Photo courtesy of Adg
The hair styling life comes with three major problems.
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Clients who don’t know what they want.
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Slaying too hard.
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Back problems.
You can fix the first one with the second one. Unfortunately, slaying like a samurai master with a pair of scissors is often fixed by the third problem: musculoskeletal problems. In fact, back problems are the number one health concerns for hair stylists, followed quickly by sore feet, nutrition, and carpal tunnel. For your average 9 to 5 office jockey, back problems might not be big game changers, but for hair stylists, if the back, legs, or hands go out, it puts your career at risk. And if you’re working 10 hours a day, 6 days a week, it isn’t if you’ll have back problems, it’s when. You aren’t doomed though. There are a few simple things you can start doing every day that will help keep your future back problems in check.
Start Sleeping More
You have to start here. Frankly nothing else will help you that much if you’re only sleeping 3 to 5 hours a night. The CDC actually considers sleep deprivation to be a public health problem, because it has a wide range of consequences, including diabetes, high blood pressure, and depression. Staying healthy requires some willpower and you just won’t have that unless you’re well rested. That means getting a minimum of 6 hours of sleep every night. You’ll feel like a superhero on 7 or 8, but we’re talking simple here. It doesn’t have a direct effect on your overworked spine, but it does help the body around the spine. It just makes everything inside you work better.
Stretch and Take Breaks
It’s hard to hold off what you’re doing to swing your limbs around for apparently no reason, but it helps to stay limber. Take five minutes at the beginning and end of each day to stretch your legs out, and during the day try to stop every thirty minutes to an hour to flex your hands and stretch your wrists. Just long enough to rest your hands and keep the blood flowing easily.
Good Salon Mats are your Best Friend
You probably spend most of your life standing on a salon mat at this point, so it makes sense to pay close attention to how it makes you feel. Your feet will be sore at the end of the day regardless, but when you start feeling that sharpness in the ankles or the knees, it’s time to either take a vacation or get a new salon mat. For such a simple piece of furniture, the salon mat is remarkably healthy for you. Besides just being comfortable, it actually helps maintain blood flow through your feet and legs, which has nice, far-reaching effects for your brain and your heart. A solid, comfy mat means a reduced risk of high blood pressure, diabetes, and osteoporosis. So, you should definitely make sure you have one you like.
Water, Fruits, and Vegetables
You probably need to eat healthier, because you’re a hair stylist and the easiest thing to do on your 10 minute lunch break is to either wolf down a protein bar or eat nothing, then consume everything in sight when you finally get home. This has a similar effect to sleep deprivation. It makes you more tired and more depressed. Your whole body just operates less efficiently and that’s going to take a bigger toll on your back. A better diet doesn’t necessarily have to be some extreme trade off, like smothering everything in spinach, or giving up meat for nuts and beans. It can be as simple as making sure your eating fruits and vegetables everyday, and drinking enough water. So for a start, just resolve to start taking at least one kind of fruit to the salon with you and a large water bottle, and you better drink enough to refill that bottle several times, because you need about a gallon of that stuff a day.
Take Walks
We know you’re on your feet all day already, and all you want to do when it’s over is kick off your shoes and melt into a mattress, but walking might be one of the best ways to protect your legs and back from trouble down the road. Walking helps you in three big ways: it improves your mood, it helps reduce weight gain, and it eases joint pain. According to Harvard Health, walking actually lubricates the joints in your legs and lower back and builds the muscles around them. You can prevent, or at least relieve, arthritis and osteoporosis just by walking five or six miles a week. You can easily make that if you spare fifteen to twenty minutes a day on strolling the neighborhood.