Healthy Growth with Extensions

Here's a question I'm throwing out to everyone: What was the length/condition of your hair before you wore extensions, and what's it like now? How much damage have you had, if any, or has it improved your hair?

(I suppose it'd be helpful if you specified how long you've been wearing extensions, what methods you've used, your preferred method, and what you're real hair is like.) I'll go first:

Time worn: About 2 years
Methods used (in order): Hairlocs, Cinderella, Great Lengths, Pinchbraids, Extendtubes, Microrings, Shrinkies (only test strands of Microrings and Shrinkies).
Preferred method: Pinchbraids
Hair before: Long, but damaged in parts from peroxide and genetics.
Hair after: Trashed, but recovering slowly.
Real hair: Thin, fine, fragile, limp, super-straight, bleached blonde.

:)

Time worn: 7 months
Methods used: glued in wefts, micro rings
Preferred method: havnt found one yet
Hair before: short, I shaved my head a year ago, good condition, had not been colored or permed since it was shaved.
Hair after: about the same, some breakage, I havnt had a hair cut since I shaved it so its about all one length and its now past my shoulders...yippeee....

I agree Boogiemama...my hair is about 2/3 inches shorter now than it was a few years ago, Ive been wearing more permanent extensions for probably 3 years, but mine is shorter because of breakage from bleach/color damage, and I also cut the rest of it shorter to get off all the damaged ends and to 'evenup' my hair. For that very reason, my next set of extensions I will do very little highlighting and start adding in darker extensions and will start gradually going back to my natural color. I CANT GO COLD TURKEY!! HELP ME I NEED BLONDES ANOMYMOUS!!

Time worn: 5 years on and off
Methods used: sewn-in wefts, great lengths, pinchbraids with hh and synthetic

Preferred Method: pinchbraids
Hair Before: shoulder length, thin, limp, stick straight, unprocessed

Hair After: all different lengths due to shaving part of my head (had a bonded-on hairpiece for 2 years), have been wearing pinchbraids for the past 5 months while my hair grows back in from shaving, no visible damage. I do have permanent thinning in areas from the sewn-in wefts. It was a one-time deal and it took out some of my hair for good.

Real Hair: thin, limp, stick straight (used to be thick, healthy and luxurious and thinned out over time for no apparent reason )

Time worn: 1 1/2 years

Methods used (in order): Clip-on, Braided with wefts sewn in (12 hours, could not take it anymore). Right now I am wearing the Bliss hair that I made into a thick Clip-on weft. The hair that I have on my head is very nice and does not tangle very much but Bliss is not consistent with the hair they send so I was not able to use all of the hair sent.

Preferred method: Clip-on

Hair before: Shoulder length in layers and dry due to a very bad highlighting job

Hair after: Getting longer and healthy looking. I have been using Keraphix by Nexus everyday and I swear this has fixed my hair. I only wash with shampoo 3 times a week (Matrix Biolage Hydrating) but use the Nexus conditioner, Redken antisnap leave in and Condition by Clairol 3 in 1 Extra Hold Mousse. I love this mouse and it's only $1.99.

Real hair: Thick, wavy, good condition, Dark brown dyed a reddish brown. I only use a hair dryer on my bangs and then straight iron them. I never use a hairdryer on my whole head or my hair gets BIG and frizzy. I love long hair but my hair gets wavier as it gets longer so it never is long enough for me. When my hair is wet it's pretty long but as soon as it dries it bounces back up. To get nice waves I twist wet conditioned and moussed hair with my fingers and let air dry.

Extensions give me the opportunity to have the long hair without the wait. I also take 2,000 mg. of Biotin everyday.

sherrie215 wrote: Boogiemama....Im confused...or did I misunderstand your post? You said you've had human hair with heatsealing? uuuhh I thought that could only be done with synthetic? Did I misunderstand?

Yes, you can do heat sealing with human hair.
You incorporate a tiny piece of synth.
This only works well with the two person method of 4 stranding though. It's just a little different than the traditional synth heat sealing technique.

Hey Sherrie-

Embrace your natural blonde! I decided to forego the bleach and 40 vol developer a few years ago with delightful and amazing results. I'm a natural dirty-dishwater (ok, how about mucky, no-color-dishwater) blonde. My hair is about a level 8 dark blonde that I've augmented with some soft (20 vol developer) highlights. I ordered 18/22 Bohyme hair last time that was a dead-on match to my ends (the roots need some sun). My hair has a lot more "depth" than when I was platinum, and it also is a bit more forgiving on the upkeep.

