Is It Safe to Just Wet Your Hair to Get It Curly Again
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I've been straightening and curling my hair wet/damp for years, despite all the popcorn-sounding fizzes and crackles – just some scientific discipline I've recently read take made me do a complete 180. Information technology turns out wet and dry hair answer to farthermost estrus very differently – and wet pilus cops information technology far worse, and non just considering it'southward more fragile.
First, a little refresher on hair anatomy. Hair has three main parts:
- the medulla – tiresome central core, actually non-existent in lite and fine hair
- the cortex – middle layer, responsible for colour, texture and most of the strength of hair
- the cuticle – protective outermost layer, fabricated of overlapping cells like roof shingles or fish scales, shiny
The cuticle lays flat, but h2o can go in between the gaps. When you wet healthy hair, it can actually absorb up to 30% of its own weight in water into the inner spongy cortex (more than if it'south damaged pilus).
An boilerplate hair straightener heats upward to 185-230 °C. Curling irons are a picayune cooler, at 95-200 °C. They're both well higher up the normal boiling point of water, which is 100 °C. (Temperatures in Fahrenheit are straighteners 365-446 °F, curlers 203-392 °F and humid h2o 212 °F, for any readers from non-metric countries similar the U.s.a., Liberia or Myanmar.)
What happens when the wet within of hair gets heated well beyond its humid bespeak? Well, it'southward non besides different to popping corn…
When water turns from liquid to gas it expands. When it'southward heated strongly it expands rapidly. Since it's confined in the cortex by the cuticle, it has to bust out. That'due south correct – the water explosively evaporates , shattering whatever'south in its path, which happens to be… your hair.
(Pilus does non usually look this spongy up close, in instance you're wondering – it should await like sliced playdough with a small spongy section right in the center.)
It'due south not only on the inside that the humid water wreaks havoc – it's got to get out somehow, and in the rush to leave it bangs up the outside of your hair cuticle pretty good besides – instead of lying apartment, the "shingles" or scales of your cuticle are now bumpy from being pummeled from the inside:
Don't freak out too much – this probably happens mostly to the pilus that's right confronting the heating plates of your straighteners and crimper irons (information technology's doing the residual of your hair a solid, sacrificing itself for the greater good!). But if you're doing this to your hair every day, the damage builds up.
Of grade, dry hair doesn't get away unscathed – it even so causes microscopic cracks on the hair's surface, denatures hair proteins, and decomposes pigment – but this happens in wet hair too. All this impairment goes on to give you ho-hum brittle hair, split ends, brassy colour, increased tangling and breakage.
What can y'all do? Well, evidently, y'all should straighten and curl your hair simply when it'southward dry out! You tin can too invest in a rut protecting spray (most of these work, to some extent!).
References
M. Gamez-Garcia, Void and pore germination inside the hair cortex past a denaturation and super-contraction process occurring during pilus setting with hot irons, J Cosmet Sci 2001, 62, 109-120.
Due south. B. Ruetsch & Y. 1000. Kamath, Effects of thermal treatments with a curling iron on hair fiber, J Cosmet Sci 2004, 55, xiii-27.
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