Busy Beauties - Healthy Hair Series
Part 1 - Heat & Your Hair
The average woman will spend 40 minutes per day fixing their hair… that’s 10 days or 240 hours lost per year FIXING HAIR… according to a poll done by European professional haircare company fabriah.com. And 75% of that time is spent drying and styling. Not only is that a lot of time you have to spent on your hair that you could be doing something much more fun (like sleep, amiright?), that is a LOT of heat for your hair to endure.
How does all that heat affect your hair? Direct heat with the high temperatures encountered using dryers and styling irons can be very traumatic to your hair, destroying proteins and eliminating its natural oils. This will cause cracks in the hair cuticle, which can lead to loss of moisture, frizz, split ends, and broken strands of hair. It can also fade your (natural or artificial) color, cause it to be weaker, less elastic, and less shiny! The more chemically treated (permed, colored, etc) your hair is, the worse the effects seem to be. I think I can safely presume NO woman wants to destroy the thing we spend so much time and money trying to make beautiful.
So what can you do about it? Well, there are a couple things (besides not fix your hair at all) you can do to still have great hair without killing it by styling every day.
- Don’t style your hair as often.
- Make sure that when you do use heat, you’re using a product with heat protection in it.
The top one is pretty self explanatory… and we’ll discuss how you can look great and style your hair less often at the end of this post.
The second is a little more difficult because you have to know what your’e looking for. First, let’s talk about heat protectants in general. What are they? Heat protectants are polymers that are able to remain strong and flexible in high temperatures and act as a barrier between your styling tool and your hair. This helps to seal in moisture, prevent damage, fight off frizz, and boost shine. Think of it as the hair equivalent of sunscreen!
What are the different types and what should you look for in your product? They can be water-based or water-resistant (silicones or oils). Water based products such as polyquaterniums and acrylate copolymers form a film on the hair to protect it but don’t perform quite as well with high temperatures when used alone as the water resistant silicones such as dimethicone.
So, if the water resistant silicones work so well, why are some people saying to avoid them? There are a couple reasons. Some silicones it can be heavy and weigh your hair down, and they can also build up with time because of the fact that they are not soluble in water. BUT, if used in combination with another silicone called cyclopentasiloxane, the heavier silicones are more spread out, taking away that heavy feeling. And all that talk about build up? All you need to do is wash with a good shampoo that has a gentle surfactant to break it up such as cocamidopropyl betaine.
As busy women, we want great hair but we also want healthy hair. We get that. That’s why when we were researching ingredients to use in our product, we made sure that we were using the best heat protection. By combining FOUR heat protecting polymers plus an oil and other natural extracts, we got a product that gives long-lasting style while also protecting your hair. You fix your hair less and use heat protection, which lessens all that would-be damage… and you get some of those lost hours back!
