My Six Months Hair Growth Challenge Update, Routine & Before and After Photos

Hey everybody!

I’m very excited today to share my 6th month hair growth update after starting the MABH blogger hair growth challenge! I know I’ve been very irregular with the updates. My last hair update was on November last year and since then, I sadly couldn’t make another post on my hair growth.

My hearty thanks to the other bloggers who shared their interesting journeys and kept the challenge alive! Read more about them HERE. I’m doing another post on their growth updates (with links to their blogs) very soon.

Note : The ends are thinner because I didn’t shape them straight for the last 2 and half years. My previous hair cuts (step, layer etc) are making my growth in such shape; but I don’t mind it as I’m concentrating on the length! As long as they are healthy and split-end free, I won’t be shaping them anytime soon!

My Current Hair Length! 

(Almost thigh length or thigh length?!)

Months 1, 2, 3 were the best! 4 and 5 were horrible (chickenpox) and 6th month was good! Overall, I won’t call it the best phase of my hair growth but I’m GLAD that I was able to save my hair in spite of bad health issues.

I talked about the hair enemies on my hair growth challenge announcement post – sunlight, chlorinated water, stress, sleeplessness and excessive body heat. I shall now write about the changes I’d made to them in the last months.

Exposure to sunlight – none; I feel very lucky for not exposing my hair to the sunlight! Though there was no ‘harsh’ sun here in Chennai till march, I managed not to go out without a scarf and my hair escaped from the direct heat. I strongly believe it has helped minimizing my regular shed rate!

Chlorinated water is still an issue. Since I live in a coastal area, the salty water is unavoidable. I thought I’d moved to a good place where the water isn’t salty.. but.. Though the tap doesn’t taste salty here, I found out that it is actually hard after it made my skin dry. No much difference in these months; I had to bath in the same old tap water; but thankfully, I’ve found a new water new method now and I’ve been following it for the last two weeks. I’m using ‘bottled drinking water’ for the last rinse, i.e I pour pure cold drinking water on my hair (2 liters for the length of my hair) and towel dry it at the end of my hair wash session. This way, it helps me to get rid of the unwanted minerals, salts and chlorine from my hair strands and the scalp. I thank someone (name – unknown) who wrote this idea on the long hair forum on the internet!

Excessive body heat – Never bothered about body heat for the first four months. I really took care of my health, consumed a B Complex supplement (that helps mouth sores, body heat etc) and vegetables to keep my body heat balanced. The came the Chickenpox!! I had nothing to do about the disease except to help my body heal faster. Since it is a virus, it takes its time to finish its cycle and disappear from the body. (I’m sharing more about my the disaster below!)

Stress and Sleeplessness – These took a toll on my overall health and hair growth on months 4 and 5! Chickenpox explains it all. So you can assume how bad my stress levels were. I didn’t sleep properly either.

My body heat hiked like anything during the chickenpox. Mouth sores, blisters and red eyes! Those were few horrible days I don’t want to remember. I couldn’t dress up; I could not comb my hair and detangle it continuously for 2-3 weeks. I could not even talk or rest. My body was covered with hundreds of blisters (40+ on face) and I’d call it severe! I cried a lot to get over the after effects! I thought the marks are going to stay forever. I covered my face with a scarf whenever I stepped out but.. finally they are fading away! And I can’t be any more happier. I shall soon do a post on my current skin care that helps me fade the marks. I hadn’t shared my skincare routine after January.

Alright; enough about the skin. So it is not only my skin, the virus made equal damage to my hair! There were too many blisters on my scalp as well. They itched a lot and took 4-5 weeks to shed completely. When they did shed, they made the hair shed too! I was horrified that they damaged the roots of my hair strands. It was the worst ever hair shed I ever faced in the recent past!

No water, no comb and no oil had touched my hair the ONE whole month when I was sick. And you know what that would do to my hair! After I recovered, I detangled my hair to lose a bunch and noticed how my hair got thinner and that is the sole reason why I’m happy about the results of this challenge when I clicked my hair! I religiously oiled and maintained my hair soon after I got alright after the chickenpox and the shed reduced a LOT. Again, thankfully I’ve not lost any volume or length!!! It’s only a bit of volume I suppose but I’m coping up with that! People say my hair has grown out! :)

My Hair Care Routine:

As I mentioned earlier, things were fine till January. My diet, oiling routine and no-exposure-to-sunlight helped my hair shine! I’ve even updated about the same HERE. After my illness, the shed multiplied and the shine reversed. It’s only recently unusual shed has stopped (after the end of February) and that was too after I started oiling my hair (With the MABH fast growth hair oil) I took a glass full of tender coconut EVERY day and I must say it worked like a charm in controlling my body heat. The first thing I had every morning – the tender coconut; sometimes I liked it and the other times, I hated sipping it! But for the hair, compromises should be made.

Coming to the diet – It was a tragedy during the time of chickenpox and even after the cycle! I was not allowed to eat non veg food. Not even eggs! (that I used to eat every single day; you can read HERE on how eggs help my hair growth!). I lived a vegetarian life for more than a month which means my protein intake went low. I highly doubt this could also be the reason for the excessive shed. I had the lightest foods, mostly liquids to help my body heal. Dal, soy chunks and almonds were what I managed to eat 3 weeks after the pox. After a month, I went back to the egg diet! I started eating 2 every night with my dinner and slowly, included chicken. Only after starting the oiling routine and bringing back protein to my diet, my hair shed visibly got less.

Now, my hair is finally in its good phase!! Not very shiny as before to be honest but the shed is not at all bad. For how ill I was, I expected to lose half of my hair. And I know how hard it is to grow it back. But fortunately, I escaped it without much damage! My dad says the ends have thinned a bit and mom says they have not. But I’m overall satisfied with the hair challenge! If not the challenge, I’d not have taken good care of my hair and the chickenpox would have done its evil work!

The difference!!

Hope you liked the photos! Kindly share your comments below!

And I thank every blogger who participated participates in this challenge! You all encourage me and your other readers by updating photos of your hair. They motivate people! And I also apologize that I couldn’t send the products in time. My health, work and few other personal issues troubled me in between. Within a week, I’m dispatching 3 bottles of the product (www.mabh.in) to each blogger who’s in the challenge! And I’m looking forward to read more about your progress in coming months!

The challenge isn’t over yet and I’m inviting new bloggers/youtube gurus to participate! You can also participate if you are a non-blogger. So if anyone’s interested, kindly drop me an email at lancy@makeupandbeautyhome.com. And please apologize me once again for not making the updates in time! I’ll be doing regular length-checks and updates on the blog in coming months. Stay tuned!