Moving to a new address

I have moved this site to a new address.  You can check it out here:  benjaminleonard.com/books

8 Steps to a Painfree Back by Esther Gokhale

8 Steps to a Pain-Free Back: Natural Posture Solutions for Pain in the Back, Neck, Shoulder, Hip, Knee, and Foot (Remember When It Didn't Hurt)

8 Steps to a Pain Free Back is one of the most thought provoking book I have read.  Its power is twofold: first, its approach of looking a populations which have few back problems and second, its conciseness and practicality.  This book reminds me of Nutrition and Physical Degeneration by Weston Price except that Gokhale deals with teeth instead of backs.  Price was a dentist and went looking for answers about dental decay and ended up finding broadly useful information about nutrition.  Gokhale started her search looking for a way to solve her back pain and developed a broadly useful concept of posture.

The main difference between Price and Gokhale is the path they have chosen for spreading their message.  Price took a more scientific and theoretical approach in his lengthy book Nutrition and Physical Degeneration.  He went deep into the concepts behind his theory, described experiments he had conducted, and gave a lot of supporting evidence.  This book was attempting to convince medical professionals, so the housewife looking to improve her cooking would not have gotten much out of it.  Gokhale started by offering lessons teaching people correct posture and has moved from there to writing a book showing people how to teach themselves correct posture.  To my knowledge she has never written a book going into depth about her theory, discussing the different populations she has interacted with, describing her experiments, and presenting in depth case studies.  Hopefully, she will do this sometime in the future.

8 Steps to a Painfree back has a introductory chapter giving the background for the book and describing how the reader go through the lessons.  Next there are 8 chapters each describing and teaching one aspect part of correct posture.  The reader is supposed to do only one chapter a week to allow the lessons to sink in before going on to the next chapter.  Finally, there is an appendix with exercises to help learn the posture.  The 8 lessons are:

1. Stretch sitting
2. Stretch lying on your back
3. Stack sitting
4. Stretch lying on your side
5. Using your inner corset
6. Tall standing
7. Hip Hinging
8. Glide walking

The book and lessons are well thought out, but many of the concepts are still difficult to grasp.  It is hard to go from a verbal desription to a mental image of how your body should look.  It is also difficult to actually make your body carryout a process you conceive in your mind.  The large number of pictures in the book make this conceptualization as easy as possible.  When she describes a concept you will be able to look at pictures of people doing the concept correctly and people making common mistakes.  This is very helpful.

Esther's posture can be summarized by a few key points.  It takes a lot of work to actually incorporate these into how you lie, sit, stand, and move. 

• The pelvis should be anteverted
• The back should be straight not hunched or swayed
• The shoulders should be back and down
• The feet should be arched
• The head should be upright with the chin down and neck straight

My one reservation about the Gokhale Method is glide walking.  I do not feel that glide walking is the optimal way to walk, but on the other hand I am not exactly sure where it goes wrong.  I have had trouble glide walking in snow or slick places and I feel that the ideal method of walking should work in all circumstances.

The Icon and the Ax by James Billington

The Icon and the Axe : An Interpretive History of Russian Culture

 
The Icon and the Ax is subtitled an "interpretive history" of Russia.  It tells the story of Russia from its origins as the Kievian Rus through the 1960s Soviet Union when the book was written.  The author, James Billington, loves Russia and this comes through clearly when he laments the Soviet destruction of Russian culture. During early Russian history the focus of the story is on leaders and historical events.  As the narrative draws closer to the present the emphasis shifts to philosophy, thought and the arts in Russia. If you are interested in Russia and willing to invest some effort, I strongly recommend reading this book. 

Depending on your previous knowledge you will gain different insights from this book.  If you already about the history of the arts (writing, plays, music, painting...) and philosophy in Europe, you will come to understand how Russian thought compares, draws, and influenced European thought.  If you already know the facts and events in Russian history, you gain a better understanding of why these events happened and how they affected the Russian psyche.  If you start without much knowledge of their of these topics (my case), you will learn the plot of Russian history and gain insights into how Russians think.  Unfortunately, if you do not already have a lot of background information, the book will take some effort to follow.  There are allusions to and discussion  many different thinkers, politicians, czars, books, plays, paintings and historical events.  It can be difficult to keep them all straight at times. 

