HAIR STRENGTHENERS - Proteins

We need a balance of moisture and protein for strong, flexible hair. Water hydrates the hair, promoting suppleness and  elasticity. Protein provides strength and structure.  Water and protein work together synergistically to give hair tensile strength. Proteins are humectants. They attract water and are film formers and emollients that soften hair.

A wide variety of proteins play different roles and serve different functions. Proteins with higher molecular weight  bind to the surface of hair, filling gaps left by broken cuticles and help to rebuild weakened areas temporarily.  These proteins form a film on the outside of your hair, making it look lustrous and silky.

lower molecular weight hydrolysed protein (2)  can penetrate the hair and form cross linkages to strengthen the cortex of the hair (1). The reinforced hair shaft is able to withstand mechanical stress and breakages better.

Traditionally people use eggs, powdered pulses and powders beans for protein treatment.  Now, modern technology hydrolyzed the protein to improve solubility in water. Hydrolyzed protein is protein that has been ‘chopped’ into smaller pieces through a chemical process or enzymatic action.

you only need to use a small amount of hydrolyzed protein in your conditioner – between 2 to 5 percent only. Since protein is water soluble, you can add them to water-based conditioners. According to Susan Barclay-Nichols, “In surfactant blends, they will increase foam stability, add slipperiness, and offer creaminess and density.”

Among the hydrolyzed protein you can choose from are silk, wheat, oat, corn, soy etc.

Some manufacturers use hydrolyzed human hair protein in their products, claiming it  not only penetrate hair  and skin better but also contain all the needed amino acids.

Besides water and protein, there are other substances that help to strengthen hair weakened by chemical treatment, mechanical stress from over styling, high heat   or pollutants. The natural alternatives are ceramides, horsetail, henna, Cassia etc.

There are specially formulated man-made positively charged Cationic polymers and silicones tailored-made as artificial hair strengtheners, thermal protectors, glossers  and hair reconstructors. (More about them in another article.)

(1) Journal of Cosmetic Science, 1993

(2) Hydrolyzed protein - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

WHICH TYPE OF HAIR CONDITIONER TO CHOOSE?

TYPES OF CONDITIONERS

One of the ways to classify conditioner is as follows:

• Moisturizer

• Reconstruct or

• Detangler

The ingredients in the above types of conditioners may overlap but proportions differ. Manufacturers also add other properties to differentiate hair care products within their product range to meet different user needs. For example, they may include :

• Thermal protector to shield the hair from excessive heat for people who use hair dryers, curling irons, hot rollers etc.

• Sunscreen to ward off radiation damage due to UV (Ultra violet) light. UV rays can cause protein degradation and color loss.

• Antistatic agents to ward off frizz

• Glosser is light-reflecting chemicals that coat hair strands to give dull hair more luster.

CHOOSING A CONDITIONER

• To get the most out of your conditioner, choose one made for your hair type and hair condition. Consider your hair texture and needs. Does your hair need an oiling before wash followed by strengthening and moisturizing? Does your hair require conditioning before styling? Some people may need more than one type of conditioner whereas others just require a conditioning shampoo only.
• If you have fine lank hair, you would not want a thick, heavy conditioner to weigh it down further. Your hair will look even more limp, oily and lifeless. A light, volumizing conditioner is more appropriate for this hair type. Heavy, oily conditioner is more suitable for smoothening down frizzy, flyaway voluminous hair. Hair prone to frizziness benefit from positively charged antistatic agents in the conditioner.

• Use color-safe conditioner to protect color treated hair. This type of conditioner helps to retain and enhance your hair color longer. Use a conditioner appropriate for your hair color. They protect against the dulling effect due to washing and over styling. Heat and UV rays of the sun can fade hair color. Thermal protector and sunscreen can mitigate this problem.

• Dry hair benefit from humectants in the conditioner. However, if the hair is too porous, the strands can swell from soaking up too much moisture from the air, leading to frizziness. Occlusives such as Wax, oil or silicone in the recipe help to reduce this problem. 

Rinse off conditioner tends to be creamy and thicker than leave-in conditioner.

• Hair with adequate moisture but tend to lose it easily due to porosity require occlusives more than humectants. Occlusives form a barrier on the hair to retard moisture lost. They are also called anti-humectants.

• Hair with open cuticles allows water and nutrients to enter easily. The flip side is the hair tangles and loses internal moisture easily. Acidic conditioners can close the cuticles.

