What is damaged hair? For majority, us it would be dry hair, split ends, loss of colour and strong frizz. In science damaged hair can be described as very highly porous hair.
Healthy hair is slightly porous, which means hair doesn’t want to take up much of the water and product. This is a good thing because it means hair is healthy, the cuticle is nicely sealed and not damaged. However, the increased hair porosity can be identified as the “holes” in the outer hair layer. Those holes allow more water to get inside the hair, which causes hair swelling. Also, it makes hair “breath out” all the moisture, which makes hair become very dry.
How hair can become porous? There are several factors that can induce high porosity of hair:
Bleaching and hair dying – as much as you might like changing hair color this can induce hair damage. Bleaching can increase pores sizes by 30 %, therefore the quality of the process matters a lot and most important haircare afterwords. Make sure you are using the right products and discuss colour change process with a very good hairstylist!
Sun exposure: Being in a sun can really affect hair health. I spoke about sun damage in my previous post and how to protect your hair.
Hair washing: How we wash our hair really affects hair health. Rubbing hair fibers into each other causes friction and formation of those holes. Be gentle during hair wash and even more gentle when you dry your hair with a towel.
Hair styling: This is probably old news, especially when it comes to hot tools. Whether you curling or straightening your hair make sure your tool is set to 180 degrees as this is the most optimal and less damaging temperature. Don’t forget using heat protection, I review a few before and how they actually work.
Constant hair touching: Yes this is a thing! Do you twist your ponytail while typing? Do you constantly brush through your hair with your fingers? Of course, these are minor actions but sometimes little things leave a big impact!
How to avoid your hair becoming damaged/ porous? Avoid all those actions I described above or at least reduce to the minimum. The good thing about hair it does grow back, but make sure you getting good haircare habits to avoid porosity formation.
I have another post coming your way sharing top tips how to reduce hair porosity, stay tuned!
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