The Icon and the Ax and is long and densely written.  Each chapter is about 40 pages and I read at a pace of one chapter per weekend.  It was limited by the amount of mental energy it took to read and digest the information in each chapter.  Reading at this pace it will take a long time to finish this book, so I recommend taking some notes after each chapter.  This will help you retain the information and you can refer back to these notes while reading future chapters.  Reading this book is a worthwhile--but not easy--mental endeavor.

While many threads ran through this book, in this review I will only discuss a few of the ones I found especially interesting.

• When you read at all about Russia, you are guaranteed to hear about the intellectual battle over whether to follow Europe or Asia and how Russia is part European and part Asian.  I was always a little confused by this because the Russians (to my knowledge) have never interacted extensively with the Japanese, Chinese or Indians (the centers of the East) and are not Buddhists. 
  
  I got a better understanding of this struggle from this book.  The Mongol (Tartar) invasion which overthrew the Kievan Rus had a large influence on the development of Russia.  The Tartars remain in Russia to this day and the effects of their invasion linger.  The Russian have at times both hated the Tartars and viewed them as national heroes. 
  
  There are also the "Old Believers" who wanted to follow the traditional Orthodox Christian beliefs and Russian ways and fled from Peter the Great into Siberia.  The Old Believers and their thoughts have been present ever since.  Their "Eastern" ideals battled with Peter's "Western" secular goals. 
  
  Various philosophical ideas from Western Europe have flowed into Russia and been met with resistance.  They have been seen both as corrupting Russia and destroying its morals at the same time as being a path to wealth and greatness. 

• Russian leaders have often tried to import the successes of Western Europe without following the reforms that Western Europe underwent to attain these successes.  This led to numerous problems because the Western successes were a byproduct of political reforms and decreasing government power not random occurrences. 
  
  A cyclical pattern ensued.  A Czar would bring in intellectuals from the West, start printing presses, and grow the universities in the hopes of growing industry and developing a Russia as a cultural leader.  Intellectual discourse would ensue, but eventually the intellectuals would question the Czar.  Why should he/she be an absolute ruler?  What gave him the right to rule the country at his whim? 
  
  Academic discussion of this matter was not what the Czar had envisioned.  It was upsetting to a monarch whose power had not had his power checked like those of the Western monarchs.  If left unchecked, discussion of this topic probably would have spelled an end to the Czars.  The Czars seeing this problem would crack down on the intellectuals and roll back the freedoms. 
  
  On the surface the "openings" were major changes, but most of the change was shallow and in the end a facade.  

• Russian thought is very dark.  My first experience of it was reading Crime and Punishment my senior year in high school.  Until recently I hadn't thought of this as being typical Russian literature, but it appears to be typically Russian. 
  
  Over the course of history many Russian intellectuals have committed suicide or gone insane.  Hamlet is one of the most popular plays in Russia.  Morbid thoughts probably stem from Russian suffering and failed political reforms.  At low points in Russian history so many men were being killed that the sex ratio reached 20 to 1 in parts of Russia. 
  
  Unsurprisingly Russians are drawn to theories where their suffering leads to some greater good or redemption for the world.  They like unifying theories of history which bring meaning to their suffering and a direction for the future.  

• I had not realized the disillusionment and consequent apathy Russians felt at the time of the writing of this book (the 1960s).  The Russians lost a war to Japan and the First World War at the beginning of the 20th century.  Both wars involved massive losses of life.  The Russians then endured Stalin:  his purges and destruction killed millions.  When things could not get any worse, the Second World War came.  Although the Russians won World War II, they were nearly drowned in their own blood.  When Russia emerged from World War II, Stalin remained at its helm and his killing continued. 
  
  Billington talks about how the Communist leadership was upset [at the time of the book's writing] by the apathy of the youth.  The young generation was not weeded by war and had access to more education than their parents, yet they would not buy into the plan the communist party had for them.  How can you blame someone who has seen their father, grandfather, and probably great grand father killed by the government for not expecting to live a life worth investing in?  How can you blame someone whose grandparents fought for a revolution which turned into a bloodbath for not working for great societal changes? 
  
  Every Russian you meet today had a family member killed in World War II.  In the 1960s these dead men and women were not ancestors but parents, siblings, and friends. 

