Tag Archives: Sam Macdonald Hair

My Year Off Part Three Taking Up Meditation

My Year Off Part Three – Taking Up Meditation

Sam Macdonald Hair | Hairdresser Trigg Scarborough North Beach Sorrento Karinyup Carine Duncraig Meditation

So not really giving something up is it?

However in a year of giving something up every month, if I’m honest I don’t have 12 bad habits.

I had to come up with something else that would be a positive change. Maybe I should call it my year of a positive change every month. Nah, doesn’t have the same ring to it…

I did put this one out to you guys, as a choice between meditating and giving up those tasty morsels of goodness that we call chips, that I serve in the salon along side the wine.

You made it easy for me, because those chips would have been waaaaay harder to stop.

I did question if there was a hidden message from you all telling me I needed to relax a bit. Hey if that was it, you were right!

So how did I go?

Loved it, every day I loved it.

There were 2 nights I got home late and realised I hadn’t done it yet. I tried to do it in bed before I went to sleep, but you guessed it, I feel asleep.

When this happened, I made it up by doing 20mins the next day. Actually by the end I was doing 20minutes by choice, as I find it takes me 10mins to slow down enough to really get the good bit out of it.

My physio has taught me how to breath into my stomach, so I did all my meditation with this technique.

I would start by concentrating on each part of my body until I felt heat in it and then move on till the whole body was done.

After this with the remaining time, I just concentrated on my breathing.

I have shared this with a few of my guests throughout the month and a lot of you have said they just can’t mediate. The common issue is not being able to stop thinking and then getting a bit frustrated with it.

For me, I was not this hard in myself. Some days were easier than others, to actually slow down my brain. I figure just the fact of stopping and breathing slowly for this long, is a vast improvement in what I usually be doing!

Am I going to continue with this?

Absolutely!

It literally makes everything better and I really do feel less stressed.

Oh and by the way, I thought I’d surprise you and give up the chips as well.

I didn’t succeed…

I seriously think that will be the hardest month of the year when it comes.

What to give up next month?

Well I’m on holidays so the first thought I had was giving up moderation. Can you imagine what a mess I’d be at the end of that!

I’m giving up complaining. Both internally and externally. I’m not expecting a 100% result here. What I do expect is a new awareness of how much I actually whinge and complain.

At least my husband will have a better holiday!

Wish me good luck.

If you’d like to book an appointment to give your hair or scalp some love. I’d be happy to talk through it’s current condition as part of your initial consultation. All the details to make a booking can be found here.

Sulfates In Hair Products

Sam Macdonald Hair - Wembley Downs City Beach Scarboroguh Trigg North Beach Sorrento Karinyup Carine Duncraig

We have all heard somewhere along the line that sulfates in hair products are bad for us, but does anyone actually know why?⁣

First things first, what is it actually for?

⁣A sulfate will only be found in your shampoo, not your conditioner or any other hair product. ⁣

This is because its part of the cleansing part of washing your hair. Basically a sulfate is a detergent and as well as being found in a lot of shampoos, you will find it in many detergent based products around your home.⁣

Some companies love to say there are no sulfates in their conditioners, well of course there isn’t, conditioner doesn’t lather like shampoo!⁣

A sulfate will give you the big bubbles that we have come to assume means the shampoo is working. It allows oil and water to be mixed together and then rinsed from the hair leaving it squeaky clean.⁣

Different shampoos have various results on how the hair is left feeling. A shampoo for dry damaged hair should remove less of the oil that one designed for oily hair.⁣

Do we have to have a sulfate in a shampoo? No, though sulfate free shampoos don’t usually lather as well.⁣

There has been some unfounded controversy surrounding sulfates over the last few years. Many studies have been done since then, to disprove possible side effects.⁣

Some people will have an allergy to sulfates which will cause them a little itchiness when they use it. This is most often the case with people with sensitive skin and skin conditions such as eczema or contact dermatitis.⁣

These condition’s can also come from many other sources not only the products being used. For example a great deal of people have a dairy intolerance, which can show up in a similar fashion.⁣

So to summarise, the use of sulfates is not life threatening. However it can cause some discomfort in some people. ⁣

