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rainfortheend
September 24th, 2013, 10:54 PM
Does your hair:
Take forever to dry (even though it may be fine and/or thin)?
Snap easily?
Not absorb oils or conditioners?
Accumulate buildup and grease because the hair is impenetrable?
Not really "take" to dyes?
Float if placed in water?

If so, you might have low porosity hair! Welcome to the club!

I figured we needed our own thread, since low porosity hair has challenges all its own that requires a very specific set of advice. Hair with higher porosity will do very well on things like NW/SO, CO, CWC, etc... not so for us. Even things like henna can overload us. So how do we take care of our stubborn hair the LHC way?

There are some controversial treatments worth discussing, including ways to open the cuticle. Some people with low porosity hair use chemical dyes to make the hair more porous. The Cherry Lola treatment, popularized on natural hair blogs, uses baking soda to strip the outer layer of the cuticle. Heat is another way to lift the cuticle temporarily, even though it can be damaging. Damaging the hair to make it healthier doesn't sound right to me. I've never done any of these things and wonder if any of you have.

I have low porosity, fine, thin hair, and finding a balance between these attributes has been hard-- especially since I've battled shedding.

Things that haven't worked for me:
Cones. Weighs down my fine strands and adds buildup.
Protein. Makes my hair even more snappable, brittle, and dull.
All oils I've tried-- coconut, olive, castor, etc... They just sit on my hair and don't penetrate it, and washing them out is a pain. On my scalp, they just make me shed more. Same with cowashing and aloe vera gel.
ACV. Apparently it's supposed to close the cuticle, which is the opposite of what we want. I didn't notice a huge difference in the quality of my hair either way.

Things that have worked:
Tea rinses. I leave them in. They lessen my shedding, add shine, and get rid of frizz and flyaways. The only downside is my hair can be flat and kind of crunchy, but I can use my fingers to uncrunchify it.
Shampoo. I use sulfate-free; I don't have any cones to get rid of, which is a lot gentler on my scalp. Currently loving Lush's I Love Juicy.
Steam and Light Conditioner. I put conditioner on my length from my jawline down, leave the shower running with hot hot water and just bask in the steam for a few minutes. (I also have honey on my face.) My ends soak up the conditioner so much better. Currently using Lush's Veganese, which contains oils but somehow my hair likes it.
Finger combing . I'll finger detangle the ends, making sure to hold onto the shaft so it doesn't yank at my scalp. With a brush or comb, my hair would be more likely to snap in the middle.

Let me know what works and doesn't work for you! I'm always on the lookout for new tips, comments, or suggestions! Any advice geared specifically toward our hair type is much needed!

Teufelchen
September 25th, 2013, 01:17 AM
I have also hair with a low porosity. I gave up on trying to make it more porous. It is mainly damaging and I don't get the point of damaging it in order to make conditioner penetrate. I use cones and never had issues with it, I don't even get build-up because it just slides off my hair.

I dye my hair with henndigo and yes, it makes it even less porous, but I don't care anymore.

My advice is to rinse really well after any wash and if you use some oil, just just very little, what others use as a leave in works for us as an oil treatment.

ACV just doesn't do anything for my hair.

Protein is usually not tolerated, I easily get a protein catastrophy, that is why I don't use it in everyday products, 3-4 times a year is enough for me.

seaj
September 25th, 2013, 02:45 AM
I'm pretty sure that I have hair with low porosity. I have Eurasian black m/c 1c ii hair that changed rather dramatically with different dyes. When I'd henna my hair, it'd get greasier faster. Putting henna over bleached hair (to get an awesome bright orange) basically repaired all the damage and left my hair feeling slightly smoother and heavier than normal. After I bleached my hair pale yellow and toned it silver with shimmer lights, I was finally able to get my collection of hair products to work. After being bleached, my hair would last longer between shampoos, it dried faster, and was completely responsive to any hair styling product.

I have never been able to get CO to work no matter how hard I've tried. I get much better results just by diluting 1 tsp of conditioner in a quart of water to dunk my hair in after shampooing. Anything more than that and my hair gets over moisturized. I never felt like oiling my hair ever resulted in anything either and never felt the need for protein. ACV rinses seemed to just make my hair take even longer to dry. I don't think that low porosity is a bad thing for the most part though. Hair with smooth cuticles is shinier, retains more moisture, and tangles less right?

Firefox7275
September 25th, 2013, 04:45 AM
I am high porosity but low porosity hair really intrigues me. I don't understand why so many are so obsessed by getting anything to penetrate the hair, aside from perhaps water IF the hair is truly dehydrated. A key purpose of penetrating oils is to reduce porosity and protect from hygral fatigue (water damage), clearly that is not required in low porosity hair. Most conditioner ingredients cannot penetrate hair anyway, they are superficially substantive only.

IMO deliberately damaging the hair with alkaline agents (baking soda, hair dye, bar soap) is nonsensical, you wouldn't deliberately damage healthy skin purely to get it to take up an active, surely? Why would you want to remove structural lipids and structural proteins from the hair only to temporarily replace those with penetrating lipids and hydrolysed proteins in the form of product ingredients? I can see the point of using heat (body or heat cap) or longer soak times in order to get the hair thoroughly wetted/ hydrated.

Brittleness is lack of elasticity, it is not necessarily related to porosity. Note too that coarseness or build up (products, hard water) is often mistaken for dryness. If anyone is unsure of their properties they might consider having a hair analysis
http://pedaheh.blogspot.co.uk/2013/08/goosefootprints-hair-analysis-with-my.html

Emanuelle
September 25th, 2013, 05:45 AM
Nice thread :) Most of my hair is medium porosity, but that's due to damage (sunlight, friction, brushing, drying ingredients I used to use, etc (I don't dye/heatstyle/perm)), because the hair on top is low porosity. So genetically speaking, I'm a low porosity. :P hopefully I'll be able to maintain that and in the end have only low porosity hair.

silver curls
September 25th, 2013, 05:52 AM
I have Low Porosity Virgin (natural) hair. The dye is all cut off and I am growing it out.
All my life I colored, blow dryed, curled and didn't know how to properly take care of my hair. It was full of split ends and DEFINITELY Very Porous!
Those days are over.
I'm trying really hard to get LONG Healthy Hair.
I REFUSE to mess with the Cuticle. IMHO, that is NONSENSE! "If it ain't broke, don't fix it" right?
Low Porosity Hair is supposed to be HEALTHY Hair, or so I've read.

That being said, my hair is also fine, and a thinner density. I have natural curl (some ringlets) that I didn't know I had til just over a year ago when I learned the curly girl method. I ALWAYS knew, all those years, I had WAVY hair, not curly.

I don't use sulfates or cones. I try to just cowash, but end up using sulfate free shampoos once a week or so, cuz my hair starts looking oily/greasy. I have since learned to read product ingredients which is very helpful in choosing what to use.

I am still trying to figure out the Protein thing.
What I've heard about Protein:
Fine hair needs it for strength.
Too much can cause breakage.
Some people's hair dont like Protein. (whatever that means?)
How do I know? I'm afraid to experiment on my hair and cause breakage.

I do, once in a great while, deep treat my hair with coconut oil. It does not wash out easily.

The Apple Cider Vinegar is used not to just close the cuticle but balance the ph, if you use baking soda or something very high on the ph scale. I have only done the soda/white vinegar to brighten my gray/silvers a few times in 20 months of my grow out to natural hair. I am AFRAID of Damage.

I have been shedding currently and think I am done now. I did notice shedding a year ago in the fall also. So, I've determined, for me, it will happen every fall. Really scared me a year ago cuz I was learning to take good care of my hair but I learned that shedding is common. Is that correct?

I finger detangle with lots of water and conditioner in in the shower. I fine tune the detangling with my leave in conditioner that is diluted with water after shower and occasionally comb the conditioner thru to distribute if I want a more controlled flatter look on top of my head. (I try to avoid the comb for my curls and to prevent breakage)

I haven't tried tea rinses or know much about them.
With the silver/gray hair, I have to be careful about what I use or put on my hair so I don't stain the natural color.

