Dry Hair? Porosity might be the cause. What is your Porosity?
There is low, normal and high porosity. Porosity is determined by the hair’s ability to obtain moisture. The higher porosity you have, the more moisture your hair absorbs. Sounds good right, but actually, it’s quite the opposite.
What happens is that persons with low porosity have very compact cuticles that disallow moisture to be absorbed and instead moisture pretty much just glides off the hair shaft. While someone with high porosity has a raised cuticle and absorbs too much moisture or soaks up the product resulting in extremely dry, crackling hair when completely dried out; prior to that you may find that your hair is spongy in feeling. Often people think that the curl pattern (type A-4b hair) determines the dryness in hair, when in fact it’s porosity and the ability to use products and methods to manipulate this. Of course someone with normal porosity has a normal cuticle thus allowing the right amount of moisture to soak into hair and allows for the extra moisture to glide off the hair shaft. Anyway, if you are unsure of your porosity, here’s how you can test it.
What happens is that persons with low porosity have very compact cuticles that disallow moisture to be absorbed and instead moisture pretty much just glides off the hair shaft. While someone with high porosity has a raised cuticle and absorbs too much moisture or soaks up the product resulting in extremely dry, crackling hair when completely dried out; prior to that you may find that your hair is spongy in feeling. Often people think that the curl pattern (type A-4b hair) determines the dryness in hair, when in fact it’s porosity and the ability to use products and methods to manipulate this. Of course someone with normal porosity has a normal cuticle thus allowing the right amount of moisture to soak into hair and allows for the extra moisture to glide off the hair shaft. Anyway, if you are unsure of your porosity, here’s how you can test it.
Take a strand of hair from a clean head of hair (after being shampooed) with absolutely no products. Place the strand of hair in water after it is dried. If it floats, you have low porosity. If your hair sinks, it has high porosity. Stay tune for ways to treat hair if you have high porosity. I’m guessing that mine bounces between low porosity and high porosity. It was normal when I did my twists that lasted for a month, but now that my hair is no longer in twists, I need to get back to my natural hair regimen.
Persons with high porosity needs protein treatments and persons with low porosity could stand to use more conditioning treatments. Do not be confused. Oils are there to help seal in moisture. Jojoba Oil, coconut Oil, Olive Oil and Carrot oil are great sealants for our hair. Personally I use olive oil on a regular basis but I need to get some more jojoba oils.
Also, read this for more tips on dealing with high porosity hair.
I have shared plenty this afternoon. Live on Purpose! MuAh & CiAo!
Oh, I did the hair strand test. Some of that single strand was below the surface and a little tip of it was on the surface. I take that to mean I hv normal to low porosity, which is pretty much what I figured. Conditioning treatments every other week should work.
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