You don’t need to be using a shampoo with a sulfate in it. You can use a sulfate free shampoo though it probably won’t later as much though it still cleanse your hair and scalp the same.⁣

Oh and by the way, if you want to be sulfate free, you better chuck out your toothpaste because it in there as well. ⁣

My Year Off Part Two Alcohol

Sam Macdonald Hair - Wembley Downs City Beach Scarboroguh Trigg North Beach Sorrento Karinyup Carine Duncraig

My Year Off – Part Two Alcohol

Hey there you unbelievers, I did it!⁣⁣

Well almost, I did cheat twice, with a total of three glasses of red wine (450ml).⁣⁣

The month started three days before the 1st of February though so perhaps it evens out somehow? What do you think?⁣⁣

First week was easy, It was only when I got home on Saturday afternoon that I had a pang for a glass but it dissipated after 10minutes and I was fine. Saw a show at fringe and I drove home, (can totally get used to the driving thing).⁣⁣

Second week is where I fell down. We went to Elizabeth Quay before going to Boorna Waanginy at Kings Park. It was so beautiful at night that I had one glass of Sangiovese with my hubby whilst sitting at The Reveley. Honestly, I didn’t even enjoy it or finish the glass.⁣⁣

The next night I had 2 glasses at home which I thoroughly enjoyed. That is until the after taste kicked in and I just felt exhausted and wanted to sleep.⁣⁣

Third weekend I simply didn’t miss it at all. We went to Dali At Night for Fringe and out to dinner with friends. They were all drinking and I had a fab time on my soda water.⁣⁣

Fourth weekend was same as the third, happy with my soda water and lime juice.⁣⁣

Conclusion is that my relationship with alcohol has changed forever.

The bonus’s are:⁣⁣

⁣⁣- more energy⁣⁣

– less headaches⁣⁣

⁣⁣- sleep is soooo much better⁣⁣

⁣⁣- the bags under my eyes are smaller⁣⁣

⁣⁣- there is more money than usual in my spending account

⁣⁣- my Carpal Tunnel syndrome is no where near as bad because of reduced inflammation.⁣⁣

⁣⁣- The amount of energy I have at the end of the week feels amazing, instead of dying in a heap on a Saturday night.⁣⁣

– With all this extra energy, I’ve been exercising and can actually see a hint of a muscle ⁣⁣

⁣The negatives:⁣⁣

Hmmm, crickets…⁣ ⁣

⁣I also read a fabulous book called The Naked Mind, Control Alcohol, written by Annie Grace.⁣⁣

⁣This is a book I highly recommend, even if you don’t think you have an issue with alcohol. ⁣⁣

⁣It shines the light from a different angle.⁣⁣

Am I giving up grog forever?⁣⁣

⁣⁣No, not for now anyway but I have to say that this month has had a huge impact on almost every area of my life and I’m super proud of myself.⁣⁣

⁣⁣

Skin

Skin | Sam Macdonald Hair | Hairdresser Trigg Karinyup Scarborough City Beach Sorrento Scarborough Wembley Downs Carine Duncraig

Skin on and beneath your scalp is where your hair begins. A healthy scalp, means healthy hair.

The skin has 3 main layers, (there are many layers within these layers, but we’re keeping this simple):

The epidermis:

This is the outside part, the part you can touch. This layer provides a waterproof protection and barrier.

The dermis:

This is found beneath the epidermis and contains connective tissue, hair follicles and sweat glands.

The hypodermis:

This is below these first two layers and contains connective tissue and fat.

Within hairdressing and beauty, we generally pay attention to the first of these two, the epidermis and the dermis.

The skin begins inside your body and slowly pushes out to the outside of your body. It then flakes and falls off. This means that your dermis, becomes your epidermis as it works through the body.

This process takes 27-28 days. This means the skin you feel now, is at the end of its life cycle.

Get to the point already right, whats this got to do with hair?

Because our skin is constantly shedding in this way, when it comes to our hair we need to give it a bit of a hand.

On our body’s it can just fall off. Sometimes we need to give it a bit of an exfoliate if we’re under moisturised, but generally it can will look after itself.

