Tips for Best Hair Care

Caring For Your Hair is Easy Respect your hair! Your inner health is just as important as the products you apply externally to your hair. Inner health is your nutritional, metabolic, hormonal and all other functions that influence your body. A Few Facts Do you know what hair is made of? Dead cells...lots and lots of them. Hair is made up of three layers -The Outside is called the cuticle -The Inside is called the medulla - In between the two is called the Cortex The cortex is where the strength of hair is. The cortex is made up mainly of strong protein bonds. There are also two other bonds which is hydrogen and salt. When hair is wet it is more flexible because the salt and hydrogen bonds that provide 2/3rds the strength of hair are broken by water. These are replaced when dry. This is how blow dried styles hold their shape. The third (the disulphide bond) is broken by chemicals and the sun. There are many other vitamins, minerals and hormones that affect the condition or strength of hair. There are three classifications of hair: fine, medium, and coarse. This is referring to the diameter (thickness) of each individual hair. The finer the hair the less cortex there is, so it is not as strong as what thick would be. If thick hair has been chemically treated this could mean that the finer hair may of course be stronger as chemicals permanently damage the disulphide bonds in the cortex. What do we do wrong? The obvious causes of hair damage: We all know that colours damage the hair. Semi Permanent colours don't do as much damage as the permanent but depending on the hair type it too can have more of a negative effect than desired. Any chemical service in the hair will permanently alter and damage the chemical bonding strength in the hair. Having two chemical services (Perm and colour) will give even more damage to the internal structure. Permanent straightening of any sort is a chemical service as well and should be noted that it is the same as if you had a colour or perm done in the affects on the hair. The not so obvious causes of hair damage: Blow Drying Blow drying seems like a harmless thing to do. Just think about a few things first 1) How often do you blow dry your hair? 2) What heat do you have your hair dryer on? 3) How long do you keep the hair dryer in one spot on your hair? If you blow dry your hair daily, on high heat, and/or don't keep it moving this can cause mechanical damage to the hair. Brushes Brushing your hair is harmless unless it is done the wrong way. Everything has a right and wrong way to do things. Any strain put on the hair has the chance of causing breakage. When the hair is wet it is at one of its weakest moments. Put the last two together and you have even more chance of damage. Straightening Irons Straightening irons are hot and having them in one spot on the hair to long will cause it to burn and break. Putting Hair Up Putting your hair up is hard. (I am a woman so I sympathise.) Putting it up too tight or under to much strain will break the hair. Be gentle with it. Imagine if you have a chemical service in your hair as well as the above processes being done... Even more chance of breakage. When two out of the three bonds that give hair strength are broken by water it will be more susceptible to breakage when wet. If you put finer hair together with a hot round brush blow drying the chance of breakage is high. Conditioning treatments and leave in treatments are important in patching and protecting hair from damage. Hair problems can occur genetically, physically, by mechanical and chemical means. Having only one can be bad enough but if you combine any of them the risk of damage is higher. Internal Health-How can it help? Let's start from the beginning... How does hair grow?To Sum Up The moral of this article is to never underestimate what will or won't affect you, and in what way. Some conditions will require specialist help. Professional and caring service is provided to patients at The Southern Trichology Clinic. Good nutrition and health is just as important for your hair as what you apply or do to it externally. Our hair is an extension of our bodies. Look after your body and the health of your hair will follow. I do hope that this article has helped a little in improving the health of your hair. All technical information in this article has been obtained through years of experience, and various hairdressing, and trichology based text books