The longevity movement is coming for your mane.
People are increasingly willing to spend lots of money — and time — chasing youth and a longer life. But for some, the journey starts at the tippy top.
Like overall longevity — which uses supplements, tech, diet and other habits to improve from the inside out — “hair longevity” is about getting to the root of healthier hair.
Often a reactive process, traditional haircare aims to tackle issues like dandruff, a dry or oily scalp, breakage or hair loss as they crop up.
“Hair longevity,” on the other hand, addresses issues by going beyond the traditional shampoo, condition and style routine. Also called “hairspan,” it’s how well the hair and scalp are able to maintain a healthy appearance and condition by switching from reactive treatments to proactive routines.
The future-proofing process is about extending the lifespan of our locks by focusing on the scalp, follicle and habits that can contribute to age-related hair changes.
And it’s becoming big buisiness.
“Over the last two years, consumers are thinking about resilience in literally every way,” Suveen Sahib, CEO and co-founder of hair-care brand K18, told Glossy.
“It’s becoming mainstream today for consumers to ask, ‘How do I preserve my biology?’ ‘How do I preserve my skin or my hair and not just try to react to damage?’ ”
The future of haircare, he added, “is going to be driven by biology, not by cosmetic sciences, and that’s going to be a fundamental shift.”
But it’s a long game and not just about faster hair growth or a miracle solution, according to Pablo Ramos, the lead trichologist at Simone Trichology.
“Gradual changes in hair and scalp are much easier to support when they are addressed early,” Ramos wrote in a blog post. “Waiting until a change is clearly visible means working against months of accumulated shift in the cycle.”
The focus is on “consistent density, resilient fibre, a comfortable scalp and a growth cycle that keeps renewing itself normally, year after year.”
He went on to say that longevity for hair is defined by three shifts away from traditional hair care.
- First, rather than focusing on fixing problems when they appear, switch to a preventative routine.
- Second, while length is often used as a measurement of how healthy hair is, the scalp is the actual starting point.
- Thurd, instead of using one-off treatments to quickly and temporarily fix an issue, consistent routines sustained over months builds long-term, quality condition.
There are four conditions to adhere to for hair longevity and to achieve the healthiest hair. And it all starts at the scalp, as “like the skin on your face, it benefits from consistent, appropriate care,” according to Ramos.
Washing away built-up products, dead skin and excess oil leads to a clean environment that healthy hair can grow from.
But be wary of stripping the scalp of all the natural oils it produces by washing hair too much, resulting in a dry, itchy scalp, frizzy hair or hair that gets greasy quickly.
In what Ramos calls “one of the most immediate, controllable parts of hair longevity,” protect what’s already grown by avoiding excessive heat, chemical processing and mechanical stress like tight hairstyles that weaken hair fibers.
Finally, if the hair growth cycle is disrupted by lifestyle habits, stress, genetic conditions, rapid weight loss or nutritional deficiencies, hair health can be affected over time.
