know perms are not common today, but 15 -20 years ago they were, and she got a perm done, and this was a natural thing for her. For those of you who don't know or who are too young to understand what a perm is, a perm is essentially a chemical process of where you go from straight hair to curly hair. And there is also a process that reverses that from curly hair to straight hair.

Any of those two processes, you have to use a lot of chemicals. And those chemicals are toxic on many levels. And in this case, the hurt hair stylist did not wash out all that chemical stuff in her head. And so that chemical stuff was in, on her scalp and on her head too long. It didn't wash out completely and it burned her scalp ,and it created scarring alopecia.

Now this client has recently done my program eight weeks later. Now she's talking about a ponytail. She's telling me she's got a ponytail and that all the areas are filling in. So this is great. It's wonderful to see that, but I'm saying, In order to prevent this from even happening, if you're still getting perms, or if you know somebody, maybe your grandma is getting perms, maybe this is something that they should: a) stop, or b) ensure that it gets washed out really, really well. Because those chemicals, if they stay in, it's not going to help the hair perform and it will probably cause more damage and harm.

And that's the same thing with the dyes, the other reason. So that was number two reason. The other reason why potentially people are seeing hair loss or breakage at the hair salon is because if you get highlights, like I do many times.

What the inexperienced or not knowledgeable incompetent stylists do. They put highlights over the old highlights. So for example, each time I go in, it'll be every three months and I have this big thick roots. And that's exactly where you're supposed to put the highlights. You're not supposed to slather the bleach or the product of the highlights right on top of the other highlighted stuff. Why? Because that creates less integrity for your hair. It creates more breakage and it makes it weaker. We don't want weak hair, we want strong, healthy, beautiful hair. We want strong, healthy, beautiful hair. And in order to do that, you have to maintain integrity of the hair. You have to be very like cognizant of how long you're leaving the bleach in. And also, just focusing on the roots each time you go, not on the whole head, because slathering on the bleach all over and all over and all over is just going to create weaker, weaker hair. And breakage and then hair loss. And this is what we don't want to do.

So a problem here is not just putting the treatment or the bleach essentially on top of already bleached hair. That's one aspect of it. The other aspect is leaving it on too long. So for example, when I was in Japan, it had been six months since I had gotten my hair done and I was already desperate, I was like, I really need to get my roots done, this is like too much for me. And I was really hesitant. I was really hesitant and I talk about this in another podcast because a) In Japan, everyone has black hair, no one is used to seeing a bunch of blondes or doing blondes on a normal basis. And so who would have this experience?

So this was a lot of my concern. And the other thing was how close was this person going to be? If you know anything about Japan, you know that, yes, you have the bullet train, yes, things are quickly from here to there, but I can't travel an hour and a half. By train just to get my hair done, which will probably take three hours to take another hour and a half train back in the same day.

That's impossible. Like that's not, that doesn't make sense to me. So it's one of these things where you wanted somebody nearby, right? Why would you go so far? But sometimes I was living in a small town, but in the bigger cities, you have more opportunity. More possibilities there. So this is the situation that I was in.

And so I ended up going to the city next door, which it was like at the outskirts of the city next door so it still took a long time to get there. And in any case, the lady thought that I was a mix, she thought that there's a lot of mix, you know, like Japanese mixed with Latin, Japanese mixed with Brazilian, Japanese mixed with Peruvian, Japanese mixed with Australian, Japanese mixed with New Zealand. You know, these types of people,

but then because the genetic situation of the Japanese hair that tends to dominate. And so when you want to go blonde in her experience and in her clientele, for the majority of them, except for me, I'm the one exception. She has to leave on the bleach longer. She normally leaves it in for like 45 minutes to an hour, which is too much for me.

For me, it's always around 20 -30 minutes max, but usually 20 minutes with no heat. And so like, I know my hair, I've been doing highlights since I'm 13. So I really know my hair. And what had happened is she left it on a little too long. I had to call her out, raised my hand. I'm like: Hey I think this is on too long, can you check my hair?

On top of that she added like this extra liquid, this extra, I don't know, chemical of sorts that she didn't really ask me if she could use, but she just did. I trusted the process and in trusting the process, she burnt my hair, and she burned it to a fact where, you know, just like anything, if you burn food on the stovetop, you can't eat it. You got to throw it away. If you burn it, if you burn food to an extent, it's just like, maybe you can pick a part at it. Maybe you can do something about it, but it's not going to happen. Right. So you're just going to end up tossing it. I don't think your dog would even want to eat the burnt food.

So it's this type of thing where if she burnt my hair, which she did. You're going to have to cut it off at the time I was in a rush to get home and I didn't see or notice the burn this of it. But as washes happen, as time went on, I started noticing, okay, this part of my hair is not curling. This part of my hair is just like dead.