The Road to Serfdom

The Road to Serfdom: Text and Documents--The Definitive Edition (The Collected Works of F. A. Hayek)

Reading The Road to Serfdom by Fredrich A. Hayek was an eye opening experience for me. Amazingly this is a short book, just a political pamphlet.  It was written in 1944 aimed at the political controversies of the years following the Second World War. I do not get the feeling that Hayek wrote it this book as a tomb for the ages; I think he was only writing it for the next few political cycles. He talks about the views of specific political leaders and academics and he refers to specific feelings and sentiments which only existed in the wake of World War II. Nevertheless this book is applicable today. When I read it, every other page I would see a quote which I thought I should write down and use in this review. Luckily, I was not near my computer while reading this otherwise I might have transcribed half of the book. I ended up chosing not to include any quotes in this review so that I could focus on the overall message.

The Road to Serfdom was written for Great Britain after the Second World War. Great Britain was deciding what its policy should be after the war during the reconstruction period. Both the elites and the general public were pushing for more central planning and trying to decide how to structure the world for growth and prosperity following the war. Hayek, an Austrian, understood the German personality and the history of German thought leading up to World War II. He had moved moved from his native land to join the London School of Economics in 1931 and thus avoided being in occupied Europe during the war. As Hayek followed British discourse and thought after the war, he realized that the British train of thinking was following the same path as German thought and sought to warn the British.

The main point which Hayek tries to get across is that you cannot have central planning and freedom. The two cannot are mutually exclusive. If you decide to direct a nation on a course, you cannot allow people to do as they choose. People must do what the state tells them and not what they feel is best. For central planning to work you must have a dictator because a democracy cannot get agreement on the very specific directions and goals required for planning an economy. Also laws must become arbitrary in order for central planners to direct society. A law that has a fixed meaning allows individuals to pursue their own agendas if they can figure out ways to avoid actions proscribed by the law. To direct society, a direction must be chosen and the planner must constantly change the meaning of the law to shepherd "his" people from wandering off in pursuit of their own dreams and goals.

Hayek does not say that this is a new trend for Britain. He says Britain had been traveling this path for some time but at a much slower pace than Germany. Furthermore, Britains before the turn of the century would have been shocked by how little liberty the populace had: the 1950s we dream about today were actually tyranical compared to its past.

Hayek places struggle as a battle between German and Anglo-Saxon thought. Anglo-Saxon thought spread outward and eastward until 1870. For much of Western Civilization liberty had been expanding, but in 1870 (Hayek does not say why this year) the tide turned and German thought based on collectivism began to push back the concepts of liberalism and freedom.

There are a number of interesting anecdotes which Hayek discusses in the book. I will only cover a couple here. We all know how Nazi Germans hated the Jews, but we attribute it to some vague propaganda put out by Hitler. Hayek gives a more reasonable explaination. The Jews were already outsiders and at the bottom of German society. As centralization advanced and the government positions became more prestigious in Germany.  More and more Germans began working for the State or in centralized state aided monopolies:  in these positions they had prestige, stability, and fixed wages. The Jews were pushed into the most despised jobs in the economy (entrepreneuring) because they could not get the cushy government jobs. Since they operated in a more free-market sector of the economy than the the Germans many of them ended up becoming wealthy. The Germans already hated businessmen and the fact that the outsiders were becoming wealthy at this hated profession made them hate the Jews even more.

Another interesting aspect of the book is that Hayek is not an anarchist and envisions a role for Government in society. He might be considered a statist by libertarians today as he conceeds many points that no self respecting libertarian would dream of letting slide. This is a sign of libertarianism's intellectual development over the past 60 years.

In closing, this is a short readable book that will open your eyes to the dangers of central planning and the havock it can visit upon society. It will open your eyes to warning signs that you had seen before. The arguments Hayek makes are very concise and convincing.

Shut Your Mouth and Save Your Life

A Painting of George Catlin

One of George Catlin's paintings of Native Americans

Shut Your Mouth And Save Your Life (1870)

George Catlin was an American Painter who lived around the time of the American Civil War (born 1796, died 1872). I had not heard of him before reading this book, but when I mentioned him to my mother she recognized him as a famous painter. Catlin began his life amongst modern (for that time) Americans but moved out west living amongst the American Indians after the Civil War. By the time he wrote this book, he claims to have more experience with Native Americans than any living person at that time. One of the things which struck him most about the natives was their freedom from the ailments of modern society. He wrote this book to teach modern people how they could become healthier.

