Maintaining that healthy, manageable hair you get from hours at the salon requires work at home. So how can you keep that high shine? Conditioning your hair regularly will improve its strength, shine and keep hair damage to a minimum, though it can't actually repair damaged hair. "Conditioners smooth the cuticles, reduce static electricity, protect against UV damage and enhance overall appearance," says Dr. D'Anne Kleinsmith, a dermatologist in West Bloomfield, Mich.

Conditioners also help keep the hair's cortex hydrated. "Dry, out-of-condition hair lacks moisture, and without enough moisture, the number of hydrogen bonds may be reduced," explains John Gray, author of The World of Hair. "Conditioning allows reestablishment of the hydrogen bonds and improves the moisture content of the hair by improving the weatherproofing of the cuticle."

Your hair's length, the amount of chemical processing it endures and the frequency with which you use hot styling tools are all factors to consider in your conditioning regimen. "Ask yourself what kind of hair you have," suggests Steve Lococo, co-owner and style director of Borrelli Salons California. "Volume conditioners have ingredients that will plump up the hair, usually with grapefruit or some type of citric ingredient. Smoothing conditioners have a tendency to have more oils or lanolin to help coat the hair shaft."

Fine Hair
Thin hair typically cannot support a high level of conditioning ingredients. To prevent weighing down delicate tresses, consider conditioning just the middle and ends, where your hair is most susceptible to damage. A light volumizing conditioner will moisturize your hair and provide thermal protection for blow-dryer use. If your hair is extremely fine, you may want to replace a basic conditioner with a leave-in conditioning spray, which boasts a lighter formulation and will help strengthen the hair shaft.

Thick Hair
The right conditioner is a fundamental component of an effective hair care regimen if you have thick, wild tresses. "Unlike fine hair, hair that’s thick can support a lot of conditioning ingredients," "explains leading hair care research scientist Steve Shiel, a Pantene hair care expert who holds a doctorate in organometallic chemistry. "I would recommend more intensive conditioning products; for example, one designed for straight hair or dry, damaged hair. Conditioning masks can also help to tame unruly hair." While a leave-in conditioner doesn't provide enough conditioning for thick hair, Shiel suggests using it as a detangling aid, especially on days between shampooing.

Curly Hair
“Condition, condition, condition” is the mantra for curly tresses. Hair experts suggest you condition your locks every time you shampoo. On the days you don't shampoo, run a conditioner through your corkscrews if they’ve gotten bulky and unkempt to help them relax and detangle easily. Rinse your scalp thoroughly but leave a trace of conditioner in your strands.

To avoid dehydration and frizz, use a deep-conditioning mask every two weeks. Maximize the results by applying the mask, then covering your hair with a shower cap or plastic wrap and running the heat of a blow dryer a few inches above your head for five to ten minutes. If your hair is extremely dehydrated, use a basic conditioner to detangle, followed by a leave-in conditioner to sustain moisture.

Colored and Highlighted Hair
Coloring your hair can remove some, or all, of the lipid layer on the surface of each cuticle, depleting your hair's natural waterproofing qualities. And since a basic conditioner is formulated to deposit on waterproof hair, it becomes ineffective on color-processed tresses. Conditioners specifically made for colored hair contain different polymers designed to work on a non-waterproof surface. Quick tip: the night before a color treatment, prep and protect your locks by coating with a leave-in oil, suggests Claudio Lazo, owner of C the Salon in Studio City, Calif.

Conditioning Tips for All Hair Types
Dispense the conditioner into the palm of your hand and rub your hands together.  Using your fingers almost like a comb, apply the product from the midsections of your hair down toward the ends. "You should concentrate on these areas, as they are the most damaged parts of your hair," explains Shiel. "When you rinse your hair, enough of the product will then deposit on the parts of your hair closest to your scalp." You may also want to use a paddle brush or wide-tooth comb in the shower to distribute the conditioner throughout.

