For most people, hair is one of our most important and distinguishing features. We can spend hours in the salon getting it permed, relaxed, dyed, or changed in other ways to fit our personalities. We may use special shampoos or conditioners to try and make our hair look even better.
Unfortunately, sometimes our hair doesn’t respond to care in the way we would want it to. Dry, damaged hair can come about from a variety of different causes. You may know what the cause is, but sometimes it may not be so obvious.
It may surprise you to learn that your shampoo could be one of the reasons why your hair is getting damaged. Even if you minimize dying or skip the blow dry, your hair can still be damaged just from a simple washing.
How Your Shampoo Can Cause Dry, Damaged Hair
Many shampoos are full of ingredients designed to strip oils out of hair. This can be useful on occasion if you have greasy hair, but not great if your hair is dry. When choosing a shampoo, it’s important to choose a gentle shampoo that won’t strip the oil out of your hair.
Good ingredients to look for in a high quality shampoo include things like aloe leaf juice, glycerin derived from vegetable sources, and organic mango extract. These are all examples of gentle ingredients that will moisturize your hair rather than dry it out.
Washing Your Hair Too Often Can Be a Problem Also
Even if you use a very gentle shampoo on your hair, you may still suffer from damaged hair directly caused by your shampoo. Even the gentlest shampoos can lead to drying if they are used too often. To protect your hair, you should shampoo it no more than once a week.
By limiting how often you wash your hair, you can get the best of both worlds. Your hair will still be clean, but won’t be as damaged from your hair care routine.
Once exception for this is if you hit the gym on a regular basis. In this case, you should rinse the sweat from your hair when ever it occurs, even if that is daily. You can still limit shampooing to every other day if that’s that case, but sweat does need to be removed.
Other times you should wash your hair more often is if you notice product build up in your hair, it’s tangling more often than usual (a sign of build up) or if it smells bad.
Your hair is sensitive to the products you apply to it, and too much shampoo or not the right type can cause real damage. It’s important to select your shampoo carefully, and to treat your hair with the loving care it deserves.
Our hair is often one of the most unique and personal parts of our body. It’s important to keep it healthy so we can look and feel good about ourselves.
For more information, or to schedule a private consultation, contact HRC Dayton today.
