The Hair Growth Diaries | Alpecin Caffeine Shampoo

Alpecin Caffeine Shampoo: Boots, £5.49

Anyone who knows me will know my obsession with my willing my hair to grow faster than it's natural snail pace. I'm not particularly drawn in my many beauty fads or must-buys. In fact, when it boils down to it I'm an awful girl. I've been faithful to the same make-up routine since I was about 15 years old with a few additions thrown in. My hair however is a completely different story. I am always spending money on remedies, lotions and potions to try and persuade it to grow into the luscious mermaid locks of my dreams. I am not one of those people whose hair grows at an extraordinary rate and is forever complaining about how frequently they have to have it cut (STOP COMPLAINING, by the way). My sister was the one who was born with those miraculous hair growing genes as she could have her hair cut considerably shorter than mine and it still will have outgrown my limp locks after just six months. A blessing I have always been envious of!

In my constant battle with my hair I thought I would begin to record it's growth with the help of any hair growth remedies out there with the aim to distinguish those that actually work over those that are either old wive's tales or fall through on their claim. In September of last year I decided to stop dying my hair in order to grow out my roots and natural colour with the aim to help the condition of my hair in order for it to grow quicker. My roots have helped me track the progress of the growth a lot easier. It had actually got to around February when I realised my roots had only grown about half an inch since September! Half an inch in three months! It was then I decided I needed a little help to speed up the process and came up with the idea of this feature on 'Fox & Feather'.

The first number on my hair growth trials was Alpecin Caffeine Shampoo, which you can pick up in Boots for £5.49. This shampoo is actually aimed at men with hair loss and contains caffeine that is supposed to stimulate hair growth directly at the roots. Although I'm not losing my hair I figured it's aim was pretty much the same as what I'm after and if it made my hair thicker then that's an added bonus! Alpecin claims that washing your hair daily with this shampoo it will immediately stimulate the roots after being left on the scalp for as little as 120 seconds, whilst if you leave it on longer more caffeine will be absorbed into the scalp. Alpecin is one of the few products I have never tried before hence I decided to give it a go first up on this series. I've been using it for almost two months now and although I don't wash my hair daily (2-3 times a week at most!) I've got to say I've noticed a huge difference in my hair growth. My hair has grown around two inches in those two months! That's double the average growth for hair and much, much faster than it was growing previously!

When washing I would leave it on for anything between 2-5 minutes dependent on how patient I was feeling. The only downside to Alpecin is the fact it really dries out your hair. Due to it being aimed at men it has no conditioning agents, which really does make your hair feel like absolute shit after washing it. This has meant having to usually condition it twice over after washing it and using a hell of a lot of hair oil. Another downside is the scent of the shampoo is quite masculine. However, this isn't a probably is you use a scented conditioner afterwards to cover up the smell. I've actually since been informed that there is a female range of Alpecin but I can't actually seem to find it anywhere, so if anyone does know hook a sister up! I've also recently invested in the Double Effect version, which I'll be trying out after this bottle runs out.


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