Want more beautiful skin and hair? Celebrate the warm weather with regular visits to your local farmers market. If winter is the season for bundling up in cashmere and braising rich stews and hearty soups, then spring is the time to not only brighten up our wardrobes, but also sate our palates with a colorful bounty of fruits and vegetables.

“Eating off the vine and onto the plate offers the best flavor and optimal nutrition,” explains nutritionist Jackie Keller, author of Body After Baby: A Simple, Healthy Plan to Lose Your Body Weight Fast. “And it’s widely known that a diet rich in fruits, vegetables and healthy fats will benefit the appearance of your hair, skin and nails.”

So as we spring forward, lighten your load, leave behind those heavy foods and fats, and do some spring dietary cleaning by indulging in these healthy and delicious fresh foods.

Strawberries
“When it comes to vitamin C, don’t just think oranges. Consider strawberries too,” says nutritionist Christine Avanti, author of Skinny Chicks Eat Real Food: Kick Your Fake Food Habit, Kickstart Your Weight Loss. These delicacies not only taste great, but are also loaded with skin-enhancing vitamin C, which, according to a study in The American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, may help ward off wrinkles by promoting collagen synthesis and production. Added bonus: Vitamin C’s load of antioxidants brightens skin by mopping up free radicals produced from too much sun exposure.

Spinach
With its high calcium content, spinach helps thicken hair and strengthen nails. And with vitamin C and A to boot, it helps the hair follicles produce sebum -- the body’s natural hair conditioner that adds shine and strength while preventing dry, brittle hair. “A strawberry and spinach salad is a killer vitamin C combination that tastes great,” says Keller.

Asparagus
There are just 25 calories in eight medium-sized asparagus spears, but that’s enough to provide a full quarter of your recommended intake of vitamin A, a vitamin that’s essential to the maintenance and repair of healthy skin. And since asparagus is 90 percent water, the elegant veggies will help keep you hydrated. “Good hydration is fundamental to skin health and appearance,” explains Keller. As a diuretic, asparagus is also a natural way to get rid of unwanted bloat.

Artichokes
Who doesn’t love peeling away artichoke leaves to get to the heart? Rich in the family of vitamin B’s like folate, artichokes aren’t just good for the heart; the folate also helps encourage healthy hair growth and skin rejuvenation by promoting cell turnover. Keller recommends eating artichokes with low-fat or fat-free yogurt instead of butter so you can take advantage of dairy’s calcium, without extra calories or saturated fat.

Avocados
Avocados contain monounsaturated fatty acids and biotin, which help prevent dry skin and brittle hair and nails. “They help keep the skin youthful,” says Avanti. And since avocados are also a great source of omega-3 fatty acids, they are anti-inflammatory
wonders for heart health and circulation too.

Kale, Cantaloupe and Carrots
Want a more attractive hue to your skin? Sure, a pink blush can help, but for a glow that won’t rinse away with your nightly cleanser, try adding a wide variety of colorful fruits and veggies to your diet. A new study done in Scotland found that eating foods that are rich in beta-carotene and lycopene led to a rosier skin tone among college students. What’s more, other people rated their skin as more attractive at the end of the six-week study. For the greatest skin boost, fill your plate with a rainbow of fruits and vegetables. Dermatologists say every color has its own health- and beauty-boosting benefits!

Photo: @iStockphoto.com/starush

Want to add more variety and spice to your life? Consider becoming a flexitarian, which involves regularly fitting meatless meals into your diet. Also called “sometime vegetarians” or “temporary vegetarians,” flexitarians enjoy the health benefits of vegetables, legumes, grains, seeds and nuts without forsaking the meat, fish and poultry columns of the menu.

Planet-friendly Benefits of Vegetables
In her weekly newsletter, Goop, Gwyneth Paltrow recently touted the benefits of Meat Free Mondays, a campaign launched by Paul McCartney in the United Kingdom. Going meat-free one day a week is a painless way for people to “do their bit” for the environment, according to the ex-Beatle.  

