Can hair reach a limit?

[blackgothicdoll]

My ends are dyed at least once, as well as heat damaged. No matter how careful I am I find more splits and knots. I wonder if it's reached its limit and needs to be cut. How long can I realistically hold onto my damaged hair?

More than half of my hair is damaged btw. I've been microtrimming and s&d but still...more splits and knots ever day it seems.

[ArtOfNoot]

I'm worried about this too, the cold is hell on my ends and it makes me worried that I wont be able to grow out my hair and have the thick ends I have now ( I love fairytale ends but they look bad on me :( ) If I bend some of my ends, they make a crease and will stay that way!!!! I have more than grown out my dyied and bleached bits and havent touched an electric hair tool since May last year. I have basically used a hair mask/oil evey week for the last month and by the second day my ends are crinkley and dead and full of slipt ends. I have been S&D aswell, #notrim2020 .

So do I keep S&D every day only to find more split ends afterwards to preserve length or do I trim away the clearly unhappy hair (for whatever reason) for health? But ugh if I trim my hair and lose length, my hair may do this to me again and I'll have shorter hair AND unhappy hair.

I'm at APL currently and would like to keep ahold of the length I've grown

[ArtOfNoot]

I'm worried about this too, the cold is hell on my ends and it makes me worried that I wont be able to grow out my hair and have the thick ends I have now ( I love fairytale ends but they look bad on me :( ) If I bend some of my ends, they make a crease and will stay that way!!!! I have more than grown out my dyied and bleached bits and havent touched an electric hair tool since May last year. I have basically used a hair mask/oil evey week for the last month and by the second day my ends are crinkley and dead and full of slipt ends. I have been S&D aswell, #notrim2020 .

So do I keep S&D every day only to find more split ends afterwards to preserve length or do I trim away the clearly unhappy hair (for whatever reason) for health? But ugh if I trim my hair and lose length, my hair may do this to me again and I'll have shorter hair AND unhappy hair.

I'm at APL currently and would like to keep ahold of the length I've grown

[ArtOfNoot]

oops sorry, I still havent quite figured LHC yet, didnt mean to double post :p

[Panthera]

I think it can. My hair definitely gets to a beyond repair kind of point where it just splits and breaks faster than I can s&d it and it feels like straw no matter what I do. But it progresses to that point very slowly and it's only the very ends of my hair, half an inch to an inch. Usually that happens maybe twice a year or so. I don't worry about it too much, I trim it when I no longer can keep up with the damage but I've still had quite steady growth. But my ends are very damaged, I've bleached and dyed and done all kinds of horrible things, hopefully healthy or healthier hair doesn't behave like that.

[Ylva]

My limit was bleaching my hair 3 or so times. I'm not exactly sure about the number of bleachings because the ends were so old (down to TBL). My hair was somewhat alright for several months until the ends just began to disintegrate into nothingness no matter how well I cared for my hair. I had to trim off about a year and a half of growth to be able to gain length with decent ends again.

[SleepyTangles]

All hair has a point of no return. Sometimes we are just pessimistic, or we have build up, or we don't lock moisture in with effective products.
Regular dustings do miracles: if you take away the bare minimum, you can prevent damage from traveling up the shaft and keep a steady growth, IMHE :)

[Joules]

I do believe in a limit of how much hair can handle, definitely. Once it's there, it will break off until it's all healthy (or you cut it). IMO sometimes it's better to just cut off all the damage and start again with healthy hair.

[YvetteVarie]

Mine do. When I did my last relaxer in May, my ends gave up on life and just disintegrated. I ended up back at BSB from BSL. In such cases, trimming may be the only hope

[Panthera]

I do believe in a limit of how much hair can handle, definitely. Once it's there, it will break off until it's all healthy (or you cut it). IMO sometimes it's better to just cut off all the damage and start again with healthy hair.
Cutting the damage is probably the wisest thing to do but I wouldn't cut it all at once, maybe a little bit, see if it feels better and manageable and cut a bit more if not. But I'm one of those length over quality-people, I'd rather keep the damage until I reach my goal. I don't recommend doing it though but it's possible in some cases. :D

[Kalamazoo]

I S&D daily. My friends say I don't have any split ends. Well, I'm just getting them taken care of before anybody else sees them. That's OK. At least they're not wrapping themselves around other healthy hairs, tying themselves in knots, and breaking their neighbors. And I chop the absolute minimum off each hair. I don't think daily S&D is bad, not at all.

I had heat damage, but I think all the oils I've been using have repaired it. Maybe it wasn't damaged very much, but I was smelling smoke, so it sure seemed bad to me.