With our scalp however, the skin can get caught in the hair and cause a few different issues. Things like dandruff and itchiness can simply be there because we haven’t helped our bodies to remove these dead skin cells.

Think about the exfoliation of our skin, using scrub gloves or body/face scrubs. We can do the same thing by scrubbing our scalp, whilst shampooing or even just with water or conditioner, if shampoo is not your thing.

Once we have dislodged this skin, our scalps can breath again and often the sensitivities will disappear, at least on a health scalp. Things like Psoriasis and dermatitis are a different thing entirely.

As always, I’m not a doctor, I simply have an interest in all things hair and scalp. Always make your own mind up and seek medical advice when needed.

Any questions, please don’t hesitate to contact me.

Photo courtesy of Pexel & @daria.shevtsova

My Year Off

My Year Off – Part One Sugar

Sam Macdonald Hair | Hairdresser Trigg Scarborough North Beach Sorrento Karinyup Carine Duncraig

Part One, Refined Sugar…

This year is going to be, my year off. My year off what you ask?

Well every month this year, I will be giving something different up and this month it has been refined sugar…

Very early this month, I was extremely inspired by one of my guests deciding to give up alcohol for an entire year…

Now whilst I’m in awe of this, I myself don’t want to do it, but it did get me thinking…

What if every month this year, I give up something that’s probably not the best for good physical and mental health and see what changes it brings…

So I started on January 5th with refined sugar because I didn’t think it would be a hard one to start with.

Frankly after having a couple of weeks off, eating and drinking too much and perhaps not being as active as I should be, I didn’t want to challenge myself too much.

In the first 5 days of my challenge, I ended up cheating a little. Deciding this wasn’t a good start, I reset myself at the 10th of January. This means I have to go refined sugar free till February 10th, even though I am starting with mt next thing off on February 1st.

So I’m writing this and I haven’t quite finished but I know I’ll be fine because you know what, refined sugar is not a big habit of mine.

So what did I get out of this if it wasn’t that hard?

Awareness of many of the place that sugar hides.

At the beginning of the month, I was having one soy coffee every morning with half a sugar.

The half a sugar went immediately but it took me longer to register that the soy milk itself has a bit of sugar in it, so I have now gone to black coffee.

This works with the small daily fasting I now do which is only eating between 10am and 6pm everyday. I absolutely cannot wait ill 10am for my coffee so black it is!

Did you know that not all sugar is bad for you? I didn’t know this until this month.

Apparently the bacteria that lives in our guts actually needs sugar to do its thing, though it has to be sugar that is balanced with polyphenols. A great source of this is things like blueberries, pomegranate, strawberries and many other berry type fruits.

If this sort of information is something you’d like to know more about, this podcast from the ATP project is the bomb. I’m completely addicted to it!

https://itunes.apple.com/au/podcast/the-atp-projects-podcast/id978635940?mt=2&i=1000401814252

I also discovered that kecap manis is basically sugar. I guess its obvious now I think about it, but that’s the point right, you have to think about it…

The big thing I got out of this refined sugar free month is awareness. I have a feeling I will be saying the same thing at the end of every month.

I’m happy to keep most of this month changes I have made in place permanently.

I will be keeping my coffee black, which has health benefits with the polyphenols in it when you don’t add milk. (Listen to the podcast) Also if a recipe calls for kecap manis, I will be coming up with an alternative.

I’m not going to give up chocolate as I don’t really eat it a lot. However I am going to think twice with what I put in my mouth when it comes to sugar…

So what am I giving up for February? Well I looked at the calendar and only 2 months this year have only 4 weekends. February and September and since its my birthday in September, it has to be February.

Yep you guessed it, I’m giving up alcohol!

Photo credit rawpixel.com

The Facts On Grey Hair

$The Fact On Greay Hair \ Sam Macdonald Hair | Trigg Hairdresser Scarborough North Beach Karinyup Carine Duncraig$

Firsts things first, there is technically speaking so such thing as ‘grey hair’.

We have hair that has colour and hair that goes white. When they mix together, they look all different kinds of ‘grey’. A good way to think of it is like the pixels on a screen on you TV for example.

