5. Using Heavy Gels Often
Heavy gels while great for defining your curls will rob your hair of moisture if you are not careful. The key to using styling gel is to moisturize and seal your hair thoroughly first and then add gel to style.
Alcohol free gels are designed to help your hair retain moisture by not having ingredients that dry the hair out all things considered. But the ingredients that allow your hair to ‘freeze’ into place can be drying nevertheless.
The problem arises when you use these heavy gels very often without washing them off thoroughly to remove build up. As a result crunchiness, breakage, and dryness ensues leaving your hair drier as you use a little bit more gel each day.
If you love gel that’s great, just give your hair a breather once in a while, she will thank you eventually.
6. Using Cuticle Damaging Hair Styling Techniques – e.g. back-combing
The hair strand is uniquely made. The cuticle layers are designed to protect the inner most layers of the strand, hold in moisture and at the same time makes your hair appear smooth, shiny and healthy when laid flat. Avoiding cuticle damage is clearly very important for overall healthy hair.
Back combing, usually done by those with very fine flat hair is essentially combing or brushing your hair upwards from the tip to the root in an attempt to create volume. The main issue with this is that your cuticles suffer serious damage and protein loss (similar to scaling a fish) which then leaves your hair drier.
A similar thing happens when you use ‘volumizing’ styling products. They raise your cuticles to allow your strands to rest further apart thereby creating the illusion of volume.
Any styling option you choose should always have a view to smoothing your hair in order to maintain it’s structure and allow the cuticles to do their job of protecting the delicate inner layers of your strands.
The point is, try to style your hair in ways that encourage the natural behavior of your hair, avoiding damage at all costs.
GOOD INFO