When I was growing up people in authority, old wives all, recommended that if you wanted your long hair to look lustrous, you needed to brush 100 strokes a day. My grandmother suggested doing this at night. My mother thought it was better to do it in the morning to “wake up your scalp.”
This 100-stroke command appeared as a grooming tip in various magazines, not to mention fiction, and I don’t just mean Jane Austin. But then suddenly the advice changed to, do NOT brush your hair 100 strokes. Some of the sources said you don’t need to, others said it was positively damaging.
Now I understand that if your hair is chin-length or shorter there’s probably not much point, but about about those of us who have two or three feet of hair? I’m not much into the whole counting thing but I’d guess on days when I’ve worn my hair loose rather than up or braided it takes close to 100 just to get it all smoothed out at the end of the day. (More if the day was windy. Which is seems like they always are.) And even if I did wear it up, it feels good to brush it when I take it down. But I have really, really fine hair and I don’t want to damage it.
Were the 100 strokes maybe a way not to have to wash it so often? How about people who are doing the no-poo thing?
I look to Phillip Kingsley* for the guy with the answers about hair and he says no on the 100 brushes a day thing.
Just as an aside on the no-poo thing: I have never, not ever, met anyone who does this whose scalp didn’t stink. Not one. Yes, even the ones who say their scalp doesn’t stink. The only way I can see this working is if you never ever break a sweat and even then I’m dubious. Can you imagine working out and then only running water over your hair and scalp? Yikes.
*He’s been a renowned trichologist for many years. Don’t let the website selling his products fool you. He was the go-to guy long before that. Still, it’s an opinion and I’m sure you can find others saying different. Unfortunately, there’s not always a consensus.
Well, he’s incorrect about a couple of those things (rinsing with cold water makes my hair unquestionably easier to comb out, but it’s long enough that I can do the cold rinse without getting cold water on my scalp to constrict the blood flow, or whatever it was he said). Also, he says if you pull a gray hair out, two more will grow in its place, and explains why. This could be a godsend for people with thinning hair, just pull some of it out. (In other words, I don’t believe it. Not gonna try it though.) Bald men tend to have more hair on their chests & backs than men with a full head of hair? Not in my experience. So…
As I mentioned, though, opinion on the internet is divided.
As an aside to your aside: Right, I cannot imagine working out and then not shampooing. And if your workout is swimming then you have to wash the chlorine out (well, I have to, the smell would drive me nuts). Maybe the no-poo people don’t work out.
The scalp produces oils which coat the hair follicles. This makes the hair appear lusturous. Brushing was supposed distribute this oil evenly throughout the hair. Especially important for people with really long hair. Now that people shampoo frequently there is no point to this brushing since the oil is going to be shampooed away.
It must be for white people’s hair only, because I can tell you my hair - curly, thin - does NOT do well by being brushed 100 times. It just dries it out and makes it frizzy. Best for my hair is to wash it 3-4 times a week (every other day) and brush it once or twice when wet, to get all the tangles out, style it, AND DON’T FUCKING TOUCH IT FOR THE REST OF THE DAY.
Doesn’t all that brushing just damage your hair? Maybe if you have really silky soft hair, but the only people I see who have that are white people and E. Asians.
I think the prevailing wisdom nowadays is to brush only until the tangles are gone and the brush glides through the hair. A boar bristle brush should be used as the bristles won’t snag the hair. Hope this helps.
I don’t either. Luckily Nametag was so incredibly helpful by pointing out what you may have misread, rather than replying with useless, pathetic snark.
medstar touched on it. The 100 strokes advise dates back to when hair brushes were made from natural/animal origins like boar bristles. Brushes like that will help pull oils from near the scalp towards the tips. Women almost universally had longer hair and rarely washed it (naturally, as a matter of water availability and how harsh lye-based soaps were), so distributing the oils was more important toward conditioning the hair.
These days, brushes are made of synthetic materials that do nothing for oil distribution, and women wash their hair much more often. Today there are shampoos that are far more gentle than what used to be available, and conditioners to replace the sebum that used to be distributed by brushing and not washing.