I am very interested also, in learning what all of you use on your Low Porosity Hair.
I think this is a Good Thread!
Thank you for starting it rainfortheend!!!!

jupiterinleo
September 25th, 2013, 07:48 AM
I was reading elsewhere that porous hair = hair that is damaged, and healthy hair has low porosity. Is this true?

Squiggy
September 25th, 2013, 08:10 AM
Well, I have long thought that I have low porosity hair, so I did a strand test when I saw this thread. It's been sitting on top of the water for about an hour now. I think that definitely means low porosity! However, it is quite elastic, doesn't snap easily, and does okay with small amounts of protein. My current conditioner has some silk proteins in it and those don't bother my hair at all. I did an egg treatment once, and my hair was a disaster!

My hair is all virgin, I don't use heat but once a month at the most, and I don't do much to cause mechanical damage. I currently am cone-free and last used cones a year ago. I don't think my hair really cares if I use cones or not, but I can't remember. After all, the last time I used cones coincided with having a baby, so I didn't really pay a whole lot of attention to my hair! I want to try them again in the future, just as an experiment.

I use SLS shampoo twice a week, but I think I am going to try low poo or SLS free when I run out of this current bottle. Coconut oil I can use as a prewash treatment, but there is just no way I can use it as a daily leave in! Even the tiniest bit makes my head look like an oil derrick, and that's just not a cute look! Argan oil and sweet almond oil do get absorbed a bit more, so I use one of those daily - just a single drop though, and right on my ends!

I used ACV rinses for awhile but I don't think they really did anything for my hair.

My hair will air dry in about 4 hours if left down. If bunned or braided it can stay wet indefinitely.

For those who use Tea rinses - what and how do you prep/use them? I've never tried, but I'd love to experiment some!

Lunadriael
September 25th, 2013, 08:17 AM
I am pretty sure I have low porosity hair. It takes forever to dry (even if I blow dry on cool) and it's not especially thick, nor especially long. If I put it in water it just doesn't sink no matter how long I leave it, and chemical dyes never took very well when I used to use them. It is most likely a lot less porous since I henna and indigoed it, which is kind of adding to my woes because it's just so dry on the ends. :( Oils are usually a disaster unless the amount I use is very tiny, but even then it builds up quickly. Coconut oil often makes my ends crunchy. :/ I still have damaged ends that keep splitting though....

I tend to find that silicone conditioners are the best thing for me because if I don't use them my hair is impossible to detangle. I do however have to use an SLS shampoo in combination with that to wash out whatever is left on my hair each time (otherwise it gets pretty disgusting and lank in a short space of time). I was actually considering trying a very gentle herbal shampoo with no conditioner when I run out of all the products I've been hoarding, because I found what I thought was a good shampoo, but the conditioner that went with it was full of oils, which just made my hair all stringy and sad. Generally the more stuff I stick on my hair the less happy it is with me.

Applegirl84
September 25th, 2013, 08:33 AM
My virgin hair is low porosity, but my length is medium porosity due to old damage. I can't wait to grow out the damaged parts, because I love the low porosity :)

AmyBeth
September 25th, 2013, 09:59 AM
Thank you! Thank you! Thank you! Since I began using hendigo, I thought I was losing my mind! I have been on this earth long enough to know what grows out of my scalp, then 6 or so months ago, when I put the hendigo in, it seemed like somebody stole my hair and put some strange, alien hair on instead. What used to love CO, is now greasy sticky mess. What used to dry in 20 minutes now takes all effing day! What used to take lovely bun waves now hangs limply. Oh, it's not all bad, believe me. My hair is so much thicker, it used to be so fine you could hardly see each individual hair, now they are clearly visible and you can FEEL each individual strand. I can actually feel my hair on my back. It's almost freakishly shiny, which I love. I almost never get splits anymore. Plus, no more grey, and hendigo colors without damage. I will not willingly damage my hair, no matter what. But everything I thought I knew about my hair no longer applies and I could not put my finger on what the problem is. Thanks to this thread, I think I get it. CO absolutely doesn't give me good results anymore, and I really dreaded using standard shampoo again, so I invested in a shampoo bar, which seems like a good compromise. I bought a moisturizing one, and now I want to try one more formulated for oily. I would like to try the tea rinses that some of you talk about. Where can I find info about that?
Again, thank you for this thread! I really thought I was going crazy or something, because since the hendigo, my hair is so very different and this makes such sense, since henna coats the hair, making it less porous- doh!:rolleyes:

Anje
September 25th, 2013, 10:08 AM
I suspect that mine's pretty low in porosity. It dries fairly quickly, but I question that it gets really wet all the way through in the time I take to wash it. Oils generally don't absorb, and leave-ins just make my hair feeling sticking/tacky/tangly/dry. Despite that protein tends to be encouraged for fineys, my hair thinks it is absolutely evil. If I want my hair moisturized, it requires an extended soak on a moisturizing treatment; in-shower conditioning can help detangle a little but doesn't cut it when my hair has actually gotten dried out. Thankfully, that's rare.

rainfortheend
September 25th, 2013, 10:12 AM
The thing about low porosity hair is that it has the tendency to snap and be dull, so it needs moisture inside the shaft so it doesn't do those things. It's like a rubber band dipped in liquid nitrogen-- you can't say that it's not strong enough. It's just not flexible and moist enough. Unfortunately, it's hard to get moisture to penetrate, which is why a lot of people talk about dying their hair to lower the cuticle a bit... then moisture can penetrate a lot more easily and their hair won't be as brittle.

The thing about protein is that it makes my hair even more brittle. I could barely get a comb through it because it would snap! Also, it made it dull... yeah, not for me.

About the tea rinses: I tried a coffee rinse yesterday and LOVED it! My hair smells wonderful and it's not as stiff as tea! Also, it looks darker and holds my curls well.

What I do is I brew about 6 oz of strong tea or coffee... at least 2 tea bags or 4 tbsp coffee grounds. (And I use the cheap stuff... what we really need is the caffeine.) I let it steep for a while, waiting for it to cool naturally until it's just warm. I put it in a hair dye applicator bottle (got it for less than $2 at Sally's, if I remember correctly) and squirt it on my scalp. I keep my hair in braids for this part because the tea/coffee can make hair stiff and it's hard to detangle. I don't rinse it out of my scalp; I'll rinse out the tea/coffee that got on my braid and the ends of my bangs so they aren't so stiff. If I'm having a super frizzy day or want waves with some hold I won't rinse the coffee/tea out of my braid. It makes a great hairspray!

I do the coffee/tea rinses after every wash... I've been trying to do them every day. After a wash, I'll use an old T-shirt (less frizz!) to squeeze the excess water out of my hair.

Siiri
September 25th, 2013, 10:34 AM
If anyone is unsure of their properties they might consider having a hair analysis
http://pedaheh.blogspot.co.uk/2013/08/goosefootprints-hair-analysis-with-my.html

Thank you for posting that link, I hadn't heard of that! I'm definitely going to try that, sounds very interesting.

As for my hair, I'm not sure what porosity it is. I'm guessing low or medium. I only seem to get subtle differences when I try different washing methods or hair products etc. Then I come here and read how going sulfate-free/coconut oil/placenta saved someones hair. I don't mean I'm envious but I nothing "works for me" quite like that, so I'm wondering whether it's a porosity issue.

PrairieRose
September 25th, 2013, 01:50 PM
I think I have low porosity hair also. I have always been drawn to WO and NW/SO and using oils on my hair but it always seems to lead to disaster. My hair does seem to like some protein though. This is a great thread and glad to find some people with the same issues! Looking forward to following it!:)

rainfortheend
October 27th, 2013, 09:14 PM
As of right now, I'll only habitually use one thing on my hair. Infused vinegar. (Well, sometimes I use lavender hydrosol to fight grease and perhaps to add a fresh fragrance on special days.) I infuse vinegar with nettle (good for shedding and growth) and lavender (to fight grease and cover the vinegar scent with something lovely.)