And that's where, when I got back to the States, I was like, okay, now I need to see my regulars. I need to see, you know, my regular stylist, my regular hair cutter, and just cut this off. And that's what I had to do. I had to cut off like. I cut off maybe like three or four inches of my hair, which is a lot for me because I have curly hair.

So it just shrinks up more and potentially makes me look like a poodle. And so this is what I want to avoid, right? We don't want to look like a poodle, but it's all good. You know, you have to cut where you need to cut and I know it'll grow back. That's the best thing about it. I know it'll grow back and moving forward.

I know that. There's no more language barrier, right? My, in my case, there was a language barrier in terms of having this open conversation. And also there was an inexperience on her part with somebody who was more Western and less Japanese. I have zero Japanese in me. So. She assumed that I did.

And so because of that, she treated my hair just like everyone else. And this is a problem because I'm not like everyone else. And just like, you know, maybe all her clients are half Japanese or maybe Japanese entirely, but I am not. And so therefore you can't treat my hair the same, right? It's not a one size fits all when you go to the salon.

And so the beautiful thing about my new stylist. And this new hair salon where I go to is that I know I'm understood. I know you know, my concerns, including my gray hairs are taken care of. And I know that in the future, no more burning of the hair is going to happen because now I can call this home and be done.

But for those of you who are going through the situation of seeing the hair loss, You know, there's many things you can do a, you can join the program, the hair and heel program, where we revitalize your health and your hair so that you see more of the abundant hair growth come in sooner than later. B you could also be cognizant of what I've just shared with you so that you can ask questions and then also.

Let your stylist know, Hey, I've been using henna. Hey, I've been using the, the stuff at the pharmacy or the, or the drugstore. And so, so that if you give them a heads up, especially with new stylists, then there'll be more more able to help you better. And maybe they say, well, you know what, maybe we can't dye you today, but this is something else you can do, or maybe you're going to have to wait a few more weeks until we can dye you because it's also, you know.

It's also a liability in many sense. I mean, not to say that, that they're going to go to jail for, for, I don't know, for burning your hair off. They're not, but at the same time, you know, accidents do happen. And so you need to be very sure of who you go with, you know, for, for things not to happen, but at the same time, you also got to trust the process.

And it's like, if you're in a situation and you have to weigh that out, in my case, I was in a situation where I couldn't deal with my, with my six inch roots anymore, and I needed to, to get help. As soon as possible. And I did what I could and, you know, it's all good. I'm in a better place now for it. But in any case avoiding the situations is first and foremost, you want to avoid it as much as possible.

So understand your hair, understand what your needs are for your hair and make sure they're washing everything out as much as possible. And if they offer you any new products, I would say, you know, go into it with caution only because as we know with products, With any product for hair, a lot of times they backfire a lot of times it's the shiny new object that comes out like Olaplex, and then all of a sudden Olaplex now has lawsuits against them.

And so now, you know, seeing the long list of, of hair products and hair brands that have had lawsuits in the past because of hair loss. Now I'm more you know, I'm more cautious and I lean away versus lean in. I lean away to put hair products more, and I'm just very, very cautious, but the same goes for, for hair dyes, for henna, for bleaching and for any other process keratin treatments, etc.

Any process that you do for your hair. You got to look at the pros and the cons. You got to look at the backstory to it. And you got to see like, if this is really worth it. I know Keratin for a long time, the Brazilian blowout was such a big deal. And this is for people with maybe curly hair who wanted straight hair or people who just wanted like silky, shiny, straight hair. And had wavy hair or whatever type of hair.

And then all of a sudden, these keratin Brazilian blowouts have formaldehyde you know, had hair loss and had a bunch of other side effects to it. And so you just want to be very, very mindful, but the other thing is to not to mix. To ensure that it's really washed out correctly and to also be cognizant of the integrity of your hair.

If your hair is like literally falling apart, that's not a good time for you to be getting it colored or, or, or bleached at any point, you know, you need the healthy hair to come out. The healthy hair will take that on, but the unhealthy hair that needs to be cut off needs to be cut off. And I'm one to.

Now, especially to cut more than to let dead hair, just linger dead hair. Lingering is not a healthy look, not for you and not for your hair, because you know, when you hold on to something, especially to the dead hair, it's not allowing for more stuff to grow. It's not allowing for more nutrients to get in.

So for example, when you. Exfoliate your skin or your face. You have all that new skin that comes out, right? And it's shiny and it's bright and it's glowing, right? That's what happens when you exfoliate the same thing. When you get a haircut, think of a haircut as exfoliation. And many times it's okay to cut more because Hey, more is going to grow back.

If you're having problems with it growing back, I'm here to help. I'm alopecia angel for a reason. I've been through it myself and I can help you as I've helped the thousands of clients I have in over 66 countries. Go ahead, leave us and rate and review our podcast so that others can listen and find us and get the help that they need to for their hair loss and their alopecia.

I look forward to speaking to you next time. Take care.