George Catlin was a very feeble man during his younger years. He probably considered himself average amongst those living and felt lucky to be alive (not dead). He worked as a lawyer and then at the age of 34 in 1830 began his travels in the Western United States. Living out of doors was a shock for his body. A mouth breather, he often woke up with inflamed and bleeding lungs and his sleep was miserable. He managed to make himself a nose breather and dramatically turned his health around. When he wrote this book he was at the healthiest and strongest of his life and had no aches and pains. The purpose of this book was to convince Americans back home how to make the same changes he did and to inform them that many of the hard parts of life are not necessary.

At the time Catlin wrote, half of all children born in major American and European cities died before the age of 5. Half of those who survived died before the age of 25. Those who lived to adulthood often had deformities (approximately one half percent of the population had the problems of being a hunch back, an idiot, or deaf). I don't know what the rates of these diseases are now, but we place most of our young boys on Ritalin and our special education classes are overflowing. Those who lived to adulthood in those days usually had bad teeth. I think we are far better at treating the symptoms of our illnesses today, but the same underlying problems still exist.

When Catlin met the Indians he was struck by their fine physical features. At the time most whites thought the American Indians were sick and disease ridden, but Catlin says only the Natives living in close contact with Whites were sickly and diseased. He refers to several major plagues which swept across America but stopped when they hit the Native Americans who had not yet started drinking whiskey. The Natives did not loose any children to sickness or childbirth. When Catlin inquired about childhood deaths, Chiefs would relate a couple instances of children drowning or getting bitten by a rattlesnake. That was all. Caitlin does say that the Indians living in close contact with whites were sickly. He is not sure why this is but he seems to attribute it to whiskey consumption.

In the book Catlin explains his theory about why nose breathing is healthier than mouth breathing. The nose is especially designed to filter and warm air before it his the lungs. The mouth is not designed to filter air so the cold dirty air flows directly into the lunges without an safety mechanisms in place. The mouth is supposed to be an aqueous environment, but breathing through the mouth causes it to dry out making the teeth less healthy. Catlin had noticed that animals die quickly if they are forced to breath through their mouths and hypothesized that people do as well. Catlin also marveled at the fine ordering and lack of decay in the Indians teeth. He attributed this to the Indians habit of keeping their mouths closed at all times. The one time an Indian opened his mouth was to speak and that did not happen often.

The last part of the book is devoted to convincing people to take up nasal breathing and teaching to them how to do this. Catlin advocates making the switch through conscious thought. He recommends keeping your mouth closed at all times while awake and thinking about keeping your mouth closed as you fall asleep at night. He motivates people of all ages by reminding them of their friends who have died and urging them to consider the effects it will have on their future health, marriage prospects, and career.

The Vitamin Code by Massoud Arvanaghi and Mike Yorkey

The VITAMIN CODE The Breakthrough Discovery That Will Change The Way You Take Vitamins Forever

The Vitamin Code tells the story behind the Jordan Rubin's Garden of Life raw vitamins. The book is written in three sections giving the reader an understanding of why vitamins are needed, the story behind the development of these vitamins, and an analysis of the vitamins on the market today. Jordan Rubin has been endorsed in the past by the Weston Price Foundation, so I am inclined to believe that he is selling a legitimate product. I do not take nutritional supplements myself: I have other areas of my diet to work on first. However, I learned a lot about nutritional supplementation from this book. In any case, I like Garden of Life's method of trying to sell their product by educating the consumer.

Part I: The learning curve

The medical community has consistently denigrated nutritional supplements but is slowly being forced to change. Today even the Journal of the American Medical Association recommends taking nutritional supplements. The history of vitamins begins in 1747 with James Lind discovering a cure for scurvy and continues with Eijkman discovering a cure for Beriberi in 1886. Both cures involved nutritional supplementation although not using synthetic vitamins. Vitamins were finally officially discovered by Funk in 1912 and synthetic Vitamin C was first produced by Szent-Gyorgyi in 1931.

There are two categories of vitamins: fat soluble and water soluble. Fat soluble vitamins include A, D, E, and K. Excess levels of these vitamins can be stored in fat for future use, and these vitamin levels will be depleted by a low fat diet. The B series of vitamins are the primary water soluble vitamins. The body flushes out excess levels so they cannot be stored and must be replenished regularly.

Part II: Cracking the code

The second part of the book tells the story of Endre Szalay who started the Grow Company which produces the vitamins sold by Garden of Life. Szalay is a Hungarian pharmacist who avoided serving in the Second World War because he is part deaf. His freedom spared, he managed to survive the warfare and rampaging armies which rampaged back and forth across his country during the war. He became a successful pharmacist after the war but was worried about being denounced to the communists, so he escaped to the United States.