Conditioner just won't rinse out as well as I'd like it to. My hair stays greasy and stringy. So I gave my hair one last SLS wash and just gave up on conditioner altogether.

I'll mix 4 oz white vinegar with 2 oz hot water. The resulting mixture is comfortably warm. I'll squirt this on my dry hair and let it sit for a good 2 minutes or so. (I have a color applicator bottle that I got from Sally's.) And then I'll rinse it out. I'll then take 2 oz vinegar and 4 oz water and use it as a leave-in.

Why? Well, I've got hard water. Unlike SLS, vinegar doesn't dry out my hair at all! It still has plenty of its natural oils. And the shine!

People always talk about not using too strong of a dilution. Well, hair does best at a pH of 5. Water has a pH of 7. You've got to bring the pH down somehow, and I've got hard water. So it works great for me... Also, the strong solution gets rinsed out after only 2 minutes.

The only downside is that I have to do this every day, or else my hair gets too greasy. But I'm fine with that since it's so healthy. And it's cheap!

rainfortheend
October 27th, 2013, 09:34 PM
I think I know why it works so well for me. I just did some research and the average pH of water in my city is 9.28!! (Lots of limestone, calcium, etc in our groundwater.)
The buildup I faced when I tried WO and CO. It makes sense!

Not sure how this is going to change my ratios. I'm going to get some pH test strips and figure it out.

WilfredAllen
October 28th, 2013, 10:08 AM
I love my low porosity hair. I was having problems with it last year because I accidentally was using a protein conditioner, and because I was trying to moisturize using higher porosity methods (conditioner, oils, etc). I've found that all my hair needs to moisturize is water and a little bit of heat ( I usually use body heat, but I am beginning to suspect that a bit of hairdryer once in a while isn't hurting). Now that it's moisturized, I won''t have to worry about it for a while. I just wash with a small amount of diluted SLS free shampoo to remove the excess grease, and follow with a vinegar rinse. My sebum does a great job and I don't have to worry about day 2+ nasty, crunchy buildup. My hair also loves catnip soaks

leslissocool
October 28th, 2013, 10:17 AM
I have very low porosity now that I cut off all the damage. My hair doesn't like protein, I use coconut oil once ever 4 months if needed now ( I switched to castor oil and olive), I have to use shampoo on my scalp but I do great with CO wash on length (I have wavy/curly hair that's really coarse, I don't need ANY more volume!). Other than the drying time, my hair is NOT very dry and it's VERY elastic. It doesn't snap easy, and I do use cones (love cones).


My hair, like WilfredAllen's, needs heat to absorb things. Even just body heat, and loves low PH's (no acid rinses for me, it turns to a giant poof). Because I do come from damaged hair past, I think low porosity is indeed healthy hair, and on coarse hair you can really see the damage. It's so much easier to handle now.

PrairieRose
October 28th, 2013, 11:53 AM
I love my low porosity hair. I was having problems with it last year because I accidentally was using a protein conditioner, and because I was trying to moisturize using higher porosity methods (conditioner, oils, etc). I've found that all my hair needs to moisturize is water and a little bit of heat ( I usually use body heat, but I am beginning to suspect that a bit of hairdryer once in a while isn't hurting). Now that it's moisturized, I won''t have to worry about it for a while. I just wash with a small amount of diluted SLS free shampoo to remove the excess grease, and follow with a vinegar rinse. My sebum does a great job and I don't have to worry about day 2+ nasty, crunchy buildup. My hair also loves catnip soaks
I find this very interesting. When I cut my hair last spring , I frequently used the blow dryer since I know I was cutting often I was not worried about damage. But now that I think about it, I did not really see any damage and my hair looked and behaved well. I never thought about low porosity hair needing some heat. Hmmmm.....

magfish
October 28th, 2013, 03:00 PM
I have low porosity hair (I'm pretty sure!) but it's also curly, so a little different from all of yours. It never sinks and in fact I can stand in the shower and if I don't move my hair around the bottom layer of hair would probably never get wet! It takes forEVER to dry my goodness.

But, my hair also loves CO, loves vinegar rinses (though, we've got really hard water here), and doesn't seem to have too much of a problem with protein OR coconut oil. I do find that other oils weigh it down pretty fast though and tend to just sit on top, but as long as I don't use too much coconut it can be good for holding any existing moisture in- I just can't use it on dry hair.

Maybe my hair isn't as low porosity as I thought? Hmmm...

bananahanna
October 28th, 2013, 03:17 PM
my hair is sitting in a cup of water right on top. I pushed it down... it floated right back up. that being said, none of the descriptors the OP used really sound like my hair. my hair doesn't seem to absorb oil but it feels great after I wash it. I use cones and my hair seems to really like that. I've also used the CO method previously and my hair did well on that as well. ACV seemed to almost dry my hair out and make it prone to tangles? but it was bleached at that point. Also, I can stretch washes for about 4 days before I get greasy.. but even then it has a lot of body. Is my porosity low just because it doesn't sink? come to think of it, when I swim, my hair floats around me as well. Oh and protein does not seem to both it one bit & today when I CO washed it it dried in 20 minutes as opposed to 1.5+ when I shampoo only (for hair typing purposes)

jeanniet
October 28th, 2013, 03:30 PM
I don't think this has been mentioned, but the float test is not a reliable indicator of porosity. Most hair will float for a long time regardless of its porosity. Other indicators are better (especially about taking a long time to become saturated), and a microscopic analysis is best.

Nanna
October 29th, 2013, 10:57 AM
I think I have low porosity too. My hair doesn't get wet easily in the shower and it takes forever to dry, oil just makes it look oily and curls and colours don't stick. On the other hand, it almost never splits, it doesn't tangle EVER and it behaves itself mostly. Good to know there are others with the same kind of hair!

rainfortheend
November 6th, 2013, 05:51 PM
Hair update:

My hair is fine, thin, AND oily... so there's a lot of grease that doesn't really get absorbed and shows up easily! So any oils, waxes, products, etc... just weigh my hair down. Even conditioner! I didn't realize how flat my hair looked until I went without conditioner and saw a big change.

Additionally, I got a humidifier which helps to add moisture, oomph up the volume and curl in my waves, and tackle dry skin and scalp. Added bonus: my cold is gone and I sleep better because of it! I save money on heating in the winter since the humidity makes it feel warmer than it is. Love that thing.

Wash: (in 6 oz color applicator bottle)
-- Less than 1 tsp Johnson's baby shampoo (I don't exactly measure this out, just pour a bit)
-- 3 oz white vinegar
-- 3 oz water

I'll squirt this all over my whole head, focusing on my bangs and hairline where it's greasiest. Even my ends can look stringy and flat, so I'll put this on my length as well.
Why these things? The shampoo is cone and sulfate free (active ingredient: cocamidopropyl betaine) yet lathers like a dream. The vinegar is for pH balance, buildup removal, and shine; white is cheaper than ACV and works just as well.

Leave in:

-- 1.5 oz Nettle leaf and lavender infused white vinegar
-- 4.5 oz water

Why infused vinegar? For one, it makes my hair smell good. Additionally, nettle helps stimulate hair growth and prevents hair loss, and lavender helps to fight oiliness.

Also attempting the inversion method for hair growth... just started today and I haven't noticed anything yet. Can't hurt, right? :D

florenonite
November 7th, 2013, 10:36 AM
I think I've got low-porosity hair. My hair is BSL, F/iii and takes - wait for it - NINE hours to air dry. Admittedly, I live in a damp climate, but that only partially accounts for it.

Quite a few of the points in the OP ring true for me. I have to wash every 2 days, ACV was a nightmare, and, of course, it takes forever to dry.

