How to Prevent Hair Breakage: Expert Tips to Keep Your Hair Healthy and Strong
You may shake it off as just another hair concern, but hair breakage has the power to affect the quality of your life. From damaged, frizzy hair to a frazzled bird’s nest, hair breakage can put a damper even on the prettiest of lengths.
If you feel relatable to these problems, too, join us as we discuss tips on how to prevent hair breakage. In this article, we will talk about everything from what causes hair breakage to how to stop hair breakage.
Quick overview of how to prevent hair breakage:
- Hair breakage is often caused by weakened hair proteins due to chemical treatments and heat styling.
- Identifying the root cause of hair breakage is crucial for effective prevention.
- Simple changes like gentle brushing, proper hydration, skipping heat styling, and avoiding tight hairstyles can help reduce hair breakage.
- Targeted repairing treatments, conditioners, and masks play a vital role in strengthening hair.
What Causes Hair Breakage?
While it’s tough to imagine something as fluid as hair breaking, the concern is very real. Hair breakage occurs when the hair's health has been compromised and its proteins are weakened. This can be a result of chemical services such as color-treatments and highlights, or mechanical services like heat styling or blow drying. The reason for your hair breakage can be unique to you. Understanding the root cause of hair breakage is the first step in preventing hair breakage.
Interestingly, a distressed strand does not look too different from that of cotton candy. It can look frayed and similar to a flyaway, or sometimes you’ll really begin to notice the damage when split ends begin to appear.
How To Prevent Hair Breakage?
Learning how to stop hair breakage is not that difficult after all. The truth is, your common, everyday habits might be the real culprits behind all that breakage. To successfully stop breaking hair, you must unlearn these habits. Here are the 5 small changes you can make:
1. Gentle brushing
Combing, detangling, brushing - all of these come very naturally to us. Combing happens to be the first interaction we’ve had with our hair; however, this does not necessarily mean we’re doing it right. Careless brushing and combing can often lead to hair breakage. Make sure you avoid over-brushing or brushing your hair too roughly. Make sure that you don’t comb your hair while it's still damp to prevent hair breakage. After a wash, use a microfiber towel or an old T-shirt to gently squeeze out excess water instead of rubbing your hair vigorously to stop hair damage.
2. Proper hydration
Never skip conditioners and masks if you want to prevent hair breakage. Make sure that your hair lengths and ends are getting ample nourishment with conditioners, leave-in treatments, and hair serums. You can also use hair masks once a week to provide extra moisture.
3. Skip heat styling
Heat styling on a daily basis may help you look polished, but it does so at the cost of hair breakage. This is why using heat protectants before any styling tools is essential to preserve the integrity of your hair. Use a thermal spray that protects hair from heat up to 230°C. This small but crucial step will give you shiny and natural-looking styles. Whenever possible, try to use the lowest effective heat setting on your styling tools.
4. Avoid tight hairstyles
A slick back bun or a tight ponytail is a perfect updo for the office. It, however, may be too harsh on the hair on a daily basis. The tightly wound hairstyles, be it braids or buns, can cause tension in your hair and lead to hair breakage. Despite a proper hair care regimen, if you still wonder how to prevent hair breakage, looser hair updos are your answer. A simple but effect hair breakage treatment is to switch up your hairstyle regularly to prevent constant stress on the same areas of your hair.
5. Repairing treatments
It’s important not to overload damaged hair with only conditioners or heavy products. One must strengthen and fortify the hair in order to fix it. So, what’s one to do when they’re suffering from hair breakage and damage? Use targeted damage repair shampoo and mask to repair the damage on your hair and prevent it from worsening further.
With these simple practices infused into your hair care routine, you can significantly reduce hair breakage and promote healthier, stronger hair.
How Can I Work With My Stylist To Stop Hair Breakage?
You can learn tips to prevent hair breakage from your stylists, too. In addition to professional-grade products and hair care regimen, it’s important to remember that you can treat hair breakage at a salon too, depending on the type of damage you’re experiencing and what you need to strengthen your hair. Talk to your stylist about how to maintain the integrity of your hair while having the hair of your dreams. You might need a haircut to get rid of damage before you treat it and work to build it up.
Patience is the key to healing hair damage, but with the right products, it is possible to have healthy, beautiful hair!
Redken India offers a range of damage-repair hair care products that can help you revive your healthy, shiny, beautiful hair. You can also find a range of shampoos, conditioners, leave-ins and other hair care products that are suitable for a variety of hair types. Brush up on our expert-validated hair care tips to equip yourself with all the valuable knowledge you need to take care of your hair.