For healthy age-proofed hair this shampoo is your life insurance policy
If you’ve lost your mum, as I have, it can be a relief when the whole Mothers’ Day gifting shebang subsides (not much fun on the sidelines). But it is a chance to remember all those pieces of life advice your mum gave you and to reflect on the things you'd love to share with her.
Mum would constantly grill me for the very latest beauty discoveries, especially when it came to haircare. She had fine hair that grew at a glacial pace, a trait that I inherited when I hit my 40s and my hair refused to grow with any sense of purpose beyond a short bob - no messy updos or milkmaid braids for me, which is probably just as well.
Highlights and keratin treatments became off limits unless I enjoyed watching my hair snap like tinder before my eyes. And when my mum died four years ago, my hair just seemed to give up entirely.
But guess what, mum, I’ve found Botox for hair – well as near as dammit. Grow Gorgeous Hair Density Intense, £19 is a shampoo that will age-proof your locks - and if you’re already at the obsessive plughole examining stage, it can help stop shedding in its tracks.
The magic ingredient is caffeine, which wakes up the hair, stimulating hair growth, a process that slows down with the hormonal shifts in our forties.
MORE GLOSS : Why you need a caffeine shampoo
You massage it into the scalp and leave it on for one minute for the ingredients (which also include amino acids and the hair growth hero biotin) to penetrate the follicle. I use the Scalp Detox Scrub, £28 first, which gets rid of build-up and, just like an exfoliator for the face, gives the actives in whatever you put on next a chance to sink in more deeply. The Hair Density Conditioner Intense, £18 too is light but deeply hydrating and the whole regime leaves hair softer, fuller, easy to style and smelling divine.
For daily maintenance, I use their Hair Growth Serum Intense, £45 (massage in 20 drops a day). It's like rocket fuel for follicles with its six per cent caffeine complex. It has hydrating hyaluronic acid, peptides and something called bio-active pea sprout, which they say, starts to work within two weeks to improve hair growth by 78%.
Having thick lustrous hair is such a signifier of health and vitality, that it can be deeply upsetting when yours just won’t play ball and it takes forever - years, I’ve been there! - to see signs of recovery. Hair is super-sensitive to life events and we don’t always know when they’ll strike. Pregnancy, perimenopause, hormones, diet changes, stress, grief and illness affect all of us at some point. As trichologist Anabel Kinglsey told me when I dragged my spring tide hairline to her consulting rooms, by the time you notice something’s amiss up top, you’ve already lost about 15 per cent of your hair.
All the more reason to start using a specialist healthy hair regime as an insurance policy (hindsight, I hear you). Grow Gorgeous have all hair female concerns covered, from lack of density and volume to shedding, split ends and product overload. Their stuff is sulphate- and paraben-free and vegan.
It may seem crazy to spend £19 on a shampoo and even more on a scalp serum, but I’m not going back. You can blur your wrinkles and create a distraction with clever makeup, but when you wake up and discover your parting is a mile wide, there’s nowhere to hide.
So hair resilience is what it’s all about. Now, mine doesn’t break as much anymore, I can finally go back to my straighteners and my parting is no longer such sweet sorrow. But don’t wait till you have issues. Show your hair some love while it’s still going strong. And your mum too.