3 Unexpected Causes of Hair Damage (And how to fix it!)

August 29, 2020

Hair style trends change with the weather, but not all trends have your healthy hair in mind. Even those of us who are going natural these days have to battle with hair dryness, brittle hair cuticles, and even hair loss. This damage can come from styling tools, accessories, or products, and it’s not always obvious. Healthy hair is always in style, but maintaining healthy curly hair on a budget can be a challenge.

So how do we make smart choices for our hair? What ingredients can cause hair damage? What hair accessories can cause hair breakage? And what can I use to grow my hair back and fight hair thinning and loss?

Here are 3 things that you may not know cause damage, and what you can do to repair and prevent damaged or thinning hair:

Cheap Drugstore Hair Care Products For many of us, affording quality hair care products can be a bit of a budget-buster. So naturally, we peruse the aisles of our local drugstores for something cheap instead. However, many of these products are manufactured with drying ingredients like high levels of alcohols, sulfates, and parabens that can compromise your hair’s natural moisture balance. Especially in curly hair products, silicones can coat your hair strands, making them feel soft to the touch, but can suffocate your hair leaving it prone to breakage. What can we do? Luckily, affordable hair care is available to anyone with the tap of a screen! Lots of small businesses have popped up with your hair health in mind, that aren’t charging salon-brand prices. Taking care to avoid harsh chemicals, check out natural products. Look for moisturizing oils and butters like Jojoba and Argan oil, and other essential herb blends that naturally nourish your strands. For example, this Follicle Enhancer has been proven to increase hair growth and strengthen damaged hair!

Clip-ins We’ve all been there. It’s the weekend, you want some length but you’re not ready to commit to a sew in (or you just don’t have the time to be bothered), so you grab for those same clip ins you’ve been wearing for years. While clip-in extensions are great for a quick night out, those metal clips often snap and break the natural hair it’s clipped into. With prolonged use of clip-in extensions, bald-spots, thinning, and breakage can occur leaving you feeling like your hair can never recover. What can we do? Fortunately, there is a solution for hair loss and thinning from breakage. Conditioning and treating the scalp with natural products intended to stimulate the hair follicles can quickly aid in the regrowth and repair of damaged or thinning hair. Ingredients like castor oil and tingling peppermint oil create a healthy environment on the scalp for hair growth. Using these products consistently and avoiding harsh styling accessories like metal clips can keep breakage to a minimum.

Tight Protective Styles High-textured hair needs tension to stay secure in protective styles. Even us tender-headed curly-girls know that loose braids and twists won’t hold. To combat frizz, tightly pulled strands have always been the way to go. But these styles can wreak havoc on our edges! Cornrows, twists, box-braids, and knots that tug at our baby hairs can cause receding hairlines in men and women regardless of age. Over time, our edges thin and fade, and we’re left wanting to feel like ourselves again. What can we do? 90’s trends are back, and that means slicking and styling out those baby hairs. Using a toothbrush and some thick hair gel, sweeping and pressing your edges (and even some of the longer strands at your hairline) is no longer a dated look. So don’t be afraid to leave these areas out when braiding or twisting your protective style. But for those who have significantly lost hair or who are experiencing thinning hair at the temples and forehead, treating the area daily with a specified scalp treatment can help encourage hair re-growth. Ingredients like castor oil, nourishing coconut milk, and Vitamin E oil condition, repair, and moisturize hair follicles to boost the overall health of your locks.

Yes, damaged hair and thinning hair can be reversible. Remember, the sooner you start treating your hair, the sooner and more effective the treatment will be! Go easy on your strands. Use quality hair products for textured hair. Avoid breakage-inducing styles. But most of all, treat your scalp with natural high-quality ingredients and you, too, can rock your naturally full and healthy hair again.