Once in the US, Szalay's genius demonstrated itself. He began at the very bottom level of the pharmacy profession and but he rose up the ladder to become the Vice President of three different pharmaceutical companies. Giving up the lucrative positions, he retired and invested his own money to follow his passion and create the Grow Company which grows vitamins inside of living organisms--yeasts. These vitamins contain all the necessary factors for the body to use them because they are constructed by a living organism. The Grow Company does not sell directly to customers it only sells to other companies, so Jordan Rubin approached Szalay to begin making nutritional supplements. The rest is history.

Part III: What the vitamin code means

There are five different levels of vitamins according to the authors of this book. From worst to best they are

1. Isolated Vitamins and Minerals: These are the cheapest and most common form. They often contain lots of sweeteners and the body has a difficult time absorbing them.
   
2. Isolated Vitamins and Minerals with Food Powder: These are the same synthetic vitamins as before but they contain some food powders which make them slightly easier for the body to assimilate.
   
3. Food Concentrates: These are vitamins extracted from healthy foods such as grasses. They were popular during the 1930s but were driven from the market by the cheaper isolated vitamins and minerals.
   
4. Fermented Vitamins and Minerals: To create these vitamins a food concentrate is mixed with a pro-biotic such as friendly yeasts. The fermentation makes the food concentrates easier to absorb.
5. Raw Food Created Vitamins: These vitamins are grown inside of yeast using the Grow Company's process which is described in more detail in the second part of the book. They are kept at low temperature to avoid denaturing from heat.
   

The World of Hair by John Gray

The World of Hair Colour (Hairdressing and Beauty Industry Authority)

online version

Hair is an indicator of health, a large part of a woman’s identity, and has played a large part in many famous stories (Samson, Rapunzel ...). Knowing the importance of hair is only a small part of the puzzle. It is important to know how hair works, what the signs of healthy hair are, how to care for your hair, and what dangers to avoid.

While researching hair I came across a good resource: an e-book called The World of Hair by Dr. John Gray. This book represents conventional science, so it must be read with a grain of salt. Its intended audience seems to be hair stylists, so it covers both the theory behind hair and how to care for it. I will summarize what I feel are the most important points of this book.

Hair Structure:
The two parts of a hair are the follicle which is below the surface of the skin where hair grows and the shaft which is outside of the skin. New cells are created in the follicle and pushed outwards to become the shaft. Hair pigment is created in the follicle. The shaft is composed of dead cells and lubricated by sebum which is secreted from the follicle. The center of the shaft is called the cortex and gives hair its curl and elasticity. It is made up of keratin and contains the in hairpigments. The outside of the shaft is called the cuticle is composed of between six and ten layers of cells and takes the form of a layer of scales covering the cortex. The cuticle gives hair its shine.

Hair Statistics:
People generally have between 100,000 and 150,000 hairs on their head. The number of hairs generally peaks around the age of 16 years old while the density of hair decreases throughout life. A baby will have around 1,100 hairs/cm2; a 25 year old, 600 hair/cm2, and someone 40 or older 300 hair/cm2. Hair usually grows at the rate of 1cm/month. Consequently shoulder length hair has usually been growing for 3 years and waist length hair for 7 years.

Hair Life Cycle:
Hair has three stages to its lifecycle. Anagen is the first phase in which the hair grows; this stage usually lasts between three and seven years. Catagen is the second phase lasting two to four weeks. During this phase hair stops growing and becomes ready for shedding. Telogen is the third phase; here a new hair starts to grow and the old hair falls out. This final stage lasts three to four months.

Hair Types:
Asian is the first of the hair categories based upon genetics. Asian hair is black and very straight. The straightness is due to the straightness of the keratin bundles. The shaft of the hair is round and thick. Its diameter can be more than 120 microns.

Caucasoid is the second type of hair. It is possessed by Europeans and Indians. It can be wavy or straight and has a wide range of colors. A mix of straight and wavy keratin bundles is found in the hair. The shaft is usually between 57 and 90 microns in diameter and oval in cross section.

The third type of hair is African. African hair is black and very curly. It is flatter in shape and the cuticle has many kinks in it.

