Does Olive Oil Make Hair Grow Faster?

by Sam

Does olive oil make your hair grow faster? Does it make your hair healthier? What are the best ways of using olive oil in your hair care? Find out here!

Many people try to move away from hair care products that are over-priced and loaded with chemicals. They are looking for easy to use, affordable, homemade body and hair care remedies, hoping to achieve better, healthier results for less money spend. Olive oil is known for its many health benefits, when used internally, but does it also live up to the expectations when it comes to external uses? Does olive oil make your hair grow faster or not? And what are its other benefits when used externally on your hair and scalp?

Olive Oil and Hair Growth

The human hair grows an average of 0.5in / 1.5cm per month (for how it does this, see Wiki article on the right!).

If your hair grows considerably slower than this, adding olive oil to your diet, and healthy eating in general, can indeed help you. But whilst it is certainly beneficial for its nutritional value, it can't be absorbed into the hair via external applications. It does help to moisturize and to smooth hair and scalp, but it doesn't directly help your hair growth when only applied 'from the outside'. So, for maximal benefit you should add it, in form of cold-pressed extra virgin olive oil, both to your diet and to your homemade hair care products.

Olives on Tree
Olives on Tree

Hair Growth Wiki

Human hair grows everywhere on the body except for the soles of the feet and the palms of the hands, the lips, and the eyelids, apart from eyelashes. Like skin, hair is ...

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Olive Oil and Hair / Scalp Health

Olive oil, when applied as a hair mask or when incorporated in shampoos and conditioners, helps to moisturize skin and scalp and can help with dandruff, itchy, dry skin on your head and smoothing of frizzy or curly hair. A healthy scalp is the next step, after a healthy diet, to healthy hair growth.

Homemade Oilve Oil Hair Mask Recipes

It is actually quite easy to make your own olive oil hair mask, see recipes below. As for how to apply it, see video on the right. Here some additional tips:

  • Instead of warming the mixture in the microwave, you can do this also on a stove.
  • Apply the hair mask to all your hair, starting with the scalp and hair roots, massaging it in gently, and then work your way down to your hair tips.

How to Apply Olive Oil to Hair

  • The best time span to keep this kind of hair mask on, depends on the type of hair you have. For thin and straight hair 5-10min are often more than enough. Thick, very curly and frizzy hair can need a several hour long treatment to see the best results.
  • Always cover your hair, first with some plastic foil and then with a thick, warm towel for maximum effect.
  • After the time is over, rinse hair and scalp thoroughly with lukewarm water and let air dry. If you don't need to go out that day, it really pays out not to wash your hair with shampoo the first time round, this way you get the maximum benefit from it. If you have to go out, or the next day, simply wash your hair with a gently shampoo for 'oily' hair and you are all set.
  • This kind of hair masks shouldn't be applied more than one, maximum two times, a month, as they could make your hair too 'heavy' looking. Sometimes less is more!

Recipes:

Use one part extra virgin olive oil and one part honey, warm gently and mix until you have a smooth, even liquid. Apply as warm as possible, without burning your scalp, so test first! This is your base mixture, for added benefits and fragrance you can also add some of the following ingredients:

Essential Oils - like rosemary, lemon, tea tree or whatever your favorite essential oil is. You can also add other oils, such as almond oil or coconut oil at this stage.

Fruit - You can also add fruits like banana or avocado to your base mixture. Just smash them with a fork and / or use a blender or food processor to achieve a smooth, even texture.

Raw Egg - This means basically making a 'hair mayonnaise' ;-) Mix egg yolk and olive oil very slowly, drop by drop, at room temperature, until you have the desired consistency. Now you can add a few drops of essential oils and / or fruit and you have a very rich, natural hair mask.

Note that, as the two last 'olive oil hair mask' recipes are richer, aka heavier in consistence, therefore the time you leave the mixture on should be shorter. Especially if you have very thin, fine and straight hair, if you overdo it, you might end up with healthy, but oily hair that clings to your scalp. Not what you were looking for!

More Health and Wellness related Articles

... by yours truly ;-)
The first time I heard about the whole 'drinking olive oil' concept, I thought: OK, big detail, isn't that the same as cooking with and eating olive oil? But the idea IS different
How much water should I drink per day? How much is enough and is there something like drinking too much water? This article aims to answer all these questions - and more.

Summary

Whilst olive oil doesn't help to make healthy hair grow faster, it certainly helps, when taken internally, to provide your hair body a lot of nutrients that help it to grow healthy hair. And when used externally, as a hair mask for example, it does smooth and moisturize your scalp and gives your hair a healthy shine. Try it out for yourself and if you like, share your experience in a comment!

Updated: 06/08/2012, Sam
 
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Sam on 02/24/2012

It certainly helps to moisturize the scalp, so I wouldn't be surprised at all if it helps also against dandruff as this is often connected to a dry scalp. No own experience on that one neither, never had dandruff, perhaps because of the olive oil?

kaazoom on 02/24/2012

When I was a child, we used to use it to help clear up dandruff. i'm not sure whether it worked or not.

Sam on 02/24/2012

What a coincidence, lol, Angel! Tell us how it worked for you when you are done ;-)

Angel on 02/23/2012

This is too funny. I am sitting here right now reading this with Olive Oil on my wet hair. I just bleached my black hair and working on going blonde. I needed something to treat my hair since it felt so dry. I read good things about Olive Oil. So here I sit and reading some more good things about Olive Oil.

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