How Can Bleach Cause Hair Damage?
o, let’s take a look at how hair bleaching actually works. We derive our hair’s colour from a pigment called melanin, which is found deep within the shaft of each hair. The cuticle is a protective coating of protein scales that surrounds the hair shaft and protects it from damage. When you bleach your hair, the bleach opens up this cuticle, which allows the melanin contained within the hair to be altered. Hair bleach, on the other hand, depletes the hair of its natural protecting fibres and oils during the process.
Though hair bleach is supposed to restore the cuticle’s normal function, it has a nasty habit of disturbing the scales, causing them to no longer be able to lay flat (this is why bleach damaged hair often has more volume than virgin hair, as each strand literally takes up more space). As a result, moisture is allowed to escape from the interior sections of the hair shaft. Hair becomes dry, brittle and prone to breaking as a result of this condition. That is the definition of bleach damaged hair in a nutshell!
How to Determine If Your Hair Has Been Damaged by Bleach
In order to determine whether or not bleaching your hair has resulted in damaged hair, you must first determine whether you have bleached hair. Some warning signals to look out for are as follows:
1. Loss Of Natural Lustre Of The Hair
It is typical for hair to have a smooth cuticle surface, which allows light to reflect off of it and give hair a healthy, shining appearance. As previously said, bleach damaged hair has a disturbed hair cuticle, which causes it to appear duller in appearance.
2. Tangling Of The Hair
Because bleach damaged hair has rough cuticles that “stick” together, knots are formed in the hair.
3. Brittle And Dry
Because the protective cuticle of bleach damaged hair has been destroyed, the hair’s internal moisture is allowed to escape. This causes the hair to become brittle and dry.
4. Flyaways
Breakage is more likely to occur in brittle and dry bleach-damaged hair, which manifests itself as flyaways and frizz in many cases.
5. Split Ends
Similarly, breakage can show up as ragged split ends. All of that sounds rather horrible, doesn’t it? So if you’re looking for information on how to repair damaged hair, keep reading.
Common Hair Mistakes
There are six common hair mistakes that people make when they have bleach damaged hair.
It’s likely that you’ve acquired one or more of these poor hair habits along the way. As a result, if you’re doing any of these mistakes, make sure to alter your course immediately to avoid bleach damaged hair (and heat damaged hair, for that matter!) in the future, so you don’t have to worry about having to repair damaged hair in the future.
1. Essential Oils
2. Inappropriate Shampoo Selection
3. Forget to use a conditioner
4. Not Using a Deep Treatment
5. Using the Wrong Tools on Wet Hair
6. Avoiding Trims
7. Skipping Heat Protection
