Update: Project Hair

I recently mentioned on Facebook that I was going to try this homemade hair regrowth serum. I'm using Jamaican black castor oil and sunflower oil, with coffee, rosemary, and peppermint essential oils, twice a week. It's too early to tell if these scalp treatments are doing anything to stimulate new growth where my hair has gotten so thin you may as well say I have bald spots. However, my existing hair has gotten quite soft and shiny, and I have zero split ends. Also, I think I'm losing less in the shower and I'm definitely cleaning less out of my brushes.

These treatments are a bit of a process. I've been doing it on Monday and Friday mornings for 3-4 hours, and my hair can still be kind of oily those days after washing it out. I can't imagine what a pain it would be if you had long and/or thick hair. (Though I guess if I used a less gentle shampoo, that would help.) And the combination of the ashy smell of the JBCO and the coffee EO makes me smell like a gas station convenience store, which is both kind of gross and kind of oddly appealing.

But!

I've also been applying some straight JBCO with a q-tip to my eyebrows and eyelashes almost every night and there has definitely been some regrowth there. I haven't been able to grow eyebrow hairs in my actually eyebrow line in a couple years, so this is huge for me. And my eyelashes, which tend to fall out frequently and sometimes in clumps leaving bare spots, have not been falling out and the bare spots have filled in.  BIG DIFFERENCE here.

In addition to around my eyes at night, I've been using the same JBCO-soaked q-tip around my hair line. It may be my imagination, but I think there are some teeny tiny baby hairs sprouting. I'll reserve judgment on that. Check out the link above for some before and after pictures (of someone who is not me).

Overall, so far, I think the Jamaican black castor oil is definitely useful in and of itself. The other ingredients for the scalp treatment, I'm not yet convinced. But it's early, and the life cycle of hair on the head is much longer than that around the eyes, so we shall see.

Watch this space.