Keeping hair healthy and free of dead-ends can be a quite a challenge. Especially with all of the daily environmental and styling damage many of us subject it to. It’s been a sunny summer here in Northeast Ohio so far (shocking, I know!), so there’s the added damage that comes from UV exposure to throw in to the mix.

All of this adds up to hair that inevitably will be prone to more splitting, breakage, snapping, brittleness and other types of structural weakness. End result: Hair that doesn’t look or feel its most healthy. Related: Remedies for Porous Hair

What are “Micro Trims”?

Micro trims are basically just taking tiny, incremental snips off the ends of your hair on a fairly frequent basis. You will not notice any length reduction per se, because you are taking such a tiny fraction of an inch off every time. Ideally, it should only be a centimeter or two. If you were to compare this to a common object, this would be about half the size of the typical eraser you see on the end of number 2 pencils.

These tiny incremental trims are designed to be interim fixes for the real visits to the stylist where you can often get a lot more cut off without risking uneven results. After all, when someone else, especially a professional, is trimming or cutting your hair it tends to turn out much better. Performing your own micro trims can be a bit tricky, but you can even employ the help of someone in your household if you’re worried about getting the right angle for even results. Related: Castor Oil for Eyebrow Growth

If you have layers, it can be hard to discern where the layers start, so this can all be a guessing game. As long as you're getting the general area of the layer trimmed up a tiny bit, you don't have to worry so much about the precision that a stylist can give when they clean it up later.

Combat Tired, Worn Out and Stressed Hair

When you trim your hair, you are preventing split ends and refreshing the strands with new strength and vitality. That’s because as your hair grows longer, it becomes weaker. Length inevitably puts more stress on the hair, simply because it is not really a 'living' tissue in and of itself.  This is why it is harder to keep long hair healthy looking. You can help keep it in tip top shape by making this small change to get the ends cut off about once per month.

Why Once a Month? Should You Go Even More Frequent with Micro Trims?

Once a month is a really good goal to give yourself, or have someone else give you, a micro trim. This is about the time it takes hair to grow enough to warrant a mini trim, and it really is complimentary to most hair types. If your hair grows very slowly, then you can of course extend the time frame for these mini trims. Likewise if your hair grows extremely fast, you can speed it up to once every 2-3 weeks.

Every few weeks provides your hair with a refresher. Think of it as a rejuvenating “start over” for the ends of your hair. It will likely also contribute to faster hair growth. It will also improve the texture of your hair by allowing your follicles to adequately “feed” the hair on your head with the needed nutrients from the blood stream more efficiently.

Since there is always a closely monitored amount of hair being disposed of on a regular basis, your body is better able to give it the nourishment it needs. You can also compare this whole process to pinching dead flowers off of a plant on a regular basis.

This allows the plant to feed and nourish the living, healthy parts of the plants and the energy to produce flowers instead of continuing to nourish dead or dying areas of the plant. Similar concept (albeit not scientifically backed, just a logical conclusion) applies here. 

Reverse Damage More Easily

Say you get a really dramatic hair coloring or highlighting job. Your hair is over processed and looking pretty crispy and brittle. Frequent trims get rid of this damaged hair and allow for fresh, new growth to occur. This makes for a really healthy look when you can get rid of the damaged ends quickly and on a frequent basis with mini trims. Related: Natural, Less Damaging Highlighting Alternatives

Get Yourself a Good Pair of Salon Shears

You can get a pretty good pair of salon quality shears for $20 or less. These are specially made to get the dead ends off hair without pulling or stretching, which a normal pair of scissors can tend to do. Especially if they are dull.

Salon style hair cutting shears come with sharper ends that quickly shear off hair without any tugging, pulling or weird angles to deal with. They are shorter than a typical pair of scissors, and much easier to grip and angle, even if you're trimming your own hair.  Simply pull your hair forward, and snip off or “tip” of the very ends of your hair. You can also tip the very ends of any layers you have in the front.

It’s a little difficult to try to tip layers in the back, you should probably leave this to a professional. But if you can get the parts in the front, this is the most important anyway for giving you the freshest looking hair you can get!