The cuticle truth

As I read different books one message continues to resound the same: the hair is a delicate fiber and it must be handles with care. I’m sure you’re all familiar with the diagrams of the piece of hair magnified under a microscope. You see the scaly looking outer layer labeled as the cuticle and if you’re like me you are thinking, ‘man hair is ugly!’

Ironically that ugliness is what actually keeps your hair beautiful. The cuticle is the outer layer of the hair and it protects the center of the hair shaft called the cortex. The cuticle is easily damaged and once the cuticle is gone the hair is too! The upside of this is the cuticle is 7-10 layers thick, the downside to this is it is easily damaged.

Damage is caused through pretty much everything! If you touch your hair you are running the potential to damage your cuticles. If the sun shines on your head you are running the risk of damaging your cuticles. It’s a wonder that we have ANY hair on our heads at all! Thank God natural curly’s have 100,000 or so hairs to help take up the slack! Keep in mind dark haired ladies, your hair count is on the low end. Blonds have more fun, and hair!

Be gentle with your hair. Everyone talks about low manipulation, but do you know why this is a successful technique? The less you handle your hair, the less damaged caused to the cuticle which leads to a longer life cycle for our hair fiber. You can be as gentle as a cat but if you are manipulating your hair daily you will still suffer breakage. Our hair should have a don’t touch label!

Everyone talks about prepooing the hair, but do you know why this is a successful technique? Because depending on the products you use, the acidic pH of the product closes the cuticle and prevents the drying shampoo from penetrating and drying the cortex. In my case I use Lustrasilk, the pH of this product  is 4.5, acidic and it closes my cuticle right on up. This combined with oils which coat the hair, help prevent drying; thus preventing breakage.

Everyone talks about deep conditioning by adding baking soda to your conditioner, but do you know why this is a successful technique? Because baking soda’s pH is a high alkaline and products with a high alkaline rate raise the cuticle allowing for the cortex to be penetrated. Better get some acid in there quick to close those cuticles before styling though!

They say don’t brush your hair, but do you know why? Don’t brush your hair because your flaking away at that cuticle every time those bristles pass over your tresses.

When you see people saying to spritz your hair with lemon juice or vinegar don’t turn away! These two substances are acidic and close the cuticle. Curly girls, note that due to the curly nature of our hair our cuticles are raised by default. So if you wanna keep hair on your head it isn’t about the magic or extreme price of the products you use, the creativity of your protective styling, or spending ridiculous amounts of time ‘delicately’ manipulating your hair. It’s about the cuticle and a closed cuticle is a happy cuticle and a protected cortex.

Natural in Arizona

Read more by Natural in Arizona at http://naturalinaz.blogspot.com

Comments

[chi]

Interesting there is a whole youtube video saying why you shouldn't use baking soda and the logic makes sense so that may not be a good suggestion to promote or at the very least counter the old argument on the usefulness of backing soda for hair.

Lets be honest we all know the baking soda is rough edge that's why it used in cleaning tiles and teeth. So why would one use it to treat hair better when brush is probably does about the same about of damage, which we are suggesting not to use. Plus because of baking sodas high alkaline which means it can start acting like a mild relaxer restructuring the hair (I don't know how permanent that is).

I think that in the end the suggestion for baking soda does more damage than good. But all the rest I can agree with. But I think that there should be discussion brought up on the PH balance of hair and whether baking soda is really helping.

[Taniya Bragg]

Hi,

Thanks for the great article about how to prevent hair loss.i like your information related to natural hair growth.

[lina40]

what an informative article -- some things I knew but wasnt sure of the reasoning -- esp pre-pooing ;) I knew that my hair just really appreciated this! Now I will have to go test my pre-poos ph values now. Cool LHDC for sharing this guest submission with us!

[Jennifer]

Very informative post!