Are you suffering from hair damage? Is your hair too dry and frizzy? When many people focus on hairstyle fashion, they only focus on how to create a more perfect hairstyle, but ignore the protection of hair, resulting in continuous damage to the hair by heat tools. This is also why your hair looks frizzy and dry to the touch. So what we want to discuss today is the causes and signs of heat damage to help you have a basic understanding of heat-damaged hair.

What Is Heat Damaged Hair?

In fact, heat damage always happens in daily life. Especially for African American heat-damaged hair. When we try to do hairstyling, we will use a series of heat tools, such as a hairdryer, curling iron, flat iron, and so on. While these tools give you a more polished look, they can also expose your natural hair to heat damage. Researchers have found that flat irons and curling irons damage up to 85 percent of the hair's keratin, causing it to become brittle and dry.

The cuticle on the surface of human hair is responsible for protecting our hair from mechanical and chemical damage while maintaining our hair's gloss, strength, elasticity, and color. The high temperature generated by heat tools will cause the cuticle of the hair to break down, and then our hair will become dry, frizzy, and tarnished.

damaged hair

How Does Heat Damage Your Hair?/h2>

Now, we have had a basic understanding that heat will damage our natural hair, then how does the heat damage your hair? We will explain to you in this part.

1. Destroy Keratin

When using hot tools, many people think that the higher the temperature, the better the final look, but this is not the case. Temperatures above 300°F convert ⍺-keratin to beta-keratin, ultimately causing hair to become weaker, lose its elasticity and be more prone to damage. When keratin melts, your hair retains that shape on a molecular level, and it's irreversible.

2. Causes Moisture Loss

When the hair is exposed to heat, the natural oils in it are stripped and the water molecules evaporate. Higher temperatures cause the moisture in the hair to dry out more quickly, which can damage the internal structure of your hair and can also break down the cuticle that protects your hair, making your hair more fragile. And the ability of damaged hair to store moisture is also reduced.

3. Make Hair Highly Porous

When the cuticle on the surface of the hair breaks, the damage will reach the cortex, and the hair becomes very porous, making it more fragile and prone to breakage.

Signs Of Heat Damaged Hair

No matter what texture your hair is, when you are brushing your hair if you find that your hair is overly frizzy and has a lot of tangles, it doesn't cooperate as well as it used to, becomes more brittle, breaks more easily than it used to, and the split ends are more obvious, then your hair is most likely damaged. Here are more signs of heat-damaged natural hair.

heat damage hair

1. Tarnish

Hair with intact cuticles looks shiny, while hair with damaged cuticles will look very dry. If your hair looks dull, this is one of the first signs of heat damage to your hair.

2. Increased Split Ends

Heat-damaged hair loses the ability to retain moisture. If your hair loses moisture, it becomes stiffer and drier, which will lead to split ends. This is a very obvious feature, you can check if your hair ends have splits similar to twigs. Increased split ends also make your hair more prone to breakage. If you find more short hair on the ground than before, then you need to pay attention to your hair protection at this time.

3. Increased Tangles

Healthy hair will develop few tangles, but heat-damaged hair will have more tangles. When hair is healthy, the shingles all lie flat together. When their hair cuticles become damaged, the shingles begin to stick out, causing strands of hair to easily knot with other strands. These tangles can also lead to further hair damage, such as hair breakage, etc.

4. Hair Loss

The average person has approximately 80,000 to 120,000 hairs on their head. Hair strands grow for 2 to 6 years, and it's normal to shed hairs. However, hair that has suffered heat damage will shed more when you brush and wash your hair. This is caused by the loss of protein and the structure of your hair breaking down.

Conclusion

This blog mainly introduced the basic knowledge about heat damage, aiming to tell you that heat is one of the most common damage happening in daily life, we must pay attention to it. Please try to reduce the damage from turning down the temperature of your flat iron, curling iron, and blowdryers. And the next blog, we will discuss how to prevent and repair heat-damaged hair. If you have the same problem, please stay tuned.