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Beauty store shelves are full of products promising you healthy, shiny hair. However, the fact is that you don't have to change your diet or your shampoo to get the best out of your hair. Your hair follicles are doing the hard bit already, growing hair. The rest is down to you, simply looking after your hair as it lengthens, keeping it conditioned and protecting it from damage. In this article learn how your hair gets damaged and what you can do to prevent it so your hair can stay its natural, healthy best.

How does hair get damaged?

Our hair, generally speaking, consists of two parts: the cortex (and in some women, also the medulla) at the centre, and the cuticle. The cortex is a very fragile structure made of long stringy proteins, porous like a sponge, that contains the elements that give your hair most of the qualities that are unique to you: strength, colour, elasticity and texture. This delicate material needs protecting, and that is the job of the cuticle. Split ends are actually where the cuticle has completely broken away, uncovering the unravelling end of your cortex. No product in the world is going to glue your split ends permanently back together. This is why the only cure for split ends is a hair cut, followed by a good hair care routine that maintains and protects the cuticle.

The cuticle is a series of layers (usually about seven) of scales made of the protein keratin, which overlap like roof tiles. This arrangement allows the hair to swell and shrink with moisture content. These scales are there to take a beating, and when we talk about damaging your hair, we are talking about damage to these cuticle scales. These scales are not living. They cannot grow back or repair themselves. Once you have blown through all the layers of the cuticle, there is nothing left to protect the cortex, the damage is irreversible and the hair breaks. As far as you and I are concerned, care of the cuticle is the very foundation of maintaining healthy hair.

The Four Most Common Causes of Damage

Chemicals.

Colouring and perming chemicals do the most damage, because the way they work is by swelling the hair to such an extent that the cortex can be altered, either by changing the pigment when you colour it, or by chemically destroying the sulphur bonds that give your hair its naturally curly or straight texture. This process roughs up the edges of all the scales right through the entire cuticle, not just the outside.

For this reason, in my opinion, all hair colouring, relaxing and perming should be done by a trained stylist and not at home. You only want to subject your hair to this process once, and thereafter only touch up from the roots. You should only do either a perm or a colour process if you have fine hair, but never both.

A good professional hairstylist will never agree to do both procedures to fine hair. Ideally, for really healthy hair, you should not subject your hair to any chemical treatment at all.

But it's fun and a lot of women don't like their hair going grey, so there are good reasons to colour or perm your hair. And if you decide you've had enough with the chemicals, you can just grow your hair out and start again.

So don't believe any company that tells you they have a gentle colouring or perming product. There is no such thing. And conditioning afterwards will not reverse the damage.

Friction.

Even if you are quite saintly and never colour or perm your hair, most of the damage to your cuticle is caused by the hairs rubbing against each other. This is where your good conditioning habits will pay dividends.

Friction includes wearing your hair down loose, especially on a windy day, brushing, back combing or teasing and just 'messing' with your hair too frequently during the day. If you find your hair knots or tangles frequently, this is a typical sign of damage to the cuticle. The scales are literally ruffled up and catching on each other, causing your hair to snarl.