The Better Blog

Learning to Love Your Hair in Midlife features four Better Not Younger models with for different hair textures and styles: straight, wavy, coily and more.

Learning to Love Your Hair in Midlife

When it comes to our hair, the grass is always greener on the other side of the salon. Many of us with fine, straight hair spent years trying to curl and volumize our locks. And those of us with waves and curls wished for the smooth shine of pin-straight tresses. And cowlicks? Don't get us started!r favorite sulfate-free, plant-based hair-care products to help you fall in love with your locks!
Continue reading
In this 5 Reasons You Need Hair Redemption in Your Life, Better Not Younger features a beautiful mature woman with long light brown hair.

5 Reasons You Need Hair Redemption in Your Life

It's no secret that we love a leave-in hair mask for moisturizing and repairing dry, damaged tresses! Our best-selling hair mask for dry hair, the Hair Redemption Restorative Butter Masque, stands out because it heals parched strands using a proprietary blend of plant-based nut butters, plus nourishing oils, biotin and caffeine for hair health and manageability. 

But don't believe the myth that hydrating hair masks are for dry hair only! Hair mask benefits include so much more: color care, scalp maintenance and strand strengthening, to name a few. 

Read on to learn more about the hair mask benefits and essential ingredients in our popular butter masque, plus five reasons why making our Hair Redemption Butter Masque part of your weekly hair-care regimen is one of the best things you can do for your hair!

Continue reading
In The Cutting Edge: The Right Way to Cut Curly Hair, Better Not Younger features a mature woman with defined curly hair bouncing her strands by shaking her hair side to side while smiling.

The Cutting Edge: The Right Way to Cut Your Aging Curly Hair

There’s something so luxurious about a trip to the salon, even if you’re just getting a haircut. Allowing someone to play with your hair for an hour while styling it to perfection is not only a great way to relax, but it just makes you feel good in the end. For curly girls, a haircut may be a bit more involved than those with straight hair, but with the right stylist, it’ll go off without a hitch. It’s all about understanding hair texture, curl definition and curly hairstyles! 

There are a few things to know, though, about getting a haircut for curly hair, especially mature curly hair, and finding the perfect curly hairstyles. We spoke with hairstylist Monica Davis, who is also the founder and editor in chief of My Straightener, for some details on the right way to cut curly hair (and how to take care of it at home between salon visits).

Continue reading
In this article about 7 Ways to Save Your Strands from Damage While You Sleep, Better Not Younger features a mature sleeping woman with short black hair.

7 Ways to Save Your Strands from Damage While You Sleep

We think a lot about how to protect our hair while we're awake: getting routine trims, not brushing our fragile hair while wet, avoiding tight updos and using a heat protectant prior to applying hot styling tools. But we tend to pay less attention to preventing hair damage while sleeping. 

To protect hair while sleeping, it’s important to focus on both hair restoration while we sleep and physically preventing hair breakage during the night. This dual approach to overnight hair health will help you achieve your healthiest, most vibrant hair yet! 

Read on for ideas for protective hairstyles to sleep in and our best tips for preventing hair damage while you're sleeping!

Continue reading
In this Definitive How-To for Hair Plopping Overnight and Benefits, BNY features a beautiful mature wman with a towel on hair for hair plopping overnight.

What Exactly Is Hair Plopping?

Hair plopping is an incredibly effective technique with a weird name. If you have dry, curly hair and deal with frizz, plopping is about to rock your hair-care world.

So, what is hair plopping?

Plopping gets its name from the literal action of plopping wet hair directly onto a wrap designed to protect and gently absorb water after a wash while scrunching strands into voluminous, defined curls. While it’s not always easy to style curly hair, this heat-free technique is a virtually effortless way to get soft, bouncy, frizz-free curls.

Continue reading
In this article about Depression, Antidepressants and Hair Loss, Better Not Younger features a mature woman with brown medium length hair looking through the window as she looks thoughtful.

Is Depression Causing Your Hair Loss?

Dealing with depression is difficult. It can take over your whole life and weigh on you both mentally and physically. When it comes to depression and hair loss, there has been some discussion of a link between the two, as it’s not uncommon to find some excess hair falling out while you’re going through distress. Female hair loss and depression are especially concerning, as hair is such an important part of our identity. But before you reach for hair loss treatmentshair growth products and hair growth supplements, let’s take a closer look at the link between depression and hair loss—as well as anti-depression medication and hair loss—and the likelihood of hair loss due to stress and depression.
Continue reading
In "Does Water Temperature Affect the Hair Structure?, BNY features a beautiful woman over 40 smiling while holding her hair during her washing hair process in the shower.

Hot Vs Cold Water: Shampooing 101

We've all heard recommendations for the best water temperature for our showers. Hot water steams our pores and opens them, but it can dry out our scalp. Cold water is invigorating and can leave our hair shiny, but it can be hard to handle frigid showers. If we ask 10 people, we can get 10 different answers. 

