How did you learn to care for your hair?

Let's face it, long hair -- at least healthy long hair -- requires a thoughtful care regimen (at least for us mere mortals).

So, how and when did you learn to care for your hair? Maybe it was a gradual process. Maybe your mother or a sister or a friend taught you some of the basics. (not mine!) Maybe your stylist gave you helpful hair CARE instructions (not mine!) Maybe you gleaned info from a book or magazine (okay, I did check out a few women's mags for haircare tips back in my early growing days. Where else was I gonna get the info?). Maybe you learned from reading long hair message boards on the www?

So, I'm curious to know where, how, and when you learned to care for your long hair.

i've learn over the years. in magazines at first. the internet has been a lot of help. especially this site. in magazines i don't always agree like supergrover mentioned. i'm short and petite. in magazines the say when you are short long hair is to overwhelming for short people. my cousin has very long hair and she is short too. in my own opinion my cousin looks the best with it long. she has tried it shorter before. she has very thick and curly hair. so magazines aren't always right.

My hair has been considered long for more years of my life than it hasn't, so it's been a lifetime of experimentation. Most of what I know was learned from that or friends, but there have been many things I learned from the internet that I would never have thought of. All I knew is that I had alot of hair that wasn't straight that wanted to get longer because it kept growing. I didn't get really serious about taking better care of my hair until I discovered long hair care websites a year and a half ago and saw pictures of very healthy very long hair. I finally realized it was possible to grow very long hair and keep it healthy!

I didn't know a thing about oiling, or paying attention to the ingredients in what I use on my hair, and I didn't know what my hair type was. After discovering haircare websites, I recall quite clearly going through all my hairties and throwing away all the bad ones. I got rid of 7 brushes I never used. And, after figuring out I had fine to medium hair, I got rid of all my conditioners and shampoos with silicones in them.

The best thing I learned is to use a wide tooth comb on wet/damp hair and never brush it wet, and do a cold water rinse in the end. I used to think it was normal to pull a matt of hair out of my hairbrush every couple of days after brushing wet. Brushing wet was actually significantly thinning my hair out. Once I stopped and as my hair filled out, I discovered that I actually have fairly thick hair, which was a surprise. The second most important thing I learned is using wide and medium tooth combs to groom, and only brushing to distribute oils.