That being said, my hair loves coconut oil. I put on a wee bit most evenings before bed, and occasionally do a more thorough treatment before washing.

Regarding conditioner, I tend to find that most rinse-out conditioners don't work too well and tend to leave my hair greasy. That being said, shampooing without conditioner, at least since I moved to the UK (my hair does lovely in cold, dry weather), tends to leave the parts of my hair that take the longest to dry perpetually greasy. I'm not entirely sure what was going on there, but since I started washing with a 2-in-1 the problem's gone away. It was alleviated somewhat by using a normal conditioner, but not entirely. In fact, my hair is really susceptible to greasiness, not just from things I put on it (ACV, leave-in conditioner), but from taking too long to dry. If I put it up when it's more than slightly damp, the bits on the inside of the bun/braid will be greasy. Should I sleep on it damp/wet, I wake up to greasy hair. This is why blow-driers were invented :p

nobeltonya
November 8th, 2013, 12:34 PM
I have no idea about the porosity of my hair.. it does float and takes several hours to dry, but doesn't really fit into the other requirements.. it doesn't break easily and has no trouble absorbing coconut oil.. how else do you determine porosity? :disco:

r00ski
November 8th, 2013, 03:19 PM
Is it possible for the hair around my roots to be low porosity and my ends which are still my pre-LHC days hair to be high porosity?

Indigo really takes to my ends but feels like it slides right off my roots..

florenonite
November 9th, 2013, 04:20 AM
I have no idea about the porosity of my hair.. it does float and takes several hours to dry, but doesn't really fit into the other requirements.. it doesn't break easily and has no trouble absorbing coconut oil.. how else do you determine porosity? :disco:

The only truly reliable way is through getting a hair analysis done. I've read about a test done by running your fingers up a hair strand (smooth = low porosity, rough = high), but I don't know how accurate that is. FWIW, I did that and felt roughness, but my hair generally doesn't behave like high-porosity hair.

Personally, I don't think your hair's actual porosity matters much (unless it's high porosity and you don't want it to be), as dealing with low-porosity hair isn't about "fixing" its porosity but handling the effects, and that'll be the same whether or not your porosity is actually low. In short, I think this thread can be of some use to you as you have slow-drying hair, but I've no idea what your porosity is :p


Is it possible for the hair around my roots to be low porosity and my ends which are still my pre-LHC days hair to be high porosity?

Indigo really takes to my ends but feels like it slides right off my roots..

Certainly! One of the common effects of damage is increased porosity.

LadyJJ
June 2nd, 2014, 04:26 AM
I have low porosity too, not sure which oils are suitable for me, any tips?

CarpeDM
June 15th, 2014, 07:04 AM
Can anyone recommend some low porosity protein free products?

battles
June 15th, 2014, 08:28 AM
SMT's work extremely well for me. Some days I'll end up doing a long SMT with a towel to hold in heat and then just wash out like CO and my hair looks great and dries soft and shiny. The only issue is my skin hates conditioner, but that's entirely unrelated.

I don't know of any products offhand that work well for low porosity hair. I use these two when I can, they're both protein free.
http://cocoapink.net/product.php?productid=358&cat=16&page=1
http://cocoapink.net/product.php?productid=1180&cat=17&page=1

I've also been using the Kiss My Face Whenever shampoo/condish but it's starting to make my hair oily and limp and requiring everyday washing, so I won't recommend that one.

Bitstuff
June 16th, 2014, 03:54 AM
There's a thread for this, yay. I don't find low porosity a problem at all for me but my ends are damaged so they must be porous. I find it difficult to keep leave-ins in the ends only. I did a round of Henna Hut brown dye yesterday and they say not to use any products for 48 hours, so my ends are pretty dry, although not horrible because of the fresh coat, but the rest of the hair is perfectly fine and has more volume than usual. I wish it would stay this way! How much can henna be expected to 'fix' damage, I wonder?

Kimberly
June 16th, 2014, 05:59 PM
Whenever I read about someone's hair "soaking up" oil I have been puzzled, because mine sure doesn't. CO leaves my hair slimy and dirtier seeming than it did before washing. Most conditioners just make my hair tangle, or leave it stringy and limp, and my hair has never been more manageable than it has since I gave up using conditioner. I do use ACV, but the water here is very hard, and my brush gets clogged with white lime powder if I don't use the acid rinse. Last time I tried dye (Manic Panic), it only really took at the ends, sort of. I had read that curlies always have porous hair, and need to do all this CO and etc. for that reason, but I am coming to the conclusion now that I must be an exception. I suppose I could get one of those tests, but I already found a routine that works and would only be checking just so I would know what thread I belong in on LHC!

I'm happy, happy, happy!!!!! about my low porosity. Yeah, my hair takes longer to dry than, say, back when I had it bleached paper-white. But it feels nice, acts nice, is what hair is supposed to be, I think, despite some split ends and floating around all over because it is so fine. I don't have the thickest hair, the longest, the prettiest color, or the springiest curls, but this low porosity thing makes me feel like my ringlets are kinda special. Yay for low porosity! Maybe that's why I'm getting away with curly no-nos all the time. :-)

Kimberly
June 16th, 2014, 06:20 PM
Can anyone recommend some low porosity protein free products?

I use CV shampoo bars with good results.

Edit: come to think of it, the bar I use has egg in it, though! Heck.

skeletonous
August 19th, 2014, 03:54 PM
So I've discovered that my hair is pretty low porosity, but I find that coconut oil as a pre-poo treatment and the Organix Coconut Milk shampoo with protein in it works fine for me so far...the oil does tend to just sit on top though unless I heat it a bit.

I think my hair likes it because my hair strands are fine, and the fact that I don't do the pre-poo treatment very often (and am currently shampooing every other day).

No wonder CO washing didn't work that great for me :p I couldn't really stretch washes because the moisture from it would sit on top of my hair, making it seem more greasy as the day went on.

Lavenderhaze
July 22nd, 2016, 03:24 PM
my hair takes forever to absorb water in the shower. I can literally stand there for 10 minutes and the underside isn't even wet. and lately when I try to oil it, it doesn't seem to be absorbing the oil. and I don't use cones. have also eliminated protein lately.

it is also very brittle and dry and snaps easily.

i'm trying to figure out what's wrong with my hair. does this sound like low porosity hair?

littlestarface
July 22nd, 2016, 03:47 PM
Oooo I didn't know we had a thread like this. Thanks for bumping it!

Decoy24601
July 22nd, 2016, 04:10 PM
I didn't know we had a thread like this either.

I've discovered that I can only use a very tiny amount of oil as a pre-poo treatment. It doesn't even wash out all the way with a strong SLS shampoo. The only cones my hair can tolerate are ones that aren't supposed to build up on themselves (like amodimethicone). My hair doesn't mind gelatin or silk protein once in a while, but it absolutely hates proteins like whey/wheat or keratin. I can't use conditioners with a lot of plant extracts either, because those like to build up on my hair.

If I take a bath, my hair floats in the water around me. It takes a couple minutes of me fully submerging it for it to sink. My hair stays somewhat dry for the first few minutes of showers. It takes my hair an insanely long time to dry, but that also might be partially because I have so much hair.

So far, I use a SLS shampoo about once a week and a shampoo bar every 2-3 days. I don't use conditioner when I use the shampoo bar. I don't do ACV rinses either, because my hair hates them now.

My holy grail so far is flaxseed gel. I love that stuff. I can put so much of it in my hair and it does eventually soak into it. I tried doing AVG and it gave me buildup and made my hair feel very odd. I now use just a little bit in my flaxseed gel.

Oh, and SMTs don't really do anything to my hair if there isn't any heat.

littlestarface
July 22nd, 2016, 05:37 PM
^ And I cannot use any cone at all or else my hair is nasty gunky and feels like it cant breath lool. My hair doesn't like rinses at all, I tried acv, lemon but it does nothing for my hair. If I apply oils I always do heat cap for 30mins.

