Avoiding Hair Damage

Hair is under constant assault, not only from the elements (sun,
wind, and rain) but also from you, its owner. There are endless
ways to torture your hair into submission — and in some cases the
damage can be permanent. In this section, we look at the things
that make your hair cry uncle and things you can do to counteract
the damage you may have already inflicted.
Because you’re constantly producing new hair, you can get a fresh
start, a second chance at caring for your hair if you did things
wrong in the recent past. This means that you replace the old dam-
aged hair with new freshly growing hair, but it will take months for
this process to occur (hair grows at
1
⁄2 inch per month). Improper
use of permanent dyes or hair setting agents can damage all of the
hair on top of your head.
You may have to wait a year or two for new growth to replace that
which must be cut away, but the hair will grow back, as long as you
haven’t inflicted permanent damage on the hair root. The longer
you want your hair, the longer the wait.
Hair in thinning areas is often finer than hair on other parts of your
head. Thinning hair also grows more slowly. If hair in the frontal or
crown areas where hair is starting to miniaturize (the step before it
disappears permanently) is damaged in any way, its growth may
stop completely until it has time to recover — and at that point,
the hair may be about to disappear permanently.
Unfortunately, the period where hair begins to thin is the time
people often start trying to make their thinning hair look better by
dyeing it. Aggressive dying may finish off the balding process
ahead of time.
Most people do dastardly things to their hair on a daily basis; here
are just a few of the worst offenses:
 Drying with a blow-dryer: Deep in the cortex are air pockets
that give hair an added bounce. These air pockets have mois-
ture in them, and if you blow-dry your hair at a high tempera-
ture, you can boil the moisture and cause the hair shaft to
explode! So a moderate temperature is essential when you
blow-dry your hair.
 Using hot rollers: These curl-creators may be the single most
damaging thing for hair because they apply heat directly to
your hair.
 Exposing hair to direct sunlight: Heat decreases the amount
of moisture in your hair, causing problems similar to those of
blow-drying. Exposing your hair to high doses of ultraviolet
light from direct sunlight can cause significant damage to the
disulphide bonds in the keratin.
 Rubbing too hard to dry hair: If you rub your hair roughly
with a towel, the friction pulls out hair and may produce
mechanical damage to the remaining hair shafts.
 Hacking it with dull scissors: Dull scissors can split apart the
cuticle, leaving broken hair with split ends that tend to peel
down the hair shaft.
 Back brushing: Think of your hair as a one-way street which
runs from the scalp to the tip of the hair follicle. When you
brush or comb the hair against the scales, going from the tip
of the follicle to the scalp, you can irreversibly damage the
shaft and break the hair. Intact, unbroken cuticle cells are
glossy and smooth and give hair its shine and luster. Back
brushing changes the character of the cuticle so that it loses
its shine and luster.
 Using a metal comb or brushing too hard: Plastic combs
create much less friction than metal combs and are a better
choice. Combing or brushing wet hair can fracture the hair
shafts, but conditioners can help by detangling and allowing a
comb to be passed through the hair without tugging on it,
which may cause it to fracture. When combing, start at the
ends and work your way up to the scalp, making sure to stay
with the grain by combing downward away from the scalp.
 Perming: As we explain in the earlier section, “Perming your
hair,” the perming process breaks apart the scales so that
water can be absorbed and the hair can be reshaped. Leaving
perm solution on for too long or perming too often can perma-
nently damage the hair shaft.
 Bleaching or coloring: The earlier section, “How dyes work,”
explains how bleaching or coloring your hair can damage the
cuticle and increase the porosity of the hair shaft, weakening
the hair by allowing it to absorb too much moisture.
 Putting rubber bands around it: Rubber bands can cause
traction alopecia by putting too much pressure on the hair
shafts. In fact, constant pulling of the hair from any source can
cause traction alopecia.
 Using hair sprays: Hair spray coats the cuticle and changes
its porosity, and it makes hairs bind to each other and pull at
the points of contact. They can produce traction from the con-
stant pulling that may fracture the hair cuticle and the spin-
dles below, exposing the cortex to possible environmental
damage.
Most hair sprays are water-soluble, so if you wash your hair daily
after using hair sprays, the hair spray chemicals and bonds they
form are usually washed away, decreasing the chance of damage.
An occasional bad hair day doesn’t mean you’ve permanently dam-
aged your hair; bad hair days usually are caused by a reduction in
static electricity in your hair, which is due to weather conditions
and not by anything you’ve done to your hair.
You guarantee that your hair will recover poorly from damage from
the various hair treatments you subject it to if you don’t give it an
opportunity for repair with good washing and conditioning. Once
the cuticle cracks or breaks and the cortex is damaged, only a
good hair cut (removing the damaged hair by cutting it off) will
allow you to get the healthy hair look you want.
When hair is damaged, it appears dull and feels rough, losing that
silky feel. Fortunately, with time, the hair grows out and you can
cut away that damaged hair as the younger part of the hair near
the base of the scalp replaces the old hair.