Consider that it takes about 634 gallons of freshwater to produce a single 5.2 ounce burger patty, but the same amount of tofu requires only 143 gallons. Or that about 40 calories of fossil fuel energy go into every calorie of beef protein, whereas a calorie of corn is produced with just 2.2 calories of energy. As Mark Bittman puts it in his book Food Matters: A Guide to Conscious Eating, a steak dinner for the typical family of four uses about the same amount of energy as driving around for three hours in an SUV while you’ve left the lights on back home.

Beauty Benefits of Vegetables
The Meat Free Mondays movement (a sister campaign here in the U.S. is called Meatless Monday) is really about the foods you discover as you put together meals of plant-based ingredients. “It’s amazingly easy to take one day in your week and not eat meat,” says McCartney. “When you think about it, there are so many great alternatives. For instance, in Italian cooking, so many of the dishes are vegetarian already, and Thai and Chinese cuisine are the same. All it means is that you have to think a bit about what you’ll eat that day, but it’s a fun challenge.”

There’s a beauty benefit to vegetarian meals too. Protein is found in every cell, organ and tissue in our bodies and is essential to glossy hair, radiant skin and strong nails. Vegetarian sources of protein -- beans, nuts, lentils, peas, soybeans, and whole grains such as quinoa and kasha -- give you the beauty boost without the fat of animal proteins. A cup of cooked lentils, for example, contains 18 grams of protein but less than 1 gram of fat. Three ounces of porterhouse steak, in comparison, have 19 grams of protein and a whoping 22 grams of fat, according to The Harvard School of Public Health.

Tips From Paltrow’s Chef
Lee Gross, who was once Paltrow’s personal chef and still cooks for her from time to time, says, “consuming a largely vegetarian diet gives me a feeling of lightness and euphoria that I don’t find in a meat-based diet.” Celebrities seem to relish the high of lotus root and tofu as well. Gross is the consulting chef to M Cafe, a trio of contemporary macrobiotic eateries in Los Angeles, where Drew Barrymore, Renee Zellweger, Eva Longoria, Kirsten Dunst, Maggie Gyllenhaal and Reese Witherspoon regularly dine on dishes like tempeh wraps, shitake-avocado sushi rolls and green kale lemonade. 

A Recipe for You
A favorite on M Chaya’s spring menu, the chickpea and dandelion salad below features dandelion greens, which are slightly bitter and astringent and “balance the richness of the lemon-tahini dressing and frizzled onions beautifully,” says Gross. Feel free to substitute arugula, mache or any other spring greens. And either almond butter or peanut butter can be swapped for the sesame tahini.

Chickpea and Dandelion Salad

Salad Ingredients

15-ounce can organic chickpeas, drained

1/2 cup red Bhutanese rice (or long-grain brown rice), cooked

1 cup celery hearts and inside leaves, sliced thin

1 1/2 cups fresh dandelion greens, washed well, dried and chopped

1/4 cup frizzled onions (recipe follows)

Tahini-lemon dressing (recipe follows)

Sea salt

Freshly ground black pepper

Tahini-lemon Dressing Ingredients

1/4 cup sesame tahini

1 cup extra-virgin olive oil

3/4 cup fresh lemon juice

1 teaspoon fresh garlic, minced

3/4 teaspoon ground cumin

Pinch cayenne pepper

1/2 teaspoon sea salt

Pinch freshly ground black pepper

To make dressing:
Combine all ingredients in mixing bowl. Adjust dressing with additional sea salt, black pepper or lemon juice, to taste.

To make frizzled onions:
Slice one yellow onion into paper-thin half-moons. Heat 3 tablespoons olive oil in frypan and add onions. Fry onions over medium heat until they are golden-brown and “frizzled.” Transfer to absorbent towel to drain excess oil. Season with sea salt and reserve.

To assemble salad:

1. Combine chickpeas, cooked rice, celery hearts and dandelion greens in mixing bowl.

2. Add 2 to 3 tablespoons of frizzled onions to bowl.

3. Moisten salad with about 1/4 cup tahini-lemon dressing and mix well to combine.

4. Taste salad and adjust with additional dressing, sea salt and black pepper as needed.

5. Transfer salad to serving bowl or platter; drizzle additional dressing, if desired, and garnish with additional frizzled onions.