Here’s a quick bit of science before we get to the good bit.

Within your scalp/skin there are tiny things called Melanocytes which create colour for your skin. Your hair follicle stem cells have a little collaboration with these Melanocytes, to create the melanin (colour) of your hair. When we start to go white/grey this process stops on the affected hairs and they start to grow out of your scalp white.

For the most part, white/grey hair is determined by your genetics.

Generally you will start to see some white hairs mixing in with the natural colour of your hair, sometime in your 30s. However it can start in your teens or sometimes not until your late 40s or even 50s.

Ethnicity plays a part as well. Caucasians tend to go grey sooner than Asians, and red heads before everyone. Scientists are not yet aware why this happens.

In some cases nutritional and hormonal factors can affect how quickly this happens to you. Things like diabetes, and thyroid problems can also create premature greying, but for the most part, white/grey hair is determined by your genetics.

Chemotherapy can cause the hair to grown back completely white after treatment, as well as a totally different hair texture.

In some cases of Alopecia Areata, the hair also comes back totally white and often softer in texture than it was before.

Basically the only way to prevent getting white hair is to not live past 30 and we certainly don’t want that!

Turns out there’s a great reason for these fabulous individuals called hairdressers, we can sort it out for you and know one needs to know when you start getting your sparklers coming through!

Whats A Toner Anyway?

What’s A Toner Anyway

Sam Macdonald Hair | Hairdresser Trigg Scarborough North Beach Sorrento Karinyup Carine Duncraig City Beach Wembley Downs | Hairdresser

A toner is used in typically used in two ways on blonded level hair.

1. To counteract unwanted colour. For example if your hair is brassy, we can neutralise it.

2. To change the shade of the blonde in a playful way, we might want to put pastel tones in, or a soft gold or beige. There are way too many options to write down here but you get the idea.

Typically I try not to use a toner to counteract unwanted colour. Toners typically only last between 1 and 15 washes, depending what product you have used and more importantly, the condition of your hair.

I prefer to try and get the tone right without the toner, so your colour will look good between visits. Then when we put the toner on at the end, its makes it look AMAZING!

In the salon I offer a range of toning options.

We start out by doing one on your colour visit to start you off looking the best you can. Then ideally you take a home toning option, to keep it looking great as the salon toner slowly eases out of your hair.

If you prefer to come back in between visits, we can re-tone for you. I even have some incredible treatments in the salon now, where I can customise the tone within the treatment service.

If you have any toning questions please just ask me.

Educating you guys is what I love to do!

If you’d like to book an appointment to give your hair or scalp some love, I’d be happy to talk through it’s current condition as part of your initial consultation. All the details to make a booking can be found here.

The Oily Hair Series Part Two, The Non Traditional Approach

Sam Macdonald Hair | Trigg Scarborough Karrinyup Sorrento Carine North Beach

Last post we went into how the scalp produces oil and how in oily hair, its overactive. If you missed this part and are interested, please look at my last post.

This time I would like to share with you why we even have oil on our scalp and an alternative approach to keeping extra oil at bay.

The oil our skin and scalp produces is called sebum. Sebum is produced all over our bodies as a natural protection from things like sun and UV.

So why do we keep removing it?

If you have normal hair or dry hair, this is totally a legitimate question. Its hard to imagine what it feels like to wake up and see flat, lifeless and oily hair when its only been washed the day before.

Trust me, the struggle is real as any oil person can attest to!

The big problem with removing all that oil is that your body is trying to protect you. When you remove this protective layer, your body goes into overdrive trying to reproduce it. You end up on this cycle of you removing it and your body hurriedly replacing it.

An alternative to shampooing all this oil out is finding something that doesn’t actually remove all the oil. If your body doesn’t feel like its being stripped of its protection, it will calm the farm of oil production.

This process can be a tough one because it can take a few months for your scalp to get the message and slow production. The upside here of course, is dry shampoo helps!

I have personally been trying this technique for 2 months now and I can finally say the oiliness is under control.

I have been using a cleanser that is a one step product, more like a conditioner than a shampoo. It doesn’t remove all the oil but helps pull it through my hair, leaving my hair shiny, healthy and would you believe it, with more body than before.