• Use a mildly acidic conditioner that adds slip and lubricity for tangled hair.

• Hair damaged and weakened from over processing and styling benefit from protein and ceramides treatments to help strengthen and repair the damage. Ceramides are a group of lipid (fats) found in cells of plants, animals and human. The lipids provide an effective barrier on our skin. Used in hair care, ceramides help the hair to accept protein treatment better. This is because ceramides bound covalently (share electron) with the proteins.

Modern conditioner formulation may also include silicone or polymers to strengthen and fill in gaps left by broken cuticles. However, some people do not like it because these man-made substances adhere so strongly to the hair that it takes a strong shampoo to remove build-up.

You may notice elastin and collagen in the ingredients list of conditioner for weak hair strands. They provide tensile strength and elasticity to hair.

Before buying a conditioner, scrutinize the label. You would not want to add body to voluminous hair or waste your money on a conditioner with color protector or thermal protector when you do not dye or use heat styling tools.

WHAT IS IN A HAIR CONDITIONER?

Hair conditioners play a variety of functions. They make our hair look and feel good, increase elasticity and flexibility,     hydrate and lubricate, strengthen and repair. Applied on the hair, it improves manageability, reduces friction and frizz as well as fill in gaps left by broken cuticles temporarily.

About 87 percent of our hair is made up of the protein, keratin. The surface of keratin contains negatively charged amino acid fingers. Conditioners uses positively charged molecules (Cationic molecules) to stick to the negatively charged amino acid so that they will not wash out easily.

Shampooing and excessive combing can remove positively charged ions from the hair leading to static electric build-up and frizz. The positively charged molecules in conditioners prevent this from happening. When the conditioner is mildly acidic, it closes the cuticles of the hair, which protects the inner shaft of the hair. For more information, go to: PH AND YOUR HAIR

Acidifiers detangle hair and closes cuticles, thus preventing moisture lost.

Humectants moisturize hair by attracting water from the air on humid days. However, humectant is a double-edged sword.  Go to ‘MOISTURIZEHAIR + RECIPE’ to find out why.

Your hair needs balanced moisture and protein to be strong. For recipes to revive and strengthen your hair, refer to: HAIR STRENGTHENING RECIPES

People traditionally use various herbs that soothe itchiness as well as have antiseptic and antifungal properties to deal with dandruff and accompanying itchy scalp. For homemade remedies, go to: SOOTHING CONDITIONING HAIR RINSE

We shall cover other components of a conditioner in this series in the ‘Plants4Health’ section of the main site, Jumblebox Home in future.

HAIR TYPES & ETHNICITY (4)- Caucasoid hair

The characteristics of Caucasoid hair

The Caucasoid people are very varied. They ranged from the pale-skinned people of Scandinavia to the darker skinned peoples of Portugal and India.

Caucasoid hair exhibits a rainbow of hues from platinum blond, flaming red, brown to black in color.  They may be curly, wavy or straight. Texture may be fine, medium or coarse. The mix in ancestry resulted in very wide combination of genetic Influences. It is oval in cross section. Over seventy percent of caucasoids have fine textured hair.

Generally, blonds have finer texture and the most hair. Darker shades have coarser hair with redheads with the coarsest and least dense head of hair.

Caucasoid hair tends to have fewer layers of protective cuticle and is laid flatter than Asian hair.

The distance between cuticles  is farther apart from each other compared to Asian hair but the ‘glue’ is stronger. Therefore, when you stretch the hair, it  breaks off into small fragments. This is because although  the glue is stronger, the cuticle is weaker and breaks off individually.

Conclusion

The structure of the hair influences its characteristics. However, there are differences within each hair type due to genetic factors, health status, diet, age,  lifestyle, how well you handle and take care of your hair as well as external environmental conditions.  All these factors will influence your haircare routine and choice of haircare products.

There are various natural homemade hair care recipes at the main site, JUMBLEBOX HOME   in Plants 4HealthList

A hair recipe that suits one person may not be perfect for another since there are so many variables. Try to adjust the quantity of certain ingredients within a recipe, substitute or remove them  altogether if you think they are not suitable for you.

HAIR TYPES & ETHNICITY (3)- Afro hair

The characteristics of Afro hair

One tends to associate Africans with tightly curled hair. However, some Caribbean people and aboriginal tribes in South East Asia and Australia also have this hair type. It tends to be woolly and dry with a flat cross section. The combination of black and red pigments in the hair result in hair color that is almost black to brown. About 10 percent of people have auburn hair.

