Repair your hair with the right moisture secrets.
Like love, the pursuit of beauty has its risks. Whether you're going for the perfect high-society wave, the most glamorous shade of blond, the sleekest bob or just a few earthy lowlights, the very acts of adding heat and chemicals to your hair can permanently alter its moisture balance, making it vulnerable to everything from frizz to fly-aways and split ends.
We're going in
Moisture doesn't move freely inside the hair like water running through a straw. Rather, water molecules -- which account for about 10 to 15 percent of the weight of healthy hair and only five percent of damaged hair -- attach themselves to protein chains within the cortex of each strand. (The cortex is the inner part of the hair, responsible for giving it its elasticity.) Hair that has never come into contact with a curling iron or a highlighting wand is nearly waterproof because these protein chains and water bonds are stronger, weight for weight, than steel.
Natural disasters -- from droughts to floods
Dyes, relaxers and styling tools can corrode the cuticle, or protective outer covering, of healthy hair and disrupt the inner cortex by breaking up the protein chains and dislodging their attached water molecules. Free to escape through the damaged cuticle, these molecules evaporate into thin air, which is how you get dry, fly-away hair. But the reverse holds true as well. Because colour-treated and heat-damaged hair is so porous, moisture from the air can enter the hair, making it heavy, limp and unmanageable, especially on damp days. (Freshly permed hair, for example, holds 200 percent its normal water content.)
Relief workers
Conditioning treatments used regularly can help repair dry, porous hair by giving it back the ability to regulate its own moisture content. They artificially raise the water content of the hair back up to 15 percent of its weight. They do this through a combination of dimethicones (these protect the outside of the hair by filling in the holes of damaged cuticles); amino acids that bond onto the hair protein; and humectants, which pair up these added proteins with just the right number of water molecules to prevent moisture overload.
Need to know how to defend your hair from damage? Read about it here!