But what does science say about it? Should we be using cold water on our hair, or is hot water better for hair washes? 

We sat down with Dr. Debra Lin, Chief Scientific Officer at Better Not Younger, to give us the scientific intel on why water temperature matters when we wash our hair and which temperature is best.

Continue reading
On "Pro Secrets for Preventing Split Ends", BNY features a beautiful mature woman with medium lenght white hair.

Do Split Ends Stop Hair Growth? 8 Pro Secrets for Preventing Split Ends

Split ends are incredibly frustrating when we're trying to grow out our hair. Even though our hair is resilient, it's still susceptible to breakage and splitting, especially at the ends. This is because the ends of our hair are the oldest and most prone to damage. 

How can we grow our hair out if it keeps splitting and breaking at the ends? It can feel like one step forward and two steps back! Before we dig into prevention techniques, let's take a quick look at how and why we get split ends and how it can affect hair growth.

Continue reading
in "Great Lengths: What to Know When Growing Out Your Hair", BNY features a mature blonde woman with long wavy hair.

Great Lengths: What to Know When Growing Out Your Hair

Growing out short hair is not for the faint of heart! Longer hair requires more maintenance and TLC, especially on the ends. You wait impatiently, envisioning yourself with long, silky locks that are super versatile. You can't wait to get there. 

But the caterpillar doesn't turn into a butterfly overnight. Growing the long tresses you desire takes time. A few weeks into growing out your hair you might have questions: Are there any good haircuts for growing out short hair? How can I encourage hair growth? Am I destined to look shaggy for the next few months? HELP! 

Not to worry. We have the scoop on some cute transition hairstyles for growing out short hair, which are terrific haircut ideas for women over 40, plus hair-care tips and products to help you on your hair growth journey!

Continue reading
In "Why Going to Bed with Wet Hair Is a Bad Idea", BNY features a mature woman with medium gray hair drying her hair with a white towel while she smiles.

Why Is It Bad to Sleep with Wet Hair?

We know how tempting it can be to take a quick shower before bed and dive between the sheets. Giving your hair time to dry or even pulling out the blow-dryer is labor intensive, and for night showerers, this sometimes just feels like too much work. Thus, going to bed with wet hair.


There are some issues with sleeping with wet hair, though, that you should be aware of before you continue on with this habit. While there are some myths surrounding sleeping with wet hair, some red flags you’ve heard are actually true. (Spoiler alert: Thin wet hair is fragile!) Here’s what you need to know about having wet hair at bedtime.

Continue reading
In this article "Why Does My Hair Grow So Slowly in the Winter?", BNY features a blonde mature woman holding her long hair and smiling.

Why Does My Hair Grow So Slowly in the Winter?

There are lots of factors that contribute to how quickly our hair grows. Sometimes our hair grows slowly because of genetics, but there are also environmental factors that can cause our hair growth to slow down, such as seasonal changes. For example, our hair grows faster in summer and more slowly in the winter. But why? One reason for this is that during warmer weather, our blood circulates more freely, carrying nutrients more easily throughout our bodies, and enabling our bodies to produce more keratin (the protein that our hair is made of). 

A second factor is that we usually get more vitamin D (the “sunshine“ vitamin) in the summertime. The sun makes our hair grow faster because our bodies synthesize UVB rays from the sun into vitamin D, which helps our bodies regulate keratin production. When we are deficient in vitamin D, this regulation misfires, triggering hair loss. 

Our hair also grows faster in summer because we tend to leave our heads uncovered more than in the winter, which creates less friction and breakage. When we bundle up to stay warm in cold weather, we often add hats, scarves and hoods, which makes sense because we lose a lot of heat through our heads! But these coverings create more friction on our hair than we typically have in the summertime leading to increased hair fall due to cold weather.

Continue reading
In this article "The Healthiest Diets for Your Hair", BNY features a beautiful mature asian woman with long gray hair with six natural flowers placed on both sides of her beautiful straight hair. She smiles and looks very happy.

The Healthiest Diets for Your Hair

We all start new diets for a variety of reasons—trying to lose weight, dealing with inflammation, understanding food allergies and more. But when you go on a diet, a lot of different things happen with your body beyond your digestive system. For example, there’s a link between diet and hair loss and all your new diets will affect your hair—though it’s not always bad.

A lot of weight loss diets, however, can be really harmful to your hair because they’re restrictive. Depriving your body of vitamins and nutrients needed for hair growth means your hair will be crying out for nourishment. On the flip side, a diet for healthy hair can keep your hair strong and shiny. Keep reading for a look at some of the most popular diets and what they can do to your hair, as well as our pick of the best diets for healthy hair.

Continue reading