How I Finally Healed My Broken Hair (2024)

Let's just say my hair has been a journey! Growing up, my hair was never a problem. It was always on the thicker side, and if I had any complaints about my person, it was more in the realm of braces, freckles, or fashion...never really my hair. Let me show you an example!

In the following photo, which my mom snapped before I left for the first day of my ninth grade year, the braces and fashion were a little wild.

This was not costume day at school, btw! This was the result of a back-to-school clothes shopping trip at the mall. And yes, this was the best outfit I could come up with! But as you can see, my hair was just fine. I'd used Clairol hot rollers, used my cool shades to pull it away from my face, and I was ready to go. (Note: This is my natural hair color; I had not color-treated my hair at this point in my life.)

This next photo, fast-forwarding quite a few years, is in 2010. I was 41 years old and appearing on Good Morning America for my first cookbook. (Hi, Robin Roberts!) Unlike the previous photo from ninth grade, I had color-treated my hair a few months before this, so I was darker/more brunette than usual.

This was all my own hair back in 2010---I had not discovered hair extensions then and didn't need them. I didn't do anything beyond shampoo, condition, blow dry, and curl with a regular clamp curling iron.

Now. Just two years later, around 2012, things started to go south for my hair. I had noticed the texture had slowly started to change; it seemed drier and a little more frizzy. Around this time, I also decided to go lighter with my red color. Here's a pic from that time, post-color change.

(I miss you, Walter!) As you can see, my hair is shorter and had already started losing thickness; I had not intentionally cut my hair or gone shorter. I noticed around this time that my ponytails were a lot smaller, too, so things were definitely changing.

Later in 2012---just three months later, actually!---I attended a party for my friends, Courtney and Robert Novogratz. I recently saw this stock image of me from that party, and you'll see that my hair is noticeably shorter and less thick.

Again, I hadn't cut or thinned my hair at all from the 2010 photo above. It was clearly breaking and/or falling out, and wasn't growing back very robustly. And by about 2014 (two years later) it had really become clear that my hair was but a shadow of its former self. So this was the year I gave hair extensions a try!

In the above image, it's about 15% my hair, and the rest are all hair extensions. They may look decent in this photo, but this would usher in about six full years of constant hair extensions. Because once I started getting hair extensions regularly, it made my already bad hair situation worse. It was a vicious cycle: Because my natural hair was broken and unhealthy, I used hair extensions to get the volume and length that I preferred, but the longer I used hair extensions, the harder it was for my hair to heal.

In addition, the upkeep was very time consuming...and very expensive. But I felt pretty stuck in the cycle for several years! The following photo was from 2019.

Hair looks fine, but it's mostly extensions and I could never really run my fingers through my hair and not feel that signature hair extension evidence.

Then Covid happened. And just as everyone did, I processed the news, read articles and assimilated information about the best ways I (as the daughter of a doctor! haha) to avoid it/endure it. One measure I landed on was taking daily doses of Vitamin D, which I began pretty quickly. This was obviously in spring of 2020, and by fall of 2021, I was still taking Vitamin D on a daily basis and I had noticed improvements to the quality of my non-hair-extension hair. Here is a photo of my hair then.

I was still wearing extensions, but was using fewer of them because my hair had steadily been growing and---the kicker---not breaking as easily. So while I was wearing extensions then, my natural hair was picking up more of the slack, accounting for more of the volume, and feeling better. I don't know if this had any bearing at all, but I also had dropped 50 pounds at this point. Just mentioning, because a huge part of my weight loss approach involved eating more protein as a percentage of my calories: Greek yogurt, cottage cheese, chicken, beef, egg whites, etc!

Last summer, things had gotten progressively better with my hair and I decided to shed the extensions altogether. I was ready to get out of that loop, and my hair had healed enough that I felt like myself again.

By this time, I was still taking Vitamin D (and had started using some of the products I'll list below), but I felt my hair color needed a change. It had gotten progressively more yellow-orange instead of orange-red, and I couldn't help but wonder if the constantly lightening of my color was antithetical to my hair health.

So I decided to go darker with my color. Still reddish, but closer to my natural hair color (as a ninth grader!) and instead of lightening/stripping my hair, it was deepening/depositing color in my hair. This was around the time I also started regularly using Velcro rollers as much as I could, to add more body to my hair as it dried. This way, I avoided blow drying it all the way from wet to dry, and I didn't have to use the curling iron quite so much.

Here's where my hair is today.

I'm 55 years old now, so it will never rival my 41-year-old hair at Good Morning America and certainly not my ninth grade hair in my mom and dad's kitchen. But after struggling for so many years with the health of my hair, it just feels good to be on the other side and not have to spend the time and money to keep that extension game going.

Here are the steps I took! (Please, please ask your doctor about the vitamins. I can only speak to the experience I've had, but only your doctor can tell you if these vitamins are advisable for you given your overall health):

• Vitamin D3
• Vitamin K2-45
• More Protein in my diet
• Eufora Moisture Intense Shampoo & Conditioner
• Velcro Rollers on barely wet hair
• Darker Hair Color
• Patience! It takes time to see a difference with hair health measures. Just like a lot of people pull a pot roast out of the oven way before it's ready and assume they can't cook pot roast, a lot of people stop hair measures after a couple of months because they don't see a change. But hair cycles are long, and slow and steady wins the race! My race was several years long, but once I started Vitamin D (and especially Vitamin K), it's been a rapid improvement.

Vitamin D Drops

I had been taking a regular Vitamin D tablet, but a year ago I started on these drops (at my dentist's recommendation because I had a tooth/bone issue!) I take about 5 drops (not droppers, drops) daily.

Vitamin K

This was also at the recommendation of my dentist: Taking Vitamin K2 with Vitamin D reportedly works magic and has a positive effect on bone mass. But I think it also really helped my hair! In drop form, I take 5 drops daily; in pill form, I take 1 pill daily. (BTW, my fingernails are hard as rocks.)

***Again, be sure to ask your doctor before you take the D and K supplements, just in case!

Eufora Shampoo and Conditioner

It's hard to imagine that a topical substance such as shampoo would make a big difference, but all I can tell you is that I have used this exact shampoo and conditioner for the past three years, and my hair has only gotten better. It is pricey, but a little goes a long way.

Velcro Rollers

I love the big ones, and I mix in little ones here and there for more curls. My family has just gotten used to seeing me walk around the house with Velcro rollers. I told them to get used to it! 😂

Below is the before and after.

Thanks for letting me share, friends! I hope you found something in this post that helps!