Afro  hair shape and twisted structure is very vulnerable. It is extremely easily damaged by heat or chemicals. The hair bulb may lie to the side of the follicle, and so the hair shaft grows out of the follicle at an acute angle. Intermittent variation in diameter as the hair strand twists causes weak points along its length. Due to their curliness, the strands weave among each other and become entangled easily. Another reason for entanglement is some scales have loosened and broken off from the hair strands.  The disjointed scales along the hair strands become caught up with the scales on neighboring hairs. The result is tangles, producing knots that in turn become tightened during combing. Even vigorous combing can cause breakage in afro hair.

Hair become wavy when there is Irregular growth in the hair bulb     (the bulb varies slightly to one side or the other). Another factor is the shape of the hair follicle, whether it is straight or curved.  All hair twists as it grows. In Asian hair, the twists are far apart. Therefore, the curvature of straight hair is not pronounced. Some Afro hair has 12 times as many twists per centimeter as Caucasian hair. The number of twists of wavy hair is between that of straight and curly hair.

The thin cuticle of Afro hair is often in an open position. This allows moisture to escape from the cortex, leading to dryness.  Moisture contributes to the strength of hair. The open cuticles make the cortex vulnerable. Since the cortex provides hair its resilience, Afro hair is the most fragile among the three hair types. It breaks under a strain of 60 grams after an elongation of 40%. At the other end of the scale, Asian hair is the strongest, withstanding a weight of 100 grams and an elongation of 55%. The strength of Caucasoid hair is between the other two hair types.

* Photo from Wikipedia

HAIR TYPES & ETHNICITY (2)- Asian hair

The characteristics of Asian hair

Asian hair is Straight or slightly curved , thick and has tensile strength. It has the capacity for  a longer life span and  grow to greater length than other hair types.  If you cut the hair, the cross section is round.   It resists damage well due to its hair structure.

The hair bulb is the tiny factory that manufactures hair. It sits snugly at the base of your  hair follicle that supplies the bulb with nutrients and water through a fine mesh of blood vessels. The hair cells die in the mid- region of the follicle and formed into a hair strand. The hair shaft  then exits through the skin of the scalp.

In straight Asian hair, bulb, follicle and shaft are all aligned directly above each other. The hair grows straight out of the scalp. Therefore, if you cut the hair too short, the thick strands will stick out like bristles of a brush.

Asian hair has a thicker cuticle (the outer ‘bark’ that protects the center of the hair, the cortex). It has up to ten layers of these scale-like cuticles.

The cuticles are laid at a steep angle and are closer to each other, providing better protection to the cortex. However, the oily ‘glue’ that holds the cuticle together is not as strong as Caucasoid hair. If you pull or stretch the hair too much, the glue give way and the hair breaks of in a long strand but can holds its shape due to the strong cuticle.

When cuticles lie close to each other along the length of the hair (closed position), it reduces the amount of moisture from escaping from the cortex. Moisture within the hair give it strength and suppleness. The flip side is it is more difficult for nutrients and moisture to penetrate the hair. For those who wish to color or perm their hair, it is also more difficult for dyes or chemicals to penetrate.

The positive aspect of close cuticle is the hair looks glossier because it reflects light better. When the cuticles are open, the hair looks  dull and feels coarse. Since Asian hair has up to twice the number of cuticle layers than other hair types, they feel very rough when the cuticles are open.

HAIR TYPES & ETHNICITY (1)

I have the typical oriental hair- straight, thick and black. I used to yearn for my cousins’ natural curly hair when I was a teenager. The ‘Afro look’ was fashionable in those days so I subjected my hair to strong,  stinging chemicals and high heat to get curls at the hair salon. I thought Caucasians also had more fun with their multitude of hair colors that were easier to dye and style.

A former colleague who had natural curly hair straightened her hair regularly. She explained that her curls were very difficult to comb. They tangled and snapped easily. She used to tell me I was so lucky to have such a luxuriant head of straight hair. Guess this was a ‘Grass is greener on the other side syndrome’ with each person thinking the other person’s hair type looked much better. Now I have finally accepted my straight hair and appreciated its positive aspects- it is the hardiest and strongest among all hair types.

RACIAL HAIR TYPES

There are three major racial hair types with variations within each:

• The Asian (Far Eastern) hair type
  
  
• The Afro hair type
  
  
• The Caucasoid hair type

Each hair type has its own characteristics and special needs that determine the hair care routine and products to use.