Can hair straighteners stop your hair from being naturally curly? Episode 160

Can hair straighteners stop your hair from being naturally curly? Sarah asks…Can straightening your hair for a long time change it from being very curly to being naturally straight? That’s like saying bleaching your brown hair for a long time will make you naturally blonde. It doesn’t work that way because you’re only treating the hair that’s already grown out of the scalp. The chemistry and biology that determines if your hair is curly or straight happens BELOW the scalp. Yes, there are two main factors that control hair shape. One is the shape of the follicle. We’ve used this analogy before but you can think of hair as little tubes of Play Doh that are squeezed out of holes in your scalp. If the scalp hole is perfectly round the hair is round and very straight. If the hold is a little more oval, the hair has an elliptical shape which causes it to twist and turn into a curl. And if the hole is sort of kidney-bean shaped, the hair grows out to be kinky (like African-American hair.) There’s nothing you can do about this although it may change as you age and experience hormone changes. The other factor is the protein composition of the cortex of the hair. That’s the core of hair that gives it its strength and it’s made up of protein bundles that are grouped into two different regions: one is called the Ortho Cortex and the other is the Para Cortex. These regions absorb water differently and this differential absorption causes one protein region to swel...
Source: thebeautybrains.com - Category: Consumer Health News Authors: Tags: Podcast Source Type: blogs