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Tips for Controlling Your Frizzy Gray Hair

First let me explain my system.  Before I ever decided to make this website I purchased almost all my hair products (and a lot of other stuff!) from Drugstore.com.  I love it.  Why? 

1. Anonymity.  I live in a small town and there are definitely things that I don’t want to go into our local drugstore and buy.
2. Free shipping if you spend 49 bucks on eligible products.  What could be better than that? 
3. They let you keep your own list of favorites. When you need something, up pops your list. You check the items you need and away you go.
4. Lastly, they give you back 5 percent of almost everything you buy.  Every few months they send you an email with the drugstore.com dollars amount you’ve accrued, and you can go on the website and spend your savings. What a deal. 

That’s why most of the products I recommend are offered through Drugstore.com. I use it.  I like it. I think you will too. 

How to Control Your Frizzy, Graying Hair

1. Get a professional to color your hair especially if your pre-gray hair was dark and you are going light.  Professionals have access to products that lift color better and are less damaging to your hair.  Think twice before you go darker with a rinse.  The friends that have done this almost always have glaring light-gray roots, which are much more noticeable against their darker hair.  When you use lighter highlights the gray/salt-and-pepper new growth is camouflaged and you can go longer between touch-ups. 
2. You can never use enough conditioner.  The one that I’ve found works the best on graying hair is Nioxin®.  Nioxin not only helps tame the gray frizzies, but each Nioxin product was developed just for aging and/or thinning hair.  The best system is to wash you hair first thing when you get in the shower and then leave the Scalp Therapy (conditioner) on until you are done with everything else...washing, shaving your legs, etc.  I’ve also discovered that the day after I have my hair colored, it really helps to pile the Biolage™ Conditioning Balm on my hair about half an hour before I shower so it can do an intensive rehydration and help alleviate some of the damage done by the coloring. 
3. To avoid damage, always use a leave-in conditioner before you style with heated hair appliances such as hair straighteners and hair curlers (see below).  I use Aveda Confixor Liquid Gel which doesn’t make my hair look greasy or stiff and smells absolutely wonderful. I can’t tell you how many people comment on how nice my hair smells. 
4. Don't shampoo your hair every day.  You can skip a day and wear a shower cap when you bathe or skip the shampoo and put just conditioner on and then rinse.  I know it sounds crazy, but try it.  Just conditioner works especially well if you live in a cold climate where the dry, indoor winter environment plays havoc with all hair, let alone dry, gray hair.
5. Don't use a hair dryer unless absolutely necessary.  If you can't let your hair air dry in the morning, then take your shower or bath the night before when you can let it air dry.
6. Use the right hair appliances.  I have made an extremely important discovery and it is tourmaline.  What is tourmaline, you ask?  Pink tourmalines are precious gemstones with highly unique natural properties that result in the natural emission of ions when they are crushed and heated.  This means that when tourmalines are applied to hair appliances they somehow keep your hair from having the frizzies.  I was dubious, but now I am a believer.  It works.  I bought the entire Remington T | Studio Collection™ with Tourmaline including the hair dryer, the hair straightener and the hair curler.  I even splurged and bought a tourmaline brush so I would have tourmaline from start to finish.  Not only does my hair not kink and wave in all kinds of weird places anymore, but I no longer have a halo of fly-aways surrounding my head when I look in the mirror.  It is heaven.  To style:   I let my hair dry naturally if possible or use the Remington tourmaline hair dryer.  Then I pull the top layer of hair up into a clip and use the hair straightener on the bottom layer. When that’s done I undo the clip, straighten the top layer and then use the curling iron to curl the ends under and to touch up here and there.
7. Use Rogaine® as soon as you notice your hair is leaving your head a little more quickly than it was a few years before. The earlier you start to use Rogaine for your hair thinning, the better your chances for success, and it probably is less expensive than you would expect.  In fact, a 3 month supply is only about $48.98 regularly and Drugstore.com has it on sale every few months for even less.  I can’t guarantee that you won’t have thinning hair eventually, but at least you will know that you did the best you could. Hey, who needs regrets? 

That’s it…my method for frizz-free gray hair that hopefully won’t thin as you get older.  Not too expensive and not too difficult.  I can’t guarantee that your graying hair will respond as well as mine has to the changes in hair products and appliances, but honestly, I don’t know why it wouldn’t.