Treat Your Hair Well - Prevent Hair Breakage

Most women crave for shiny, healthy looking hair, the way it is portrayed in advertisements or movies. But each time you find hair on your pillow, your comb/brush or your towel, it breaks your heart a little. The villain here could be hair breakage or hair shedding.

Many experts; be it advertisements on TV, magazines, internet, or even your friends and family, who advise you on how to treat your hair. Some of them are authentic, others are just assumptions. It is always better to find out the cause of hair breakage before going into what to do about it. Firstly, hair breakage is not a natural process because it is caused due to the weakening of hair, breaking it off from the middle. This weakening is the result of one or many things that are done wrong to treat your hair.

The main reason for hair breakage is running a comb through just-washed hair in a hurry. Hair is extremely sensitive and fragile when it is wet and combing or brushing will cause it to entangle and breakage occurs. The best way to handle this is to detangle your hair with your fingers and comb through it when it is dry. Show some patience while doing this, because tugging and pulling at your hair to get a quick job done causes further breakage.

Save those curling tongs or straighteners for special occasions; your hair does not need to go through extreme heat treatments daily. It would be best if you could avoid blow drying your hair every day and let it air dry. But if that is not possible, allow your hair to partially air dry and then use the dryer at a low level of heat after applying a heat protecting mousse or spray. Using high quality styling tools and hair brushes/combs can help you prevent hair breakage. Avoid rubbing your hair vigorously with the bath towel which causes friction and thus damaging the cuticles. See a doctor for itchy scalp, because vigorous scratching causes hair to break off.

Go easy on your hair products like hair sprays, hair gels and hair colors. A long lasting hold of your hair gel will make the hair stiff and brittle causing breakage. Colouring your hair frequently also causes heavy hair breakage because of the chemicals in the hair colors. Use ammonia free, semi-permanent colors for less damage. Get your coloring done by a professional, because the before and after care of hair coloring should be given a lot of importance. Apart from the three regular hair types – oily, dry and normal – people have a combination of oily scalp and dry hair. Ask your hair stylist for the best shampoo, conditioner and other hair products that you should use to stop hair breakage and how to apply them effectively.

Excessive sun exposure causes weakening of hair which allows it to break easily. Try to cover your hair when out in severely sun, and use sun-protect serum to reduce the damage. Use moisturizing shampoos and conditioners during winters as your hair tends to dry out soon.

The best way to handle hair breakage is by taking measures to never let it happen in the first place. Because as they say, prevention is definitely better than cure.