I remember I tried CO along time ago but it did nothing for my hair it only left it limp and oily but then I learned how to do it for low porosity hair and it honestly gets my hair cleaner than any shampoo could ever do. Chelating also works wonders for me, makes my hair really wurly and bouncy soft. Henna is great for me too but I have to make sure to chelate and do it on damp hair beforehand and add a heat cap to it to make it work so I get the benefits of the conditioning. My hair loves honey and protein so much with lots of heat, I need deep treatments every week as my hair loves lots of moisture and lots of protein.

I can't put oils on dry hair or else it wont soak in and it'll just leave my hair oily and gunky, I need to put stuff in when it's wet and not much either just 2 things max, like a leave in and some gel. I tried putting in a butter but that was a bad idea, my hair just felt waxy and coated.

My hair takes long to dry but I don't ever notice it cuz I always shower before sleep and let it air dry by itself over my pillow and when I wake up it's nice and dry.

Decoy24601
July 22nd, 2016, 05:48 PM
Oh, my hair hates butters too. The only way my hair can tolerate it is if I mix a tiny bit in some flaxseed gel in my palm and smooth it over my braid for the night. I can only do that one time though, or else it'll build up.

I do prefer my hair texture without using conditioners with amodimethicone, but the light cone helps keep my hair from tangling, and it loves to tangle. I've been meaning to order some of night blooming's selkie herbal detangler or something, but I'm afraid that would cause buildup too because of the herbs.

It's taken me a while to figure out that less is more when it comes to my hair. I tried layering my hair in butters and oils, only to wonder why I had to wash multiple times on the next wash to get it out. I only use a tiny dab of conditioner on my hair in the shower when I do use it now and I make sure my hair is as wet as possible so it's a bit diluted.

I've actually been meaning to chelate my hair. My building has old pipes and our soaps don't foam well, so I have a hunch that we have hard water. What do you use to chelate your hair, littlestarface?

Silicone serums leave my hair feeling very very gunky. For some reason heavy cones like dimethicone leave my hair feeling gunky and it makes my hair stick together and tangle even more. The weird thing is, my hair is fine with it on dry hair, but once it gets wet and I try to put any products over it, I swear everything in conditioners just sticks to the cones. It takes multiple washes with a strong SLS shampoo to get it out too.

littlestarface
July 22nd, 2016, 05:55 PM
I'm using joico chelating, I swear that stuff works the best and I dunno why. I tried using redken chelate and it coated my hair it was so weird, I also tried citric acid, and that one water but nothing did it for me like joico has and there's no cones at all.

You'll know you have hard water when white stuff always builds up around the sinks and you see white streaks on the kitchen sink as well. Also your cups will have spots :rolleyes: and you'll see rust stains in the toilet/shower. It's the worst and sometimes I think to myself, eww I take a shower with that crap bleh!

Decoy24601
July 22nd, 2016, 06:06 PM
I'll have to order some of that soon then. Thanks littlestarface.

Yeah, I can see the white buildup on my shower head. I also get pinkish deposits (rust?) along with white deposits on my clear shower curtain, which is weird. I know it's not mold or anything though. My glasses always have spots too. The toilet also gets visible rust deposits within a couple days of being cleaned. Some days the water seems worse than others too. I'm fairly sure it's the pipes in this building, because a family member on the other side of town has had their water tested and it's extremely soft.

I used to live in a town where the tap water was visibly between a yellow and a rust color, so I've definitely dealt with much nastier water. That stuff tasted horrible. Bottled water sold very well in that town, hah.

littlestarface
July 22nd, 2016, 06:11 PM
I'll have to order some of that soon then. Thanks littlestarface.

Yeah, I can see the white buildup on my shower head. I also get pinkish deposits (rust?) along with white deposits on my clear shower curtain, which is weird. I know it's not mold or anything though. My glasses always have spots too. The toilet also gets visible rust deposits within a couple days of being cleaned. Some days the water seems worse than others too. I'm fairly sure it's the pipes in this building, because a family member on the other side of town has had their water tested and it's extremely soft.

I used to live in a town where the tap water was visibly between a yellow and a rust color, so I've definitely dealt with much nastier water. That stuff tasted horrible. Bottled water sold very well in that town, hah.

My town is like that, our water is a orangey color at times and it smells like rotten eggs. I would never drink this water again, I used to get sick all the time when we drink tap water, now it's nothing but bottled water for us. Imagine i'm cleaning my hair and body in that so gross.

florenonite
July 22nd, 2016, 11:19 PM
my hair takes forever to absorb water in the shower. I can literally stand there for 10 minutes and the underside isn't even wet. and lately when I try to oil it, it doesn't seem to be absorbing the oil. and I don't use cones. have also eliminated protein lately.

it is also very brittle and dry and snaps easily.

i'm trying to figure out what's wrong with my hair. does this sound like low porosity hair?

It sounds like it might be. Low-porosity hair is notoriously hard to moisturise because so many products just sit on top and don't penetrate (although the flip side to this is that if you care for it it often needs less moisture). If your hair is very dry, I'd suggest something like a warm SMT. Low-porosity hair needs something like warmth or an alkali (which I wouldn't recommend - too much risk of damage) to open the cuticle a little and let moisturising treatments in.

school of fish
July 23rd, 2016, 06:09 AM
How have I missed this thread?!

It took me a while to cotton onto the fact that my inability to oil was likely a porosity thing. I've tried just about every oil, in the tiniest amounts possible, trying every application method and order of application, and no matter what I get oil slick, stickiness and build up. I've never known what it's like to 'oil your hair and let it soak in' - the soaking in never happens, I can't even imagine what that would be like, haha! What's more, my own sebum does the same thing! As a result I have to wash daily - 5 days a week CO, the remaining 2 days S&C. I need sulphates in the shampoo and light cones in the conditioner, and little to no protein in either. Stretching washes does not decrease oil production for me, that factory's just open 24/7 ;) And since my hair absorbs nothing, it just has to be cleared away routinely.

Rinse-out oil has been the only oiling method I've been able to use with any success, but only in tiny drops, only on the S&C days, and only during the winter dryness - I've had to abandon it during the current summer humidity. In winter it keeps the static down.

Once I realized my hair responds better to rinse-out moisture methods than leave-in ones it started behaving much better. SMTs are lovely for me, thick but oil-free conditioners that rinse out cleanly are most effective, and as I mentioned rinse-out oil is an option. A little heat applied to the SMT does help it along. Leave-ins like serums or oils or butters or a touch of conditioner are no-gos for me... I can ruin a perfectly good clean hair washing by applying just 2 drops of anything as a leave-in, hahaha!!!

Now that I've figured it out, keeping my hair happy is an easy thing :)

H o n є y ❤
July 23rd, 2016, 10:59 AM
I don't *really* know my porosity but I find it very annoying that I have thin hair that does not take well to anything other than small amounts of protein. Protein is supposed to give fine/thin hair a boost right? I don't know if these small amounts of protein are really doing anything for my hair. How am I supposed to strengthen it if protein treatments makes it brittle and tangly?

littlestarface
July 23rd, 2016, 12:10 PM
I don't *really* know my porosity but I find it very annoying that I have thin hair that does not take well to anything other than small amounts of protein. Protein is supposed to give fine/thin hair a boost right? I don't know if these small amounts of protein are really doing anything for my hair. How am I supposed to strengthen it if protein treatments makes it brittle and tangly?

Are you making sure you do a moisture treatment after? with heat preferably. Always follow with moisture after protein or else your hair is gonna be tangly hard.