In healthy hair the cortex or central part of the hair shaft is undamaged and the cuticle or covering sheath of the shaft is intact. Keeping hair in this state is easier said than done because once hair leaves the scalp it cannot be repaired. Hair needs to maintain its pristine conditions for a long time: 3 years for shoulder length, 5 years for waist length, and 12 years for hair long enough to sit on.

Since not everyone owns a high power microscope to examine their hair for damage, it is important to be able to tell hair’s healthiness through observation with the naked eyeball. Here the useful correlation between health and beauty aids us because we can recognize healthy hair instinctively. This explains why men are attracted to hair even though most men know almost nothing about hair. Properties of healthy and beautiful hair include glossiness, cleanness, amount, and volume.

The glossier hair is the more light it reflects. This is the most obvious property of healthy hair. Dark hair is generally glossier than light hair (this does not mean dark hair is better) because of the contrast between the shine and the natural hair color. Hair’s glossiness depends on the state of the cuticle. If the cuticle is mostly gone or highly damaged, hair will not reflect much light.

Clean hair is free of debris and has a proper level of natural oils. Hair naturally produces oil and should have some; however, it should not be excessively oily. There should not be debris or caked hairspray in the hair. Dirty hair is not as glossy as clean hair.

The amount of hair depends on the diameter of the hair shaft and number of hairs. The diameter of a pony tail can vary by more than 100% based upon the diameter and number of hairs. Both number of hairs and diameter of hair shaft are related to genetics and healthiness of lifestyle. Even though modern science says that both of these are fully genetic, it admits that in the case of starvation or high stress hair is lost and changes color. The amount of hair varies with length as well, but most of the time people do not grow their hair to its limiting length.

Volume is amount of space hair takes up. It is dependent on “thickness” as described in the previous paragraph but not entirely so. Hair properties such as stiffness, curvature, cohesion, and friction play a large role in determining hair’s volume. These cause hair to flow and hold itself in ways that hold more air inside and make it look bigger. While the amount of hair depends on ones long term health (of yourself and your ancestor), volume can be vary from day to day based upon treatment and weather conditions.

Next I will discuss general Dr. Gray's ideas about hair care and not specific techniques. First I will discuss styling and then cleaning. Hair styling is temporarily or permanently altering the shape of hair. Temporarily changing the shape of hair involves setting and changes weak bonds between hair while permanent altering either “perming” or “relaxing” chemically changes the shape of hair. Cleaning hair involves both the method of cleaning hair as well as the materials used.

Setting or temporary styling involves drying hair into place. This needs to be done every time hair is wetted. This is the safest way to style hair and everyone does it without thinking. Having a good haircut can make this easier. Avoid is back combing. This can increase the friction of hair leading to more volume, but it pushes up scales on the cuticle damaging the hair. Be careful about blow drying hair. Everyone agrees that air drying is optimal, but this takes a long time. Heat damages hair, and if there is a lot of water remaining in hair when it is blow dried, the water on the hair can boil seriously damaging the hair. For this reason towel dry and air dry as much as possible before blow drying. Hair can also be temporarily colored; this colors the hair with pigments which will eventually wash out. I would guess that this is not healthy [but more healthy than permanent coloring] because the pigments will also be absorbed into the scalp.

Permanent styling of hair changes the structure of hair through chemical processes. Usually a chemical is applied to the scalp which alters the structure of the hair chemically and a physical force is used to reshape the hair either curling (perm) or straitening (relaxing). After a period of time a neutralizing agent is applied counteracts the original chemical and locks the hair into its new form. Hair may be permanently colored as well. Here the pigments in the hair are neutralized and permanent dyes are used to change the color of the hair. Conducting these chemical causes permanent damage to hair and the author repeatedly emphasizes the need to determine what treatments hair has already received before applying new treatments so that hair is not too heavily damaged. There are many pictures in the book captioned by a statement along the lines of “this extremely beautiful hair has never been touched by any chemical treatment.”

A shampoo and possibly a conditioner is used to clean and care for hair on a regular basis. It is important to know your hair type in order to pick the correct shampoo. A shampoo removes grease and dirt from hair while a conditioner prevents tangling and protects the cuticle. Dr. Gray says that hair is washed much more often now than it had been in the past because shampoos are not as harsh as they used to be. I infer that you do not need to wash your hair nearly as much as we do.

Let your hair hang naturally and not pile it on top of your head while washing. Piling the hair will causing tangling and other problems. Do not scrub the hair too vigorously either. Shampoo should be applied mainly to the scalp while conditioner needs to be spread evenly throughout the hair