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I'm going for long-winded again, but you get pictures at the end as a reward... Hair is a fibrous, proteinaceous system which can absorb fluids. How porous or absorbent your hair is has a lot to do with how it looks and can help you decide what to use on your hair to help it look it’s best. A porosity is a hole or a gap – an opening. For example, teeth are slightly porous and that is why they can be stained by coffee or tea. Limestone is porous and so water can run through it (a groundwater aquifer). Concrete can be porous and so the inside of concrete basements can become damp when the outside soil is saturated with water. ©Science-y Hair Blog 2013 Hair which is porous will take on water and other chemicals easily because of all the tiny openings in the cuticle. Most of these openings only go from the outside world to a deeper layer of cuticle. Porous hair has little flaps of cuticle sticking up. These areas can be “patched” – stuck down or filled in temporarily by hydrolyzed prot...

I work outdoors, sometimes all day for a week at a time in spring, summer or autumn. So I know a thing or two about what makes an ideal hat. What does this have to do with hair, skin and the meaning of life? Bear with me, please. 1) A proper hat protects your eyes. Shading the eyes prevents migraines, cataracts and squinting which can cause headaches. ©Science-y Hair Blog 2013 2) A good hat keeps the sun off your scalp and hair. Hair protects the scalp. Hats protect the hair and scalp.  When hair is exposed to 200 hours of ultraviolet radiation from sunlight, the cuticle edges begin to fuse as the cuticle “shrinks.” As it shrinks, tiny openings are created and these are known as "porosities." After 400 hours, porosity continues to increase with further cuticle damage, and after 1200 hours, the cuticle becomes rigid, brittle, and may crack, leading to even further increases in porosity. If your hair grows the "average" of up to 6 inches per year (15 cm) and you get s...

From scalp to toes, it’s all skin. Some of it is modified (thick skin on heels, for example) some of it is thinner than in other places (scalp, eyelids). But as living tissue (except for the top layers – that’s all dead and even though it’s constantly shedding cells), it’s not inert. This post is about to the nature of the top layer of skin – and why you need to protect it. ©Science-y Hair Blog 2013 A little skin architecture: ©Science-y Hair Blog 2013 The Stratum corneum is the top layer of skin and if you have sensitive skin, this is the place where your efforts can make the most difference. Don’t think of it as a pile of dead skin cells – it’s way more active than that. Imagine a brick wall. The corneocytes are the bricks made of protein (lots of keratin – like hair) which can hold a lot of water. There are around a dozen layers of these, linked by proteins at the outer layer of the corneocyte and surrounded. These protein bonds are the “mortar.” Lipids and ceramides and other compo...