H o n є y ❤
July 23rd, 2016, 12:22 PM
Are you making sure you do a moisture treatment after? with heat preferably. Always follow with moisture after protein or else your hair is gonna be tangly hard.
Yes but I usually have to follow up with 2 moisture treatments until my hair is back to normal. I don't know that's just sort of an inconvenience to me because at that point I'm doing 3 hair treatments in one day.

school of fish
July 23rd, 2016, 12:22 PM
I don't *really* know my porosity but I find it very annoying that I have thin hair that does not take well to anything other than small amounts of protein. Protein is supposed to give fine/thin hair a boost right? I don't know if these small amounts of protein are really doing anything for my hair. How am I supposed to strengthen it if protein treatments makes it brittle and tangly?

I don't know if this helps, but here's an analogy for the protein/moisture issue that's helped me understand how to find the balance in my own hair, because like you I discovered that my fine hair wasn't responding well to protein...

If you think of developing muscle, you can develop it in two ways - by loading it with weight to create bulk and strength, and by stretching it long to create suppleness and flexibility. A well-developed muscle needs to be trained for both, strength training needs complimentary stretching to counteract tightness and prevent injury, and flexibility training needs complimentary strengthening to counteract weakness and prevent injury. Each needs the other to be most effective.

And of course each of us has our naturally given tendancies - some of us are born very powerfully and can lift heavy things easily without excessive effort, others of us are born very bendy and don't need to work hard to drop into a split. And of course many of us lie somewhere in between.

So - as it is with muscle, so it is with hair ;) The naturally 'strong' ones are more likely to need moisture and are prone to get protein overload more easily, and the 'bendy' ones are more likely to need protein and will tend get over-moisturized more quickly. The ones in the middle will be working to maintain the balance rather than create it. Fine, medium and coarse hair can be found anywhere along that 'strong/flexible' spectrum, which means there's no one type of treatment for any given thickness type.

It's a rather simplistic and perhaps somewhat flawed analogy, but I've found it a helpful way of thinking about the protein/moisture balance, making sorting through the vast amount of info and advice on this board a little easier :) You can also use an elastic band as another analogy - it needs both suppleness to stretch best and it needs strength to snap back, both are necessary for best performance. And too much in either direction can cause breakage, either through lack of structure from overstretching if too 'bendy', or by snapping from brittleness if too 'strong'.

So in your case, *if* your hair is actually needing more moisture than protein in order to strike the balance between the two, then by adding moisture you'll actually be effectively strengthening your strands - supporting the strong muscle with suppleness to avoid injury, so to speak... much more so than adding protein would do :)

littlestarface
July 23rd, 2016, 12:42 PM
Yes but I usually have to follow up with 2 moisture treatments until my hair is back to normal. I don't know that's just sort of an inconvenience to me because at that point I'm doing 3 hair treatments in one day.

If your hair is becoming brittle I suggest to cut out protein for abit and just stick to moisturizing it for now. You can do on and off like maybe one or 2 times a month (depending on when you wash)of protein if it needs it. Cuz instead of helping it looks like it's making worst.

H o n є y ❤
July 23rd, 2016, 01:15 PM
I don't know if this helps, but here's an analogy for the protein/moisture issue that's helped me understand how to find the balance in my own hair, because like you I discovered that my fine hair wasn't responding well to protein...

If you think of developing muscle, you can develop it in two ways - by loading it with weight to create bulk and strength, and by stretching it long to create suppleness and flexibility. A well-developed muscle needs to be trained for both, strength training needs complimentary stretching to counteract tightness and prevent injury, and flexibility training needs complimentary strengthening to counteract weakness and prevent injury. Each needs the other to be most effective.

And of course each of us has our naturally given tendancies - some of us are born very powerfully and can lift heavy things easily without excessive effort, others of us are born very bendy and don't need to work hard to drop into a split. And of course many of us lie somewhere in between.

So - as it is with muscle, so it is with hair ;) The naturally 'strong' ones are more likely to need moisture and are prone to get protein overload more easily, and the 'bendy' ones are more likely to need protein and will tend get over-moisturized more quickly. The ones in the middle will be working to maintain the balance rather than create it. Fine, medium and coarse hair can be found anywhere along that 'strong/flexible' spectrum, which means there's no one type of treatment for any given thickness type.

It's a rather simplistic and perhaps somewhat flawed analogy, but I've found it a helpful way of thinking about the protein/moisture balance, making sorting through the vast amount of info and advice on this board a little easier :) You can also use an elastic band as another analogy - it needs both suppleness to stretch best and it needs strength to snap back, both are necessary for best performance. And too much in either direction can cause breakage, either through lack of structure from overstretching if too 'bendy', or by snapping from brittleness if too 'strong'.

So in your case, *if* your hair is actually needing more moisture than protein in order to strike the balance between the two, then by adding moisture you'll actually be effectively strengthening your strands - supporting the strong muscle with suppleness to avoid injury, so to speak... much more so than adding protein would do :)
It's very difficult maintaing a good balance between the two but wow...I've never thought about it like that before. Good analogy! I'm thinking maybe I should just stick with my moisture treatments for now.

H o n є y ❤
July 23rd, 2016, 01:19 PM
If your hair is becoming brittle I suggest to cut out protein for abit and just stick to moisturizing it for now. You can do on and off like maybe one or 2 times a month (depending on when you wash)of protein if it needs it. Cuz instead of helping it looks like it's making worst.
Yes, I think you're right. The protein treatment definitely do more harm than good. Thanks littlestarface and school of fish! :)

sumirechan
August 4th, 2016, 03:10 PM
I find that using a combination ratio of 1:1 of VCO and olive oil for my low porosity hair does wonders to combat the frizzy ends. I just tried it last night and left it on my hair for 3 hours. I am amazed with the softness and smoothness it gave my hair. I'm going to try coconut milk for my hair and will see how it fares.

Rebeccalaurenxx
October 7th, 2017, 02:21 PM
Bumping this forum back up, I did the strand test and turned out I am low porosity. No wonder my hair never really liked protein! Oils just sit on top of my hair. I may need to buy a heat cap for deep treatments -- probably why after an SMT I notice no difference -- the products can't get through!

mira-chan
October 7th, 2017, 05:58 PM
Hair that takes forever to get wet? Yup.
Takes a long time to dry? Yup.
Hates silicones? Yup, feels like doll hair with them.
Proteins? A little is ok, a lot, not so much.
There was floating last I checked, I have to shove it down into the basin to wash it...
It doesn't snap easily, though it does so loudly, but mine is also coarse.
Oiling, I'm ok with but I oil pre-wash and focus on my scalp, or if the length to weigh it down, not for absorbance.
ACV or citric acid, I use more for the scalp than the hair, there's not that much of an effect for hair, but scalp is happier with it with certain water/ location.

Grease? My scalp doesn't produce anything that goes down the hair shaft so no clue.

I do know it Hates.... really really hates humecants. Honey or glycerin = hair looks and feels like it's been washed in manky swamp, slime and all. So SMT as is doesn't work. Aloe is not my friend either.

What works: Thick conditioner, left on under a shower cap for 20-40 min periodically. Body heat does the warming just fine. When I'm lax with that my hair gets more dry, coarse feeling and floofy in a bad way. ...I'm often lax with this.. <_<

Henna... fades on me. It also doesn't do much of a dramatic color change on my dark hair but even the white hair at first is a light orange, then fades to a yellowy color. No clue about other dyes, never used any.

I do use leave ins, mostly to weigh the hair down and clump the waves a bit. Coarse hair problems, not so much porosity issues there.

Combing? ...I don't? My hair doesn't tangle much, all tangles fall out as they dry. I can't comb wet or damp hair at all, but dry, no problem. All combing generally does is make my hair fluffy in an unfortunate way. So usually I just comb before wash to get the loose hairs out, if I do any combing at all. Benign neglect, the ultimate edition here.

