Let’s say you’d like to blow-dry your hair. You have an important event to get to in a few hours and due to some unforeseen circumstances, you’re behind schedule. Now, you have to rush your entire hair process and are consequently cutting corners – and so you neglect spritzing your hair with heat protectant. How bad could it be, right?
Very bad. Maybe you can get away with doing so the first time, but the more you neglect this step, the more your hair will suffer the consequences.
So, let’s get into the specific repercussions of not preparing hair with heat protectant.
When you use excess heat on hair, you can throw off the moisture-protein balance. This makes the hair brittle and weak, and can even permanently alter the natural structure it previously had.
What’s more is that hair discoloration can occur via the oxidisation of your hair pigments. The result is clear – faded hair that lacks any vibrancy or body to it.
Frizzy, dull and lackluster hair is another setback – since the moisture within the hair has been evaporated, as is excessive shedding due to breakage. Split ends and a lack of elasticity are also symptoms of heat damaged hair. There comes a point where if you use high enough temperatures, (over 150°c) you can actually melt the keratin in your hair strands – and so the damage becomes irreversible.
To prevent this, make sure to not constantly depend on heat and when you do use it, use a sensible temperature and heat protectant as a precaution. Narisse, author of Colonised Hair, Decolonised Mind comments in the aforementioned book “The best ingredients used in Heat protectants are: pvp/dmapa, acrylates copolymer, and hydrolysed wheat protein, which protects and provides benefits such as the hydration and nourishing of your strands.” Doing so will prevent yourself from being susceptible to heat damaged hair.
