The Importance of Trims for healthy hair

"We all want healthy, long hair but..."
Heard this line before? Get tired of hearing it, huh? I know I do. This line is always the start of some natural hair rule that you must follow to get long and healthy hair. I hate rules, especially when it comes to natural hair. I tend to bend some and poke fun at others, but sometimes you have to bite the bullet and actually follow one of these most important natural hair rules.

Trimming!
Some say 6-8 weeks, others say seasonal, and yet there's those who don't. I've tried them all and learned a couple of things about the forbidden world of trimming. I've broke it down to a couple of key points.

Frequency.
How often you trim your hair depends on a couple of factors. Trim too much and you won't see any retention. Trim too little and you risk having the damage spread to the healthy parts of your hair. First things first, understand why you're trimming.

Why?
Trimming is the only way to "reverse" damage on your hair. Split, frayed ends, heat damage, color damage, etc, can only be "reversed" by cutting. For me personally, my hair is prone to split ends no matter what I do, so trimming frequently is the only way to prevent those splits from traveling up the shaft to the healthy hair (something I had happened and something I don't want to live through again). Just look at these splits I had from my color damage a couple of years ago:

Prevention.
This is the best way to prevent your hair from becoming like that^^^  which will lessen the frequency in which you have to trim your hair. Moisturizing and sealing ends with a thick oil or butter, protein treatments, using fingers instead of hair tools, moisturizing products, and low manipulation will all help in reducing the amount of damage done to your hair.

For me, my henna glosses are the reason why I don't have to trim as often (any more). Strengthening the hair helps to keep it from being damage. Henna builds up a layer around the cuticle, protecting it. We all know that all damage is the hair fiber having less cuticle layer or some type of trauma to the cuticle layers.

But how much to trim?
This depends on you and how much you feel comfortable with removing. A good rule of thumb is half a inch. I find that this gets most of the damage off without sacrificing too much. You can even do less if you have a trim schedule. My trim schedule right now is a dusting every 2 months (just to get rid of excess damage from when I bleached my hair and to prevent more damage). Like everything, this will change depending on my hair reacts.

Trim or Dust: Is there a difference?
There is. A trim will usually get rid of several inches of hair. Dusting the hair will get rid of anywhere upwards to an inch (usually a lot less). For each trim session, I opt for more of a dusting of my hair. I never cut more than a half inch. This ensures I get all of the splits I need to trim off with retaining my length.

Added Bonus:
I know I talk about it a lot but my henna gloss actually dictates how much hair I trim. At the end of the month will all my treatments, a healthy coating of brown/red color shows up on my hair. Henna usually coats the hair cuticle in order to show this color. If your cuticle is damaged or you have less layers of the cuticle, the color will show more of a reddish hue. This is how I know what to cut. The more red the hair shows on the ends, the more I know I need to cut.

Final remarks.
I was happy with the length retention I was seeing. Especially because I usually don't see any length retention. This new regimen that I'm on has really helped me see progress with my hair. I was weary when I looked at my reminder to trim. However, after I was done trimming and I saw all the splits in the trimmed hair, I was happy that I did. Hair is hair and it will grow long. But hair is not always healthy and holding on to unhealthy hair will not get you closer to your length goal.