If your hair isn't melting off & coming out by fistfuls, then it's not as bad as it could be. Don't despair, be gentle, be kind to your hair & give it what you know it needs, and it'll bounce back.

Even if it IS melting off & coming out by fistfuls, don't despair, be gentle, be kind to your hair & give it what you know it needs, and it'll bounce back.

Limits exist, but they're often elastic, & usually come in stages, by degrees.

[Belgrade Beauty]

I S&D daily. My friends say I don't have any split ends. Well, I'm just getting them taken care of before anybody else sees them. That's OK. At least they're not wrapping themselves around other healthy hairs, tying themselves in knots, and breaking their neighbors. And I chop the absolute minimum off each hair. I don't think daily S&D is bad, not at all.

I had heat damage, but I think all the oils I've been using have repaired it. Maybe it wasn't damaged very much, but I was smelling smoke, so it sure seemed bad to me.

If your hair isn't melting off & coming out by fistfuls, then it's not as bad as it could be. Don't despair, be gentle, be kind to your hair & give it what you know it needs, and it'll bounce back.

Even if it IS melting off & coming out by fistfuls, don't despair, be gentle, be kind to your hair & give it what you know it needs, and it'll bounce back.

Limits exist, but they're often elastic, & usually come in stages, by degrees.

what S&D mean? I've seen it before but I don't know what it means

[Faraniel]

For me, not really in damage...my hair could take a lot (bleaching every month, constant changes, etc) but with length? Even when I had my virgin hair it just wouldn't go past my waist. I'm still mad about it :D

[Belgrade Beauty]

I'm worried about this too, the cold is hell on my ends and it makes me worried that I wont be able to grow out my hair and have the thick ends I have now ( I love fairytale ends but they look bad on me :( ) If I bend some of my ends, they make a crease and will stay that way!!!! I have more than grown out my dyied and bleached bits and havent touched an electric hair tool since May last year. I have basically used a hair mask/oil evey week for the last month and by the second day my ends are crinkley and dead and full of slipt ends. I have been S&D aswell, #notrim2020 .

So do I keep S&D every day only to find more split ends afterwards to preserve length or do I trim away the clearly unhappy hair (for whatever reason) for health? But ugh if I trim my hair and lose length, my hair may do this to me again and I'll have shorter hair AND unhappy hair.

I'm at APL currently and would like to keep ahold of the length I've grown

I found a way to avoid trimming until I reach my goal. I don't know what S&D is,nobody answered but I you want to keep your length you can try my way. I don't know how often you wash your hair,I do it every other day because I have oily scalp, but every day I put coconut oil on my damaged hair. Not a lot,just enough to keep them moist and avoid dryness . I do my oil treatment 2 a week because I have time for that, but I understand a lot of you girls don't so maybe once a week. But my advice on the matter cause I do have the same problem would be trim a split when you see it, and oil the ends every day, or wet them and put some conditioner on them for a few minutes then rinse and let air dry. You can't save your hair that is split already but you can make it manageable like I do. I have a sister that had long hair and her daughters also. She never cuts her hair before it reaches her goal length ,then after she reaches her goal, every month 1 cm until she cuts all damaged her out. I have cut my ends 6 times since growing but it never affected my length because i trim less than it grows in a month. I hope you'll try this and that it will work for you. Best of luck :)

[GoddesJourney]

S&D stands for seek and destroy, or search and destroy as you prefer. It refers to looking at your hair and cutting off individual split ends instead of trimming the whole thing uniformly. People often do this to avoid trimming.

As for limits...it depends on what you mean. If you mean limits as how much damage you can do to it before it stops cooperating, then yes. Your hair can only take so much and then it has to grow out and start over.

If you are referring to terminal length, that is different for everyone. It is unlikely that your terminal length is at APL.

I have relatively thick hairs that don't usually tangle much and i had fun as a teenager bleaching it and dying a wide variety of colors (it's dark so I had to bleach first). After a year or so of this, it turned into straw and refused to get longer. At the time I thought it wouldn't grow, but I realized it was just breaking off at about APL. I had to just wait it out. I tried a bunch of silicone products to coat the damaged hair until I could finally lop it off. I then found out my unbleached hair hated silicone products and so I gave them up and gre out that damage. It took years, but that's the nature of growing hair.

It sounds like you are stuck right where I was. Hang in there. You will eventually grow out all of that damage and your hair will get longer. It won't look like much is happening for a while, but it is.

[lapushka]

Yeah, there is definitely a limit! And I've reached that quite a few times. It was as if I wanted to see how far I could take it. :( :roll: Henna, henna, henna, bleach (full strength), bleach (full strength), box dye, box dye? Melt off, much? <sigh> Yes, that happened.

