High Porosity Hair: Characteristics and Haircare Tips

Hair porosity influences how effectively hair absorbs water, oils, and hair care merchandise. Your hair porosity can vary from low to excessive. Excessive porosity hair absorbs water simply and air dries rapidly. It might probably additionally reply quickly to hair dyes and chemical therapies, inflicting surprising outcomes. Excessive hair porosity can happen naturally in curly and coily hair or come up from harm to the hair cuticle.

Excessive porosity hair is extra more likely to develop into broken and dry, making this hair sort typically difficult to look after. Hair care practices like layering merchandise to seal in oils, utilizing protein therapies, and limiting warmth styling might help you take care of high-porosity hair.

Your hair consists of a cuticle, cortex, and medulla, all of which assist defend your hair from harm and retain moisture. The cuticle—the outermost protecting barrier of your hair—could be simply broken by chemical therapies corresponding to perms, bleach, chemical straighteners, and coloration therapies.

Warmth styling and publicity to ultraviolet (UV) mild also can harm the cuticle. As soon as this happens, your hair’s cortex and medulla are in danger for harm, too. Injury to the hair shaft can create areas or voids within the shaft, growing your hair’s porosity.

Excessive porosity hair sometimes incorporates a number of voids or areas within the cuticle. Generally this happens when your hair is broken by way of therapies and grooming practices. Different occasions, it’s a pure attribute of your hair’s construction.

Who Is Extra Seemingly To Have Excessive Porosity Hair?

You could be extra more likely to have excessive porosity hair if you happen to use chemical processes in your hair, corresponding to perming or bleaching, or if you happen to typically use warmth to type your hair, corresponding to utilizing a blow dryer or curling iron.

Excessive porosity hair can be widespread in individuals with textured hair, or hair that incorporates a lot of curls and coils. This kind of hair construction naturally tends to have lifted cuticles alongside the hair fiber. Individuals with African ancestry are likely to have excessive porosity hair.

Additionally, individuals with grey hair or light-colored hair and other people of older age usually tend to have extremely porous hair.

Excessive porosity hair can have numerous traits. A defining trait of this hair sort is that it absorbs water rapidly, particularly in comparison with low porosity hair. Excessive porosity hair can be extra widespread in individuals with curly or coily hair or hair broken by chemical therapies.

Attainable traits you could discover in excessive porosity hair embody:

• Seems dry, frizzy, and brittle
• Absorbs water, hair merchandise, and different liquids rapidly
• Tends to dry rapidly and feels dry to the contact
• Breaks simply when grooming or styling
• Loses moisture or hydration at a speedy fee
• Experiences accelerated and inconsistent outcomes after chemical therapies
• Accepts hair colorants sooner
• Seems cooler in coloration after therapies than much less porous hair
• Appears boring and doesn’t replicate mild effectively

Figuring out the porosity of your hair can inform you ways greatest to look after it and why it responds to hair care merchandise, hair drying, and coverings the way in which that it does. Just a few lab exams can be found to check hair porosity, corresponding to measuring hair fiber swelling in response to water and humidity. Nonetheless, you may also take a look at your hair’s porosity at residence with a number of easy strategies.

Spray Take a look at

To carry out the spray take a look at, use a sprig bottle to spritz clear, dry hair with water. If the water droplets take up into your hair immediately and your hair turns into saturated rapidly, your hair is excessive porosity. This occurs as a result of the cuticle is extra open, permitting the water to enter the hair shaft sooner. With low porosity, the water droplets could sit on the hair’s floor for a number of seconds earlier than soaking in.

Float Take a look at

An alternative choice for figuring out your hair’s porosity is utilizing the float take a look at. With this methodology, you’ll take a strand of unpolluted, dry hair and drop it right into a bowl of water. If the hair sinks rapidly, it’s excessive porosity. Low porosity hair will float, whereas medium porosity hair will sink slowly.

Slide Take a look at

To make use of this methodology, pull a bit of unpolluted, dry hair taut and slide your fingers upward alongside the hair shaft from the ends to your scalp. In case your hair is excessive porosity, your fingers will transfer simply up the hair, however it might really feel tough with bumps.

Low porosity hair will really feel easy, and your fingers will meet resistance making an attempt to maneuver up the taut strand. Medium porosity hair may have some resistance. 

With excessive porosity hair, the hair’s cuticle is extra open than that of low or regular porosity hair. This implies excessive porosity hair will take up merchandise and chemical therapies extra quickly and is extra susceptible to wreck. To guard your hair and stop additional harm, you have to to take steps to deal with your hair gently. Listed below are some methods to care for prime porosity hair:

• Seal in moisture. If in case you have excessive porosity hair, your greatest problem might be retaining moisture. Layering hair merchandise might help seal in oils to keep up hydration. Strive the LOC methodology: After shampooing and rinsing, apply a leave-in conditioner (L), adopted by an oil (O), and end with a creamy styling product (C).
• Choose the suitable oils. Researchers have discovered that polyunsaturated oils like avocado oil work effectively with excessive porosity hair. One other examine discovered that utilizing coconut oil and merchandise with coconut oil can scale back the probability that your hair’s porosity will increase.
• Use protein therapies. Excessive porosity hair responds effectively to protein therapies, as these merchandise assist fill the voids in your hair’s broken or lifted cuticles. You may as well search for shampoos wealthy in amino acids (protein constructing blocks). Nonetheless, keep away from merchandise with humectants, like glycerin and aloe vera, which don’t at all times work effectively with excessive porosity hair.
• Discuss to your stylist earlier than treating your hair. Excessive porosity hair responds quickly and inconsistently to chemical substances, corresponding to these utilized in perms, hair dyes, and chemical straighteners. This implies you will get extra excessive colours and responses than somebody with low porosity hair. Discuss to your stylist about your hair porosity and the best way to use chemical processes safely. As an illustration, they’ll take a look at a chemical on a small strand of your hair first to see how your hair responds and when to rinse out the therapy to keep away from over-processing the hair.
• Defend your hair from additional harm. For the reason that cuticle of excessive porosity hair is already open or broken, it is vital to keep away from additional harm. Restrict how typically you deal with your hair with colours or different chemical substances, do much less warmth styling, and be light when grooming. Think about overlaying your hair when outside because of the threat of harm from pollution and ultraviolet mild.
• Keep away from damaging substances in hair merchandise. General, it is best to keep away from hair care merchandise that include sulfates, parabens, sodium laureth sulfates, and silicones. These merchandise may cause your hair to lose moisture and develop into dry, which is already a difficulty for prime porosity hair.

Your hair’s porosity is decided by how effectively your hair absorbs water, therapies, and hair care merchandise. If in case you have excessive porosity hair, your hair’s cuticles are lifted or have voids that enable them to soak up supplies simply.

Individuals with textured, curly, or grey hair and other people with broken hair usually tend to have excessive porosity. You should use a sprig, float, or slide take a look at to find out your hair’s porosity. Caring for prime porosity hair includes layering oils and different merchandise, utilizing protein therapies, and avoiding sure substances like paragons, sulfates, and silicones.