Really, it seems that going darker has been more flattering to my skintone, too. I can wear less makeup (I was seriously pasty with pale, pale hair and pale, pale skin) and I'm spending a lot less money on coloring/conditioning, which has freed up my $$$ to buy extension hair.

I think you'd be happier to leave the high-lift stuff behind. It gives you a little more latitude to be cruel to you hair in other ways!

You can do it! Show you hair some love (and then abuse it with heat styling!).

I just had my second set of GL put in about two weeks ago. I'm still undecided about how I feel about this batch of extensions; however, I did what some folks have done on this thread, and started all over with healthy hair the second time around. It has made a WORLD of difference.

My first set of GL: I have had processed bleach-blonde hair (I am a dark brunette naturally) since the 8th grade. Half the time it was done at a salon, the other half was out of a box done by myself. So it was very. very. fried. beforehand. Before I had the first set put on, my hair was also "layery" from never having my hair cut (yes, i know that I needed to be in hair-prison for that!), and the processing breakage. I wanted to keep the blonde, so I had blonde GL, full head applied. I had them taken out after my 10-year reunion (where I kicked a!@ with my hair - I got voted "Most Changed" and since I don't tan, I looked about 10 years younger [and better IMO!] than all of the cheerleaders who worshipped the tanning bed religiously!), and went with a bob cut, with layers a little higher in the back. The longest part in the front met at my chin. I hated having to cut it, but when you start out with damaged hair, it can't be a good sign...I also switched to my natural shade of dark brown. I vowed the processing would be over with, and my hair thanked me with a huge sigh of relief....

My second set of GL: After three months of allowing my hair to "breathe", as Jenny_RR likes to say, my hair had faded to a light brown shade (which impressed my extensionist because he thought it would fade bad going from dark brown to blonde), but it had grown to all chin length and was completely healthy. When I had my first set taken off, I had foregone the dyejob, and let my roots grow, so he would have a good "sample" of my natural color to match when he did the first brown dyejob. Since then, my hair was my natural color until about 2 inches from the bottom. He was putting the second set on entirely healthy, unprocessed hair. I now have 16" strands, still a full head, but before they went on, he stained my hair with a gentle dark chocolate color and trimmed the ends. Actually, I have been told that I resemble Ashlee Simpson (in this day and age, to me, that's not necessarily a good thing!) because the cut that he gave my extensions to make it blend kind of looks like hers (see the cover of the latest Glamour magazine - It's the one of her in a red dress on the cover); however, I don't have her nose or her natural mullet cut, and I can sing better than she can! I love the extensions, and will keep everyone posted as to the damage my hair undergoes with taking these off...

I am a longtime lurker here, and like most of you, got the majority of my information for extensions here. I have only been wearing these suckers since July of 2004, and have not really had any problems with the GL method. I also have really thick, fine texture hair, and don't naturally have a problem with needing to thicken up my hair. If anything, I break ponytail holders because I have too much hair naturally! I don't know if hair texture and volume makes a difference with the outcome of extensions, but the only reason I got them was because I want long hair, and I have the patience of a three-year-old.

Sorry for the long post, but it's good stuff here!

What was the length/condition of your hair before you wore extensions:
fine, thin, genetically crappy. In the hair lottery, I got screwed!

and what's it like now? :
still fine, thin , and crappy.

How much damage have you had, if any, or has it improved your hair? :
Some methods caused damage, and other did not. The best my hair has ever been was after wearing a 'full cap' weave (no natural hair left out) for about 3 years.


Time worn: about 14 years with only taking a break of about 6 weeks in that time period.

Methods used (in order):
3 tracks sewn in, full cap weave, back to 3 tracks sewn in, Shrink Links, Ultratress Seamless, Invisible hair, integrations, Shrink link Tabs, clip ins.

Preferred method:
Clip ins or Shrink Links

Hair before:
My hair never grows but 3 inches past my shoulders. Just stops growing at that point. Very fine, extremely thin, (see through when wet) and straight-frizzy

Hair after:
about the same condition, but my hairline near the temple area has thinned out alot more, and I don't know if it is due to extensions or just genetics. I suspect that the weaved in tracks caused too much tension on this area and cause the thinning. This hair has never recovered in that area.

Real hair:
Very baby fine, very thin all over (but no bald spots), dark brown in color which I color with Color Sync to make it a 'chocolate raspberry color"

Thanks, girls.

Question for Metalgirl: Why did you stop wearing the full-cap weave? Was it just too stressful for your hair after awhile? :)