[Kalamazoo]

what S&D mean? I've seen it before but I don't know what it means

Like GoddesJourney said, S&D = Search & Destroy. I look for the tiniest damage to individual hairs. Often, it's merely a white dot at the tip. Then I use sharp scissors and trim that individual hair. My goal is to trim 2 mm shorter than where the damage starts. (Being near-sighted is useful! :rolleyes: )

I also do a whole bunch of stuff to make my hair grow faster. https://forums.longhaircommunity.com/showthread.php?t=150332&page=4 which works occasionally, provided I'm also doing good basic self-care (eating enough good food, sleeping enough, drinking enough water, exercising enough, doing stuff that makes me happy, etc.)

ETA: IF you can do anything to grow your hair faster (not everybody can), the hairs that grew faster will be healthier than the hairs that grew slower. Let's say two people have 24"-long hair, but A's hair grows .5"/month, while B's hair grows 1"/month. That means B's ends are 2 years old, but A's ends are 4 years old. Let's pretend that A & B are identical twins, so they do everything alike, washing their hair on the same days, using the same shampoo, etc. Well, A's hair ends have been shampooed twice as much as B's ends, & have been blown by the wind twice as much, etc.; so B's hair's going to be healthier, just because it grew faster.

[MusicalSpoons]

Unfortunately yes, that's why we hit false terminals until whatever's causing the damage stops and the damage has grown out (or been cut off). You could maybe consider intentionally maintain your length with microtrimming for a while, see how that goes.



I'm worried about this too, the cold is hell on my ends and it makes me worried that I wont be able to grow out my hair and have the thick ends I have now ( I love fairytale ends but they look bad on me :( ) If I bend some of my ends, they make a crease and will stay that way!!!! I have more than grown out my dyied and bleached bits and havent touched an electric hair tool since May last year. I have basically used a hair mask/oil evey week for the last month and by the second day my ends are crinkley and dead and full of slipt ends. I have been S&D aswell, #notrim2020 .

So do I keep S&D every day only to find more split ends afterwards to preserve length or do I trim away the clearly unhappy hair (for whatever reason) for health? But ugh if I trim my hair and lose length, my hair may do this to me again and I'll have shorter hair AND unhappy hair.

I'm at APL currently and would like to keep ahold of the length I've grown

You may have been better off starting your own thread :) that way we can ask lots of questions to help you pinpoint what things you could improve to help your hair as much as possible :flower:

[Kalamazoo]

Limits exist, but they're often elastic, & usually come in stages, by degrees.

I think that if your hair appears not to be growing, that means that you've reached a limit. It's a less drastic limit than when your hair's melting & coming out by clumps. Just review what you've been doing. Is there something that "everybody says" is bad for hair growth, that you've been doing anyway? You may have been thinking, "My hair can handle it;" but if your hair's not growing, she's trying to say, "I beg your pardon, but is XYZ really necessary?"

What you choose to do about it is your choice. Your hair will tell you whether she liked your choice or not.

[Dark40]

Yep, it sure does have a limit. That's what we all have to deal with.

[ArtOfNoot]

S&D stands for search and destroy and its when you go through your hair section by section and cut off only the strands with split ends. It maintains length but is very time consuming.

Coconut oil tends to weigh my hair down, but I'll definitly start putting oil on my ends and not washing it out! Once I reach my goal length I'll be so happy to trim away all the unhealthy bits while keeping at my desiered length, its literally my dream :p

[Kalamazoo]

Coconut oil tends to weigh my hair down, but I'll definitly start putting oil on my ends and not washing it out! Once I reach my goal length I'll be so happy to trim away all the unhealthy bits while keeping at my desiered length, its literally my dream :p

Coconut oil definitely works for some people, & it is mixed in with other oils in some products that I like. But when I put plain coconut oil on my skin, my skin winds up kind of dry and crunchy. So for my hair, if I'm using one oil alone, I like choosing something else, like argan or avocado or apricot or ...

[blackgothicdoll]

It's not to the point it's breaking off, or at least not alarmingly so, but it seems to be splitting and knotting faster than I can s and d. So it's still hanging in there, but it's a mess. Nothing I hate more than gnarly splits, splits with multiple branches and a knot on some of the branches. Yeah pretty gross haha.

Thanks for all the responses. I think I'm on the right track to retaining it but there are some spots where only prayer is really keeping it attached. I'll keep on s&ding and micro trimming and just be patient and not make it worse. Woosah.

[Hexen]

Hair reaching a limit.
It can be disheartening no doubt.

But I think my hair too just wont grow any longer. And I so much wish it would.
I'm about waist...but it just wont go any farther it seems... :(

[lapushka]

Hair reaching a limit.
It can be disheartening no doubt.

