Beautiful Hair

Fluffy, Full and Healthy Hair

By Anna Lynn C. Sibal

To achieve this full-bodied look, women resort to using various products – shampoo, conditioners and styling aids. Subjecting the hair to chemical treatments like coloring, bleaching and perming also results to this. Blow-drying the hair also fluffs it out. Unfortunately, too much of these products and processes can lead to hair damage as well.

Each strand of our hair is made up of cuticles covered with scales. These scales are responsible for protecting the hair from damage. Ideally, these scales are supposed to lie flat against the cuticle, but when the hair is permed, bleached or colored, the chemicals involved in the process open up these scales to treat the hair inside as well. The open scales cause the hair to fluff out, making the hair look thicker and fuller. This is also what happens when the hair is exposed to heat from blow-drying or using hair irons and curlers. The danger to having the scales of the hair open, though, is added vulnerability of the hair to chemical build-up, as well as to probable damage of the cuticle from ultraviolet rays, leading to dryness, frizzing and split ends.

Perming and coloring may seem like a quick fix for thicker hair, but it will prove harmful in the end. Thick and fluffed-out hair is not beautiful hair if it is not healthy.

So how does one get thick and full-bodied hair that is also glowing with health? The first step to this is using a good volumizer shampoo. Like the chemicals used in perming and coloring, volumizer shampoos also enter the scales and cause them to open up and pad the hair with substance. But unlike perming chemicals and dyes, shampoos also have ingredients that are formulated to protect the hair’s cuticle.

Volumizer sprays and lotions applied to the hair while styling also do the trick. Another method involves hair gel rubbed onto the hair while being blow-dried, lifting the hair strands and creating the illusion of thickness and body.

But again, too much is bad. Shampoos and other hair styling products leave residue to the hair that will make it look limp. The product build-up must be washed out of the hair at least once a month with clarifying shampoo or castile soap. These products will rid the hair of build-up but let the hair keep its fullness.

Another thing you can try to increase the volume of your hair is tipping your head down and brushing your hair from the back. You can also do your hair up in curlers for those volume-adding curls.

Having thick hair is not just a dream, and neither is it an expensive and difficult reality. Be creative and keep your hair healthy!

Also see: Curly Hair Rules