Elasticity and Hair Health

One of the most important properties of healthy hair is its elasticity. Healthy hair will always “spring back” to its original shape after being stretched. In fact, healthy wet hair can be stretched by up to 30% without breaking.

If your hair won’t take a curl or breaks off at the scalp when you brush or style it, you probably have poor elasticity.

To test your hair’s elasticity, pluck a single hair from your head and gently stretch it. The hair should stretch by about one-third, then bounce back to its original shape. If it doesn’t stretch, bounce back, or simply breaks off, you have poor elasticity.

Poor elasticity is caused by damage to the keratin fibers in the cortex. (Remember that the cortex is the center part of the hair responsible for hair’s strength and elasticity).

The damage is usually caused by too many chemical treatments like bleaching, coloring and perming; excessive heat from blow dryers and hot irons; and exposure to UV rays – either from the sun or tanning beds.

If your hair has poor elasticity, do not perm, straighten, color or bleach it. Your hair can’t handle any chemical treatment at this point and will probably break off or turn into a frazzled mess. If you have a salon appointment and are worried about your hair’s elasticity, ask the stylist to give you his or her opinion. An ethical stylist would never perform a chemical service on hair in poor shape. Instead of processing your hair, sign up for a series of deep conditioning treatments.

This will increase the moisture content of your hair and strengthen it for future chemical processing. You and your stylist can work together to determine when your hair is ready.

How Chemical Processes Damage Hair

All chemical processes damage hair in one way or another. The trick is to balance the desired result with as little damage as possible.

Permanent wave and chemical straighteners (or “relaxers”) work by breaking the hair’s disulphide bonds. (These bonds are responsible for much of our hair’s strength and can only be broken with very strong chemicals.) The hair is either curled or straightened into its new shape, then the chemical bonds are allowed to reform into their new positions.

There is inevitably some lifting of the cuticle and weakening of the cortex during this process.

When using bleach or hair dye, the chemicals must penetrate the hair shaft and alter the cortex. The hair follicle in the scalp is not affected, as evidenced by the dark “roots” that grow in after a few weeks. 

Repeated chemical treatments that are too strong, too quick in succession or applied improperly can cause excessive damage that wears away the cuticle and causes the hair to break. The good news is that chemical processes can’t cause you to lose your hair because they don’t penetrate the scalp. Only a severe burn caused by the chemicals can actually kill hair follicles and stop future growth.

To keep your hair healthy and properly elastic, you must keep the cortex in good shape.

Here’s how:

• Make an effort to use less heat (blow dryers, straightening irons, etc.) and fewer chemicals on your hair.
• Increase the moisture content of your hair by using products with Panthenol (also called Vitamin B5 and Pantothenic Acid), the only nutrient proved to penetrate the hair shaft and strengthen the cortex.
• Make sure you get enough sulphur in your diet through foods such as garlic, onions and eggs. The main protein in the hair’s cortex is sulphur-rich keratin; too little sulphur weakens the hair and causes it to react poorly to cosmetic treatments. One form of sulphur is called MSM (methylsulfonylmethane).