But I think my hair too just wont grow any longer. And I so much wish it would.
I'm about waist...but it just wont go any farther it seems... :(

Patience, grasshopper. One of our mods, at least I think it's one of our mods :hmm: (oh gosh my memory) had a major stall and has beyond knee and it didn't grow for years, then suddenly started to up and grow again; never give up! :D I think it's trolleypup if I'm not mistaken. Oh goooosh someone please correct me if I'm wrong. :oops:

[Kalamazoo]

Maybe it's just been growing slower because it's winter? Some people's hair grows steadily all year long, but others get faster growth in the summer. And then somebody else said that their growth spurts were in the winter?! Hair's very unpredictable. Just wait it out. I've had a 5-month stall, but I think I'm coming out of it. I tried a new hair mask this week & lost a bunch of hair in the shower when washing it out the next morning. That extra hairfall is a sure sign for me that new growth is on the way. My hair seems thicker now! (Not what you'd expect immediately after losing all that hair! But for me, that's my signal that as many follicles reawakened from tellogen phase into anagen as I had hairs on the shower wall.)

[Sarahlabyrinth]

Yes, Lapushka, it was Trolleypup.

[spidermom]

O.k., well I don't think hair has an opinion one way or the other, but I think we humans reach a limit beyond which we are not willing to go. I know if my hair is in such bad condition that I feel I'm fighting with it every day, I'm ready to cut away the damage and return to a shorter length in better condition so I can enjoy it again.

[Kalamazoo]

O.k., well I don't think hair has an opinion one way or the other,

O.K. I got carried away...

[AutobotsAttack]

My ends are dyed at least once, as well as heat damaged. No matter how careful I am I find more splits and knots. I wonder if it's reached its limit and needs to be cut. How long can I realistically hold onto my damaged hair?

More than half of my hair is damaged btw. I've been microtrimming and s&d but still...more splits and knots ever day it seems.

That’s a fairly broad topic in my opinion. If we’re talking in the sense of what most folks on here refer to as “damage”, then you can say I’m sporting 39-40in. of purely “damaged” hair. But objectively speaking, even virgin hair will go through “damage” by just existing, as time progresses.

I’d say it also matters what type of “damage” is going on. Mechanical damage is pretty unforgiving in that it can just straight up break off any number of hairs. The means of said mechanical damage don’t really matter if the end result is still breakage.

Chemical services, in my opinion, have a bit of wiggle room. You’re altering the structure of the hair to some degree, but I think so long as you stay under or within a certain threshold, you can still retain most, if not all of your length. Case in point would be myself. The more you increase what you do to your hair concerning chemical services, brushing, manipulation, using heat, etc, further add to that thread hold of what your hair can handle, and is dependent upon each individual.

So I’d suppose hair can reach a limit, but how quickly that limit is reached can vary.

[ynne]

O.k., well I don't think hair has an opinion one way or the other, but I think we humans reach a limit beyond which we are not willing to go. I know if my hair is in such bad condition that I feel I'm fighting with it every day, I'm ready to cut away the damage and return to a shorter length in better condition so I can enjoy it again.
I know I'm responding two months+ later, but I think this brings up an important point: it may be possible to retain it, but is it really worth it? For me, it probably wouldn't be either.
For someone who prefers length over the frustration of damaged hair, it might be! And that's fair.

I hope you are happier with your hair now, blackgothicdoll! Or that it's at least tolerable. :) You might not see the response, but do you feel like the split ends travel up a lot? That would probably be the main concern to me.

EDIT: Oh! I see you went with a big chop. :) The above still stands – hope you'll be happier with it now! That's what matters the most, after all. It must be such a relief!

[blackgothicdoll]

I know I'm responding two months+ later, but I think this brings up an important point: it may be possible to retain it, but is it really worth it? For me, it probably wouldn't be either.
For someone who prefers length over the frustration of damaged hair, it might be! And that's fair.

I hope you are happier with your hair now, blackgothicdoll! Or that it's at least tolerable. :) You might not see the response, but do you feel like the split ends travel up a lot? That would probably be the main concern to me.

EDIT: Oh! I see you went with a big chop. :) The above still stands – hope you'll be happier with it now! That's what matters the most, after all. It must be such a relief!

Ah, thanks for bumping this thread, and so yes at the highlighted!!

I wanted it to be worth it to hold onto those ends, but it just... wasn't. All I could think about was what my next goal was and then how I'd have to cut back. Now the cutting back is done with. It's over! I can simply grow out my hair now, nothing else.

Now it's not all rainbows and butterflies dealing with all of my natural texture for the first time, and my hair is the hardest to deal with the shorter it is, but hey, I know I can get to the next milestone so it's all about time now. :o