If your hair feels dry and lifeless, you may have heat damage. Heat damage is caused by excessive application of heat to your hair. Applying too much heat to your hair ruins your cuticles and creates irreversible damage.
How to determine if you have heat damage?
Heat damage looks different in each hair type. Find your hair type below to determine if you experience the same characteristics.
Straight Hair
• Dry Hair
• Brittle Hair
• Hair loss/Excessive breakage
• Rough Texture
Wavy Hair
• Straight ends
• Dry Hair
• Frizz
• Hair loss/Excessive breakage
• Stringy Hair texture
Curly Hair
• Curly to “straight” ends
• Dry Hair
• Frizzy Hair
• Hair loss/Excessive breakage
• Hair tangles easily
Five Tips to Repair Heat Damage
1. No More Heat!
The first step to repairing your hair is to avoid heat completely. Applying more heat will cause more heat damage and make matters worse. Also, avoid chemical treatments like dying your hair and chemical hair smoothing. These will only cause your hair to become weaker and even lead to hair loss. If you are unable to avoid heat completely, use heat protectants and treat your hair with deep conditioners before you apply heat.
2. Create a Hair Routine!
Creating a routine is a great way to stay on track of caring for your hair and maintaining the health of your hair. Depending on your hair needs, create a daily, weekly, or monthly routine for washing, conditioning, treating, and styling your hair.
3. Deep Condition/Protein Treatments
Deep conditioning allows moisture to deeply penetrate your hair shaft. For heat-damaged hair, moisture is a necessity and conditioning sometimes does not provide all the moisture you need. Deep conditioning leaves your hair soft, shiny, increases elasticity, strength, and smooths and seals the cuticles. Incorporate deep conditioning into your routine at least 1-2 times a week.
Protein treatments are holy grails when your hair feels weak and brittle. They strengthen the cuticle and gives it back its shape. Your hair is made up of natural proteins called keratin. Protein treatments work by removing dead cells from the scalp and infusing your hair with the protein it needs to stay healthy. Incorporate protein treatments into your routine at least once a month.
4. Apply Hair Serums/Oils
Hair serums and oils help to condition your hair, repair dry, brittle hair, and prevent further damage. Hair oils can moisture, condition, seal moisture into the hair shaft, and fill in gaps between the cuticles of your hair. You can apply oils on dry/wet hair or as an oil treatment. Certain oils work wonders to repair your hair like avocado oil, grapeseed oil, jojoba oil, olive oil, coconut oil, and peppermint oil.
5. Time for a Haircut
The easiest way to get rid of heat damage is to cut it all off. Getting a haircut can be scary at times, especially if you have lots of heat damage. However, cutting off the heat damage from your hair will promote the growth of your hair and give you a brand-new start for healthy hair. You will see instantly that your hair will feel healthier, stronger, and shiner after cutting off all the hair damage.
Holding onto heat-damaged hair can cause more damage by allowing spilt ends to rise and prevents your hair from growing faster due to the damaged ends weighing down your hair.
