Carmilla wrote:
My hair seems to break extremely easily. For example, I can break off the very bottoms using merely my fingernail. That isn't healthy, is it? If not, how can I take care of the problem without spending $50 a month on shampoo and conditioner?

Carmilla, you can use all the conditioning products in the world, but the truth of the matter is, split ends will never "heal". get a good haircut. hair is just a group of dead cells. they will never regenerate. conditioning treatments/products will only temporarily "glue" the ends toghether, or make the hair FEEL better. they will never "heal" the split ends.

split ends are like cracked glass. they will crack up, and up the hair shaft, so the best thing to do is to trim it off before you start getting little breakage pieces that stick straight up (imagine those little flyaways... but 10 times as many!)

and like the others said, heat, chemicals, salt water, clorine all contibute to damage, and if your hair is long, the ends are probably a couple years old. which means they have been through a couple dry winters, and couple years of hard water, a couple years of blowdrying/flat ironing, etc...

it is hard to tell someone to NEVER blowdry thier hair and think it's actually going to happen, so i say DO blowdry your hair but with a good THERMAL product!! go to your stylist and ask what thermal products she would reccomend for your hair type.