Don’t let a few inches -- or feet -- of snow and subzero temperatures keep you from getting your best body ever this year. It may be too cold for jogging or playing tennis, but you can break a sweat with these great new indoor workouts.

1. For a fresh spin on spinning, check out RealRyder cycling classes. They feature “unstationary” stationary bikes with frames that tilt 18 degrees, so along with pedaling, you can also lean and steer. That means your whole body -- legs, upper body, glutes and core -- are working. What’s more, as you shift your body from side to side, you come a lot closer to the experience of riding a bike on a curvy road on a windy day. The result: you can count on burning about 20 percent more calories than in a conventional spin class, while getting a good mental workout too. With total focus required, it’s a boredom-buster.

2. Pilates is great for toning and lengthening muscles, but it falls short when it comes to cardio conditioning … until now. Pilates reformer classes equip the classic piece of Pilates equipment with pulleys and springs for a fast-moving workout that will leave you drenched in sweat. Sara Kapuchinski teaches a version of these classes to a roster of celebrities that includes Kim Kardashian, Christina Ricci and Sofia Vergara at her Los Angeles studio, I Heart Fitness XO. “Pilates is great for your core,” she says, “but I wanted to balance that with something that was more cardio-driven without being a boot camp.” For an at-home alternative, consider the CoreBody Reformer by Nautilus ($279 at CoreBodyReformer.com), a portable Pilates system with built-in pulleys and weights, and DVDS that will lead you through Pilates and cardio moves.

3. “Muscle confusion” is the newest science in working out. The principle is that when your body becomes accustomed to a set of exercises it adapts, you stop losing weight or toning up. New at-home programs like P90X and Supreme 90 Day outsmart this plateau by constantly changing up moves so your muscles don’t know what’s coming next. The P90X system includes 12 DVDs -- Supreme 90 Day has 10 -- that take you through different core, cardio, lower-body and upper-body workouts each day. The American Council on Exercise (ACE) tested out various muscle-confusing programs and found them highly effective. Overall, muscle confusion workouts burn more calories, including a higher percentage of fat calories, says an ACE spokeswoman.

Cold-weather Swaps

If you can’t get to your yoga class, try:

“Shiva Rea: More Daily Energy.” This DVD from the celebrity yoga teacher contains seven 20-minute practices for both beginners and advanced yoga students. A customizable yoga matrix allows you to tailor your own workout depending on your energy level, mood and schedule.

If the playground is under a foot of snow, check out:

The “Hoopnotica” collection of fitness hoops and DVDs, and join the new generation of hoopers, including Michelle Obama and Beyonce. You’ll find travel hoops, glow-in-the-dark hoops and beginner hoops. Advanced hoopers also get mini hoops so you can twirl two or more at a single time.

If you don’t have time for a full-length workout, try:

“Exhale: Core Fusion Power Sculpt.” With five 10-minute segments that combine yoga postures and light hand-weights, you can work your biceps and triceps before your morning shower, your core at midday, and your thighs and glutes before bedtime.

If you’d rather stay near the fireplace than venture to your favorite dance class, try:

Zumba Fitness 2 for Nintendo Wii or Zumba Fitness Rush for Kinect for Xbox 360. Both versions include tracks from artists such as Pitbull and Nicole Scherzinger, as well as 24 dance styles, including Latin pop, Bollywood and samba. Want even more moves? Join one of the crews on Dance Central 2 for Kinect for Xbox 360 and get your sweat on to a soundtrack that includes Usher, Rihanna, Lady Gaga, Bruno Mars, Daft Punk and Missy Elliott.

If you’ve ever been baffled by all the different styling aids on the shelves and wondered which ones you actually need, you’re not alone. “Any time someone finds out I’m a hairstylist, I end up surrounded by women with questions about products,” says Lisa Chiccine, owner of the Lisa Chiccine Salon in New York City. Here, Chiccine and David Rhys of Jet Rhys Salon in San Diego look beyond the label to demystify what’s inside the bottle.