The process keeps my scalp clean because I scrub like its a shampoo and this help to remove dead skin cells, leaving my skin being able to breath.

This way of dealing with oily hair will not be for everyone but its great to have another option. If you would like further information, please don’t hesitate to contact me for a chat.

The Oily Hair Series Part One, The Traditional Approach

Sam Macdonald Hair | Trigg Scarborough Northbeach Karrinyup Sorrento Carine

Oily hair is caused by an over active oil sac (known as a sebaceous gland), that lives in your scalp.

To simplify the process, picture a hair magnified (right to the area underneath the scalp), and then imagine at the base of it a little tiny sac of oil on each side of that hair.

In oily haired people this is the sac of oil that causes all the greasiness in your hair, when its being overactive and having a little party beneath your scalp.

Traditionally the way we deal with this oil, is to find a good quality astringent based shampoo to remove as much of it as possible, and leave your scalp free of oil and therefore with more body and life in it.

If you don’t have a shampoo particularly for your oily hair type, it may be too heavy and not remove as much of that oil as possible.

So once we have removed this oil, how long do you think we can expect to have an oil free scalp for?

For some people like myself, it can be as little as 6 hours until you see that oil start to seep through at the root area. This is because that how long it can take for the body to push more oil out of the sebaceous gland, and then to be released onto the scalp.

This is why some people wash their hair everyday, although a lot of hair professionals will tell you daily is too much.

Being an oily haired individual myself, what do you do on day two when the oils been coming through for hours? You’re feeling better suited to work in a fast food restaurant than an office or like me a hair salon?

Well I for one don’t think daily shampooing is bad. You wash your body at least once a day, well at least I hope you do!

The important thing is what you’re using to cleanse your scalp. Inferior products will potentially take too much oil away leaving your scalp open to irritation.

Another option on day two is a dry shampoo which is a must have in my routine. I have actually been known to shampoo daily AND use dry shampoo. A girls gotta do what a girls gotta do!

As always my recommendation to you is to speak to your hair professional about what right for you.

If you don’t have one you trust right now, I’m happy to do a consultation for you and I have a trichoscope (microscope for hair and scalp) if we need to get a closer look.

Purple Shampoo

Sam Macdonald Hair | Hairdresser Trigg Scarborough North Beach Carine Sorrento City Beach | Purple shampoo

I would say that every blond out there knows that they need a purple shampoo to keep the colour looking fresh between visits but is it that simple?

Have you ever used a purple shampoo on your blonde hair and it’s gone a flat kinda greenish colour?

Let’s start with a bit of simple colour theory that we all learned in primary school. Before I go on if you don’t remember it, don’t worry, primary school was how long ago and like trigonometry, only those of us that need to know it have remembered it!

Do you remember in art class mixing certain colours together and they neutralised each other, effectively turning them brown?

Still don’t remember, don’t worry because I’ll explain it.

There are 3 primary colours, yellow, blue and red. Primary means you can’t make them from another colour.

There are 3 secondary colours, which come from mixing together 2 of the primary colours, purple, orange and green.

When we mix together yellow and purple, they neutralise each other. The same thing happens when we mix blue and orange together and also red and green.

With all this in mind it makes sense that a purple shampoo will keep light blond hair toned and neutralised but what about when the purple shampoo we are using starts going that flat greenish tinge?

Not all purple shampoos are created equal.

Let’s go back to the 2 colours that makes purple, red and blue.

When the ‘purple’ in the shampoo is actually more of a purple with extra blue in it, what can happen is the blue from the shampoo mixes with the yellow of the hair and makes it…… that’s right green!

Have I lost you completely?

To simplify, some purple shampoo is just purple and will gently tone out the yellow in your blond hair, whereas some of the stronger stuff has blue pigment which with extended use can put a slight green tinge in your hair.

The good news is that shampoo colour isn’t permanent and you can simply wash with your normal shampoo until the overtones colour is gone.

Not sure what kind of purple shampoo is right for your needs? Check with your hairdresser as that’s why we do the 3-4 year apprenticeship, so we can help you look and feel amazing!