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Porosity is tricky to define because of these three things: 1) Porosity is a physical condition that belongs to an individual hair - or a portion of a hair. It is the amount of surface area with porosities - gaps and holes through which water and other things can move. 2) Porosity is a behavior or your individual hairs and your hair as a whole - how quickly does water move through any porosities present. 3) We want to use porosity to determine what to do to our hair - but all the things we do can modify our hair's porosity-behavior or even mask actual porosity. For example, sun-damaged and therefore porous hair may feel different than bleach-damaged and therefore porous hair. Or hair which is easily weighed down or low-density (thin hair) may or may not be able tolerate lots of conditioner and heavy oil applications that we usually think porous hair needs. Different porous hair has different needs. Why does porosity-behavior matter? Let's say you use a henna or cassia treatment...

Upcoming post news:   I've been a busy blogger - but not busy blogging.  Currently I'm working on a post in which I'll examine (and photograph) the at-home test for hair porosity called the "strand float test." Look for that in the coming week. Here's a handy laundry tip for cutting static in laundry coming out of the dryer without using fabric softener . Fabric softener tends to make towels less absorbent and coats laundry. It also tends to be heavily fragranced (unless you buy fragrance-free). In winter I like to dry laundry on a rack indoors like in this post . But some things won't fit, like sheets. So that's where I use aluminum foil. Pull off a large-ish piece of aluminum foil - a little larger than a letter-size sheet of paper. Crumple it up - try to crumple the edges on the inside to make the ball last longer and avoid sharp edges. Make 2 or 3 of these and toss them in the dryer with your laundry. You won't get shocked when you handle the l...

Don't panic, air-drying is not going on your list of things you need to feel guilty about. Won't you join me in getting all "critical thinking-y" about this subject? This post is in response to a blog reader's question about a recent study which reported that air-dried hair acquires some internal damage during drying whereas blow-dried hair accumulates more external damage. The study was published in the Annals of Dermatology, November, 2011: Hair Shaft Damage from Heat and Drying Time of Hair Dryer , Lee et. al.  If you thought air-drying was best for hair - this catches you off guard, to be sure. But while I did a double-take when I saw that eye-grabbing factoid in what I think of as "hair social media" - after reading the article I think this information was taken out of proper context. In other words, it makes a great headline, but there is not enough information provided to support the idea that air drying is bad. Please, read on. Some things to con...

Hair Logic. You see short hairs floating above your scalps, sprinkled throughout the length and think - oh no, is this breakage? Have I damaged my hair? Probably not. Apply some simple hair logic. It's reckoned that we lose 50-100 hairs each day when we and our scalps are healthy. This varies - a few months after the end of summer we usually lose more hairs than in spring. All things bring equal, it makes sense that 50-100 new hairs have begun to grow each day. And of course they're shorter than the rest of your hair. Welcome those new little hairs. They're not broken or damaged, just exploring their new world.

Updated May 2016 Low porosity hair is not necessarily difficult hair or problem hair. It is hair that is easily kept in a healthy condition, strong and elastic. It doesn't need a lot of help to keep its integrity, it needs gentle handling and a little personalized care. So why do people describe having a hard time moisturizing low porosity hair, then? What are we missing? Why isn't conditioner the quick path to moisturized hair? Why does oil and conditioner seem to sit on top of your low porosity hair, but soak in for everybody else? NOTE: Healthy, low porosity hair may or may not have the cosmetic attributes you find desirable - that's different. That's perception and  expectation . You may find your low-porosity hair frustrating because you want it to feel or behave differently whereas somebody else might prefer to have hair like yours. If your lower porosity hair feels dry, wiry, tangly or brittle it not necessarily lacking oil or conditioner - it's lacking hyd...

What is a film-forming humectant? It's a term for a group of ingredients that are moisturizers par excellence! Especially for hair that is easily weighed down by conditioners, or hair that oils or conditioners seem to sit on top of instead of "soak in." There is a list near the end of this page of products emphasizing film-forming humectants.  ©Science-y Hair Blog 2014 Rather than just attract water when water is abundant like glycerin or sorbitol do, film-forming humectants form a film over your hair that helps your hair resist dehydration. ©Science-y Hair Blog 2014 Humectant ingredients in products (once the hair is dry) can release the water they initially attracted when the air when the air around your hair is dry. Some humectants release water fairly readily like glycerin or sorbitol. When humectants form a film, water is slowed down by needing to pass through the film, therefore water loss from your hair to the air around it is slowed.  With film-forming humectant...

Updated July, 2018 Coconut oil is great for hair - some people simply cannot have a good hair day without it. It makes hair less porous so it doesn't get all dehydrated during washing, it makes hair soft, blah, blah, blah. I know, coconut oil is great, I wrote about it here and here . There are those of us who use coconut oil, and find our hair gets crunchy or stiff or rigid or rough, brittle, even breaking or shedding and we just don't see what the fuss was all about. Or worse yet, we think there is something wrong with our hair - or maybe we did it wrong. Maybe our coconut oil is the wrong kind.  Yet another Miracle Product that works for "everybody else" doesn't work for you. Well, that makes a person feel pretty mopey. Cheer up! There's nothing wrong with your hair. It's the coconut oil. Coconut oil's "miracle ingredient" is medium-chain triglycerides , a variety of fat or oil. Human sebum (skin oils) only contains around 35% triglyceri...