Beeboo123
October 8th, 2017, 12:20 AM
I have low porosity virgin hair. I've thrown shed hairs into a filled sink at night, and still found them floating the next morning. My hair takes a full day to dry in 30+degC/90+degF weather. It completely refuses to soak up oils except for squalane, and given time and heat, camellia oil. No buildup with either! It's pricey, but I just need two drops of either for tailbone length hair, so it turns out pretty economical. I only condition twice a week (cone-free conditioner with silk proteins), and wash everyday with a cone-free, SLS-free shampoo. My hair used to tangle all the time and was impossible to brush until I started putting squalane in it, and I don't get tangles anymore. My hair really likes chamomile rinses, it gets really shiny for a few days and becomes frizz-free. I do these rinses once every one or two weeks.

My hair used to be high porosity, after multiple cycles of bleaching almost white then dyeing black within a year. I greatly prefer having low porosity hair, imo it's much lower maintenance! There's no way that I'm going to dye it to damage it to increase porosity! My hair still frizzes, especially when it is humid, but it's also so soft, and nice to touch. Damaged or undamaged, I've never had problems with breakage though.

Lavenderhaze
October 8th, 2017, 10:52 AM
It sounds like it might be. Low-porosity hair is notoriously hard to moisturise because so many products just sit on top and don't penetrate (although the flip side to this is that if you care for it it often needs less moisture). If your hair is very dry, I'd suggest something like a warm SMT. Low-porosity hair needs something like warmth or an alkali (which I wouldn't recommend - too much risk of damage) to open the cuticle a little and let moisturising treatments in.

just now saw your reply, florenonite. thank you. my hair is virgin now, but i used to color my hair for years and it actually made my hair behave much better, my hair would soak in oils and conditioners and be much glossier and less heavy. Now that it is virgin, I could literally soak my hair in olive oil, wash it, and it would be dry and brittle the next day. I now use only tiny bits of oil for taming. I do COwash with suave and that seems to help, protein is only good maybe once a month or less.

I think the challenge with low porosity hair that is brittle, dull, rough or otherwise difficult, is how to moisturize it. If a person has low porosity hair and it looks great, great - if it ain't broke, no need to fix it.

Wavybrunetteuk
January 10th, 2018, 05:46 PM
For low porosity hair, do you HAVE to use warm water for the conditioner to absorb or soak in?

leayellena
January 11th, 2018, 01:53 AM
Proud low porosity hair I have. (Master Yoda joke).
It takes serious 4 hours for my hair to dry. The water basically flows from the top to the ends of my hair, so if I think I might up do my damp hair I will "instantly freeze" of cold water that's still at the ends. My damp braid in the morning remains damp when I come home, comb trough and redo my braid for sleep. Thankfully my hair is all dry the next morning. Phew!

ghanima
January 11th, 2018, 02:57 AM
For me the trick has been to keep conditioners on for 30 minutes and DT's for 1h. Finally they are not so dry as they used to be. Oiling does nothing for me, but sometimes I do oil the points a bit, between washes.

lapushka
January 11th, 2018, 02:47 PM
For low porosity hair, do you HAVE to use warm water for the conditioner to absorb or soak in?

When I wash, I use hot water to get the oil to loosen up, before I slather my head in shampoo. It helps! Then I wash with warm water. And then I rinse out my conditioners with warm water also. I found that is the best way to get it out. Cold water just leaves conditioner in my hair. I also do not do a cold rinse as the final rinse. This is what works for me. I have medium to low porosity though.

GrowingGlory
June 30th, 2019, 07:47 PM
I've been told that my hair has low porosity. That's why it's so shiny and doesn't benefit from a deep conditioner. My cuticle is impermeable enough to protect the cortex of my hair. So I find it to be a good thing.

But I wonder about the connection between low porosity and frizz and webbing. Does anyone have experience with this?

blackgothicdoll
June 30th, 2019, 10:59 PM
I've been told that my hair has low porosity. That's why it's so shiny and doesn't benefit from a deep conditioner. My cuticle is impermeable enough to protect the cortex of my hair. So I find it to be a good thing.

But I wonder about the connection between low porosity and frizz and webbing. Does anyone have experience with this?

I absolutely have frizz and worse than that, webbing. Even with a ton of product I still have stubborn parts of my hair that will web.

I have no advice but hope some one else does! :o

Eta: my dyed hair is shiny but my virgin hair is not at all. With deep conditioning, heat is a necessity or its really just regular conditioner.

Eta 2: I haven't done a float test but my clearest indicator of porosity is after I've washed and I get out of the shower, there are beads of water sitting on top of my hair at the roots. I'm like a poodle! I only see this at the roots; my dyed hair may be a different porosity but it still hates protein, needs heat for DC to work and gets build up very easily.

Where I differ is my hair loves oils and butters, even some heavy cream. Dimethicone high in the ingredients or emulsifying was, bees wax and castor oils are a big no though, immediate yucky coating that takes multiple sulfate washes to remove.

sillyme
February 24th, 2020, 09:41 AM
I've just lately figured out that I have low porosity hair. Now I finally understand why what seems to work for the majority, doesn't work for me: protein, oil in any form (especially coconut oil), cones, ACV, shampoo bars, etc. Also CO was a failure.

Now I realize what my mother meant while shampooing my hair for me when I was a child. She always said while wetting my hair, "It's just like pouring water on a duck's back!". Pretty accurate description, huh? :)

So, since I am now aware that I have low porosity hair, and have been paying attention to its likes and dislikes, I'm at a loss as to which shampoo and conditioner to use. Almost every product I have has proteins and/or cones in it. And it's almost impossible to find any hair product without coconut oil in some form in it. I've tried many, many sulfate-free shampoos and they have all left my hair dry and dull, while it's usually left shiny after washing with sulfates.

What's been working best for me lately is diluted Prell shampoo followed by lots of rinsing, and no conditioner. But, this is far from perfect. For one thing, my hair is left pretty matted and tangled at this point. Also, the ends of my hair seem to be getting kind of dry even though my hair is unprocessed and I use very little heat or products on it. So, I'm thinking I need some kind of conditioner on the ends, but most conditioners just sit on the surface of my hair, leaving it stringy and greasy looking. And leave-ins are definitely a no-no for me.

I found this thread and have read every post, but found few recent recommendations for shampoo and/or conditioners. I would love to get recommendations as well as advise from those of you with similar hair. TIA!

Ylva
February 26th, 2020, 12:32 AM
Lovely to know we've got a thread like this!

I'm growing out my virgin hair properly for the first time in probably a decade and a half, and I have reason to suspect it might be low porosity. It'll be a big adjustment going from high porosity, bleach-damaged hair to how my virgin hair is behaving so far, a whole different mentality I'd say since less definitely seems to be more now.

So far, it LUCKILY doesn't seem to mind a little bit of protein or coconut oil in shampoo. That makes life a lot easier since I have many such products left to use.

leayellena
February 27th, 2020, 01:10 AM
I visited my parents 2 years ago. my mom asked my why my freshly washed hair was still greasy. it was shiny. she actually checked out my scalp but there was no oil or grease gunk. then she saw that my hair is not shiny only on my scalp, it's shiny down to my waist. the rest of the taper is too thin to look shiny when loose. after I braided my hair she saw how shiny my tassel can get. "wow! those products you use must be really expensive". I actually had to blog (http://luisahx.blogspot.com/2020/01/how-much-shampoo-conditioner-do-i-use.html) about my conditioner price because I knew it's not expensive but I wanted to know almost exactly how "expensive" my long hair is.

shelomit
March 2nd, 2020, 10:09 PM
Judging on how my hair behaves I expect it's somewhere in the "low, but not too low" zone. Therefore I'm not certain if this will agree with your hair, sillyme. I've always found that I get the best results from technique rather than products. Two things really seem to make a difference:

1. Time and/or heat. My hair is so reluctant to "take" anything put on it that I might as well not do anything to it unless I have ample time for the stuff to sit. It's just washing the product down the drain, basically. When I put on conditioner, I leave it on under a shower cap for as long as I can stand it (certainly at least an hour--several hours is better). Heat seems to help speed things up, so if the weather's cold I'll wrap a towel around my head, too. Letting conditioner sit for longer and/or adding heat might make it actually do something beneficial for your lengths rather than sitting on top of the surface of the hair and making it gross and greasy as you describe.

2. Rinsing well. It sounds like you're onto this one too! My hair reacts poorly to straight oils and my scalp reacts incredibly poorly to oils, but I have no problem using shampoos/conditioners with coconut oil in them, which I think is just the result of rinsing my hair extremely thoroughly. I don't do vinegar rinses or anything like that, just a lot of plain old water and finger-combing through my hair to make certain I've got absolutely all of the product and/or dreck out. I can't use leave-ins, but with thorough rinsing I have very little problem with buildup and only have to clarify every month or six weeks.

Product-wise. . . I'm currently in a weird, unplanned CO phase, but theoretically I use Cake shampoo for weekly washing and Suave Clarifying every once in a while. Conditioners are V05 and Aussie Miracle Moist, plus I picked up a couple of bottles of Herbal Essences on sale and they've worked well for me. Again, in my case I find that the products don't matter all that much, or didn't matter after I figured out what it took to make them work for my hair.

Ylva
April 4th, 2020, 04:03 AM
Long drying times are often associated with lower porosity hair since the cuticle is supposed to effectively trap the water inside, but can it also be the opposite? I mean, my bleached hair takes a long time to dry because it simply soaks up SO MUCH water; it's like a sponge. My virgin hair dries a lot faster. It doesn't make sense for my virgin hair to be higher porosity than my bleached hair, so can it be just because the virgin hair doesn't actually absorb much water at all, so all it needs to do is "shake off" what little water there is on top of it as the cuticle closes again, and then it's all good?

A bit hard to explain what I mean but hopefully it was understandable.

Crystawni
April 4th, 2020, 07:06 AM
Well, my whites dry almost instantly, whereas my pigmented hair takes hours and hours, but it's all virgin, low porosity. :shrug: Weird hair is weird.

This older pic shows the dripping wet darker stuff compared to the cottony dry whities fresh from a few minutes in a turbie:

https://i.imgur.com/s5DrBuN.jpg

florenonite
April 4th, 2020, 07:58 AM
Long drying times are often associated with lower porosity hair since the cuticle is supposed to effectively trap the water inside, but can it also be the opposite? I mean, my bleached hair takes a long time to dry because it simply soaks up SO MUCH water; it's like a sponge. My virgin hair dries a lot faster. It doesn't make sense for my virgin hair to be higher porosity than my bleached hair, so can it be just because the virgin hair doesn't actually absorb much water at all, so all it needs to do is "shake off" what little water there is on top of it as the cuticle closes again, and then it's all good?

A bit hard to explain what I mean but hopefully it was understandable.

I think it depends on how wet it gets? Like if I spend a few minutes outside in a drizzle, my hair will dry quite quickly because the water hasn't penetrated it. When I immerse my hair in water to wash it, though, I guess the water actually gets into the cuticle and it takes So. Long. to dry.

Ylva
April 4th, 2020, 08:10 AM
I think it depends on how wet it gets? Like if I spend a few minutes outside in a drizzle, my hair will dry quite quickly because the water hasn't penetrated it. When I immerse my hair in water to wash it, though, I guess the water actually gets into the cuticle and it takes So. Long. to dry.

Yeah, that's what I was after. Unless the low porosity hair is REALLY soaked, a regular wash might not be enough to open the cuticles so much that a large amount of water would seep in. Therefore it would also dry fast.

It just confuses me when people imply that it's as black and white as slow drying = low porosity and fast drying = high porosity.


Well, my whites dry almost instantly, whereas my pigmented hair takes hours and hours, but it's all virgin, low porosity. :shrug: Weird hair is weird.

This older pic shows the dripping wet darker stuff compared to the cottony dry whities fresh from a few minutes in a turbie:

That's interesting!

florenonite
April 4th, 2020, 11:07 AM
Yeah, that's what I was after. Unless the low porosity hair is REALLY soaked, a regular wash might not be enough to open the cuticles so much that a large amount of water would seep in. Therefore it would also dry fast.

It just confuses me when people imply that it's as black and white as slow drying = low porosity and fast drying = high porosity.


That's a good point! I hadn't thought about that - my hair is really fine and thick and very dense on my head, so that might be why mine always seems to get really soaked when I wash it? It might be different for someone with coarse, thin hair that's low porosity, then.

Ylva
April 4th, 2020, 01:46 PM
That's a good point! I hadn't thought about that - my hair is really fine and thick and very dense on my head, so that might be why mine always seems to get really soaked when I wash it? It might be different for someone with coarse, thin hair that's low porosity, then.

Hmm! I don't know. My hair is on the finer side and medium density at the scalp. Maybe there are meaningful differences even within low porosity. Generally, it's very difficult to wet my virgin hair in the first place. I feel like it only gets wet AFTER shampoo, and when I'm lathering the shampoo, my hair still feels partially dry.

blackgothicdoll
April 4th, 2020, 01:56 PM
My low porosity hair almost doesn't get wet. It's hard to explain but water rolls off it. My damaged hair on the other hand would stay dripping wet for quite awhile, so I'm definitely the opposite of how I often read others describe it.

florenonite
April 4th, 2020, 04:08 PM
Hmm! I don't know. My hair is on the finer side and medium density at the scalp. Maybe there are meaningful differences even within low porosity. Generally, it's very difficult to wet my virgin hair in the first place. I feel like it only gets wet AFTER shampoo, and when I'm lathering the shampoo, my hair still feels partially dry.

Oh, interesting! It feels like it takes forever to get my hair wet when I wash it, but part of that is also the thickness; I have to section and separate it so it all gets wet.

Ylva
April 15th, 2020, 05:25 AM
Is it primarily porosity that determines how quickly one experiences buildup? Or are there other factors as well?

I find it odd that even my bleached hair seems to start suffering from buildup relatively quickly. Of course, I wash quite frequently as well (approximately every other day), so I put conditioner on it more often, but still, even my bleached hair wants to be clarified at least once a week even though about half of my hair at least is definitely high porosity.

Could there be some factor regarding buildup that is still retained despite an increase in porosity and thus play a part in how quickly you experience buildup? Or is that simply an absurd thought?

ETA: In case it matters, the most meaningful causes of buildup in my routine are, to my knowledge, guar gum and occasionally shea butter, even though it's not something I like to use but a lot of conditioners contain it so. :| I don't use either in any insane quantities.

Vividwings
April 16th, 2020, 12:22 PM
I think I have low-porosity hair. It's generally low maintenance, if prone to immediate frizz. It takes FOREVER to dry, oils don't seem to have the same effect they do on other people (they do weigh it down and temporarily stop frizz, but they don't really do anything long term), and I thought all hair was prone to floating before I read this thread. My hair is pretty fragile, and I'd love to know if anyone's found a way to improve hair strength? Silicones make my hair easier to detangle and my hair seems to tolerate them okay, but they might be contributing to my issues, I'm not sure.

I tried a shea moisture low-protein shampoo/conditioner, and it just seemed to make my hair tangle in the shower, and the conditioner didn't really help. :( I may give it another shot.

florenonite
April 16th, 2020, 12:28 PM
I think I have low-porosity hair. It's generally low maintenance, if prone to immediate frizz. It takes FOREVER to dry, oils don't seem to have the same effect they do on other people (they do weigh it down and temporarily stop frizz, but they don't really do anything long term), and I thought all hair was prone to floating before I read this thread. My hair is pretty fragile, and I'd love to know if anyone's found a way to improve hair strength? Silicones make my hair easier to detangle and my hair seems to tolerate them okay, but they might be contributing to my issues, I'm not sure.

I tried a shea moisture low-protein shampoo/conditioner, and it just seemed to make my hair tangle in the shower, and the conditioner didn't really help. :( I may give it another shot.

Hmm, generