Lori’s a lime lover: I use V05 Kiwi Lime Clarifying Shampoo twice a week. I follow up with V05 Kiwi Lime matching conditioner. Do I need to get my hair trimmed more often because I use this V05 2x a week? Someone told me I will get long-term damage from using a clarifying shampoo. This worries me because I’m trying to grow my hair.

The Right Brain responds:

As we’ve blogged before, there are only a few basic types of shampoos and clarifying shampoos fall into the deep cleansing/volumizing category.

Pros and cons of clarifying

These formulas tend to contain higher concentrations of cleansing ingredients and fewer conditioning agents. The advantage is that they give you squeaky clean hair that’s free of all the styling gunk and silicone residues that may have built up over time.  The disadvantage is that they may dry out your hair a bit if you over use them. Of course, if you’re using a conditioner after shampooing, as you said you are, you probably won’t have a problem. But the VO5 conditioner is a relatively light weight formula; if you feel your hair needs more moisture, use a more premium conditioner that contains a silicone.

The Beauty Brains bottom line

If you’re clarifying twice a week and you’re using a conditioner each time, you should not see a big increase in split ends. VO5 is tough to beat for basic cleansing, but if your tresses are stressed, you should consider using a more moisturizing shampoo/conditioner system.

What do YOU think? Do you feel you need to use a special shampoo to get rid of buildup on your hair? Leave a clarifying for the rest of the Beauty Brains community.

The Beauty Brains receive hundreds of questions each week and while we read each and every email, there’s no way we can answer them all. So, we thought we’d try something new – we posted a few of your recent questions in our Forum where we’re blessed with over 1000 helpful and knowledgeable members. Today we’re posting the best of their responses in answer to the following question…

Jen asks: I used to bleach my hair and recently just dyed it to dark brown as my natural color because I realized my hair was damaged. Are there any products that I can use to help my hair not break off at the bottom? I always have slpit ends and my hair just doesn’t grow long. Please help thank you.

The Beauty Brains Forum Responds:

Janis

Some products like coconut or olive oil are helpful for mitigating damage to your hair, and you shuld definitely be using a good conditioner — but overwhelmingly, the only thing that will get rid of splits is handling.

You say that you used to bleach your hair — unfortunately, this will have damaged it, so you’ll have to wait for that damage to grow out. Even going darker damages hair since the process of dying hair lifts the cuticle scales on the outside of the hairshaft like the spines on a ticked-off porcupine. The process supposedly then smooths them back down, but they never go back exactly the way they were.

The fundamentals of gentle hair handling are: wear it up completely up when you can, bunned is best but at least off your back. Don’t use elastics at the ends of your hair. Use VERY LITTLE to no heat treatment: blow dryers, flatirons, curling irons, all of that. No color — bleach and double-process is damaging inherently. Comb instead of brushing.

Generally, don’t fuss with it as much and it’ll be much happier. If you like to blow dry or flatiron, and see yourself dyeing your hair again in the future, it may be that split ends will be something you just have to battle.

Anne

The only real solution for split ends is to have them trimmed off. It will help your hair look healthier. If you have regular trims, your hair also seems to grow faster. I know it doesn’t really, but it seems like it. I regularly dye my hair to cover grey, but don’t have a problem with split ends. You can blow your hair dry with little damage as long as you point the air down the length of your hair and stop as soon as its dry.

Janis

I’ve never actually had my hair grow with regular trims, and it’s down to mid-thigh. I found that I couldn’t expect busy stylists to remember with exact precision “not as short as it was six weeks ago but shorter than now.” As a result, when I got regular trims, my hair stalled at shoulder length for years.

I found that when I handled my hair gently and wore it up frequently (as I do now; I LOVE hairtoys!) it grew quickly, and I only needed trims every six months or so.

The secret to long hair is to handle it gently, wear it up, and simply don’t cut it. Cutting results in nothing but shorter hair; it took me years of frustration before this simply truth occurred to me.

Some trims are needed as you see splits, but “regular” often just means that you’ll be getting new growth trimmed away at the same rate at which it’s generated.

Again though, it depends on how long the original poster is aiming for. Most people are quite content with mid-back as “long,” which means that a year or two of no-trimming will be fine followed by maintenance trims for life.

Jules

Try putting a bit a of silicone based products from the middle to the tips of your hair… I do this twice a day – once in the morning before I go anywhere and once before i got to bed. The silicone coats the hair and protects the cuticle and helps prevent anymore damage being done to it. I also recommend serious oiling with olive oil and coconut oil combined.

Another thing – try washing your hair less often with shampoo – or if you can’t do that try shampooing with a shampoo with a milder surfactant so that it’s not that harsh on your hair.

And one last thing – i hear that “glossing treatments” are also good at protecting your hair from anymore damage – apparently it coats the hair – but i’m trying to find more out about that at the moment. Your hair salon will do glossing treatments.

Krsn89

To help out your hair a bit, make sure to get regular trims. As much as it sucks, especially if you’re trying to grow your hair out, it’s the only way you can *actually* get rid of split ends. No matter what marketing tells you, even those things that claim to mend your split ends, what’s done is done and you need to get ‘em trimmed!

If you blowdry and/or flat iron, weekly deep conditioning is a must, to keep your hair moisturized and healthy. Also a must if you heat style are protein treatments once a month. If your hair is damaged, it could be worthwhile to use a product that has protein listed, whether it be a shampoo, condish or styling product. Protein will be listed as hydrolyzed wheat protein or soy protein, etc. Lastly, make sure you use at least a heat protectant or a leave-in conditioner before heat styling every time, so at least *some* damage will be prevented.

For deep conditioning there’s a variety of masks available, high end and from the drugstore. You can also use coconut oil as a mask with heat for half an hour or so, just make sure it’s raw and unrefined coconut oil. Popular protein treatments are Nexxus Keraphix (light protein), Bumble&bumble “Deeep” (light) and Nexxus Emergencee and ApHogee (lotsa protein!)

If you’re experiencing breakage at the bottom, find neat hairstyles to wear that will keep your hair up and out of the way of car windows, fans, excessive rubbing on the back of chairs etc. Also make sure though that you use hair friendly styling things, like no snag elastics and barrettes, because if you don’t, simple things like elastics can pull a lot of hair out, and that defeats the purpose of tying your hair up in the first place!

If you use silicone laden shampoos/condishes and/or styling products, make sure you clarify every once in a while to stop buildup that *might* lead to potential breakage.

And last but not least, if you don’t have one already, get a good, seamless wide-toothed comb. Apparently, you should never brush hair when wet – it stretches and is more prone to breakage, so combs are the way to go.
A big BB thanks to Janis, Anne, Jules and Krsn89 for their answers. What do the rest of you think? Did you find these Forum  comments helpful? Would you like to see more Forum answers to your questions? If the answer is “yes” and you just can’t wait, then head over to the Forum today to post your questions under Open Beauty Questions.

Cristy’s question: Is it beneficial to use a heat protector on my hair when using a hair dryer and flat iron vs not using anything?

The Right Brain’s heated reply:

Heat protection IS important for your hair, Cristy, because heat is bad for your hair. But that’s not exactly a news flash now is it? You’ve probably read that before on a zillion other beauty blogs. But only the Beauty Brains explain WHY heat is harmful and tell you what to do about it. We’ve blogged before about heat protecting sprays, but here’s some more information for all you “hot heads” out there.

How Heat Is Harmful

Coming unglued

Each strand of your hair is covered with shingle-like structures called cuticles that protect your hair from damage. Cuticles are composed of layers of protein structures called the epicuticle and the exocuticle. You can think of them as tiny protein sandwiches. These protein structures are stuck together with a natural hair “glue” called 18-methyleicosinoic acid (or 18-MEA for short.)

Sadly, this “hair glue” can be broken down by heat. (It can also be destroyed by exposure to shampoo and UV radiation.) Without the glue that holds them together, your cuticles become weakened and loose. That means your hair is more likely to be rough and dull and more likely to be damaged by combing and brushing.

Super dry = Superbad

Heating your hair evaporates the water inside it. In fact, heat styling tools can drive off more water than your hair can reabsorb from the air. (The scientific term for that kind of moisture loss is syneresis. Try using that word the next time you want to impress your stylist.) To recover from syneresis you actually have to resubmerge your hair in water to restore its original moisture level. When the moisture level is low your hair is more brittle and will break and crack more easily. That’s not good!

Swelling is not swell

Wetting hair and rapidly drying it causes the fibers to swell and then quickly contract. This cycle of swelling and contracting causes the cuticles to lift and buckle and even crack. And cracked cuticles mean rougher feel, loss of shine, and potential breakage.

Now that you understand why heat is bad, we’ll tell you what you can do about it. Here are three heat saving tips.

3 Heat Savers

1. Don’t do drying damage

To avoid syneresis from heat drying, you can wash and dry your hair less frequently. Since that’s not always practical, when you do blow dry your hair use a diffuser to avoid over heating.

2. Guard the glue

To protect your hair from heat, you’ll need all the hair glue that you can keep! And since sunlight degrades hair glue you’d better protect your tresses from UV light. Using products with UV absorbers can help a little bit, but focus on leave in products because rinse out products aren’t very effective at depositing significant amounts of sunscreening agents. Of course, you could always wear a hat.

You might also consider sulfate free shampoos that use milder surfactants, like decyl glucose, because they are less likely to dissolve the precious 18-MEA.

3. Be cautious with cuticles

Once your cuticles have become loosened, you need to do all you can to prevent further erosion. Good conditioning is the key here – you should never let a comb or brush (or even a towel) touch your hair unitl you’ve put some kind of protective conditioner on it first. Either rinse out or leave in will work, the trick is to find But you have to find one that feels right for your hair type.

The Beauty Brains bottom line

Any time your hair goes from wet to dry you’re causing some kind of damage. And using heat to make it dry faster only speeds up the damage. Hopefully this article has helped you understand exactly what is happening to your hair and these tips will help you defend your tresses from thermal stresses. (I love it when I get to end a post with a rhyme!)

What do YOU think? Do you have a favorite heat protector to share with the rest of the Beauty Brains community? Leave a comment!

Catherine’s quandary: Hi there! I recently bought a product in a London Indian grocery Store called “Jasmin Hair Oil”. This product is made by a company called KTC and the ingredients are listed as “paraffinum liquidum” and “parfum.” I thought it may be good for my dry split ends. What is your take on this product?

The Left Brain’s reply:
While it might sound like a spell that Harry Potter would use, Paraffinum liquidum is actually just another name for mineral oil. Yes, mineral oil. As regular readers of the Beauty Brains know, many people seem to think mineral oil is the spawn of the devil, even though it’s a great skin moisturizer. (In case you missed them, here are our previous posts on mineral oil and cancer.)

There’s nothing wrong with using mineral oil on your split ends but you’d probably see more of a benefit from coconut oil because it’s been proven to penetrate into the cortex of the hair. Or for that matter, use a good silicone-based anti-frizz product, like Tresemme Anti-frizz Secret. And if you want to learn how to avoid split ends in the first place read about our Top 10 Split Ends Busters.