Hair Spray
“It will put a nice hold on an elaborate style and lock in a look,” says Rhys. “It also helps refresh a look throughout the day.” Be aware that different types of hair sprays, such as flexible and maximum hold, deliver very different results. Higher-octane sprays (generally in aerosol form) are going to give you longer-lasting, stiffer hold and volume while locking out humidity. A flexible spray (in plastic bottles or aerosol cans) gives you more control and hair that still feels soft to the touch.

Style benefit: Hold, control, volume
Best for: All hair types and styles
How much to use: One to two pumps applied wherever you want to achieve hold. With sprays, you can be generous since they will disperse evenly
How to use: Hold bottle several inches from head to get even distribution, and spray on dry hair

Thickening Spray/Root Booster/Volumizer
“Before a blow-dry, this will give your hair body that will sustain itself all day,” says Rhys. 

Style benefit: Volume
Best for: Fine or straight hair
How much to use: Apply one to two pumps per section
How to use: Spray at the root and work into scalp with fingertips, then mist once over the rest of your hair

Texturizing Spray
“A texture spray makes hair stick together,” explains Chiccine. “You don’t want to see clumps, so less is more.”

Style benefit: Defines waves, curls and reduces frizz and flyaways
Best for: Wavy, curly and/or thick hair
How much to use: Five to six spritzes
How to use: Spray damp hair evenly from mid-shaft to ends of hair, then scrunch

Styling Cream/Styling Lotion/Curl Cream
“These are light and versatile and amazing as blow-drying aids for that non-product feel,” says Rhys. “They are also wonderful finishing products to show off layers and movement.”

Style benefit: Definition and separation
Best for: All hair types, but especially good for short, layered and curly hair
How much to use: A nickel-sized blob for creams, and two to three pumps for lotions/liquids
How to use: Work through hands, then run evenly all over damp or dry hair

Wax
“This is the heaviest product there is,” says Chiccine. “It takes just the tiniest amount of wax to create texture, and it’s best-suited for thicker hair.”

Style benefit: Texture, piecey look, spikiness
Best for: Thick hair, especially shorter pieces
How much to use: A baby pea-size dab
How to use: Spread between fingers, then pinch onto the ends of hair

Gel
“Ideal for short cuts, gel is good to mix with paste for a defined style that’s not sticky,” says Chiccine.

Style benefit: Volume, hold, control, texture
Best for: All hair types, but especially short styles
How much to use: A nickel-sized dollop
How to use: Apply evenly to damp hair

Mousse
A hair care staple for years, mousse has come a long way. “Like gel, it’s evolved into touchable, brushable, non-flaking goodness,” Rhys says. There are different formulations (some thicker and some lighter) to help you achieve different looks -- lift at the roots, all-over thickness, curl definition, tousled “scrunched” waves.

Style benefit: Volume, hold, definition
Best for: All hair types, but especially thin or fine hair
How much to use: A golf ball-sized dollop
How to use: Apply evenly to wet hair

Shine Serum
“Everyone needs shine,” says Chiccine. “Serums seal the cuticle layer to deliver maximum sheen, which is great for sleek looks.”

Style benefit: Shine, curl control, heat protection|
Best for: All hair types, but especially frizzy or coarse hair
How much to use: A pea-sized dab. Too much will make even clean hair look dirty and weighed down,” says Chiccine
How to use: Rub between fingers and run over wet or dry hair from midshaft to ends

Frizz Cream
“If you dislike the syrupy texture of serum, try the creamier, weightless version known as frizz cream,” says Chiccine.

Style benefit: Same as a serum but lighter and less likely to weigh down hair
Best for: All hair types, but especially frizzy or coarse hair
How much to use: Start with a pea-sized dab and add more as needed
How to use: Rub between fingers and run over wet or dry hair from midshaft to ends

Photo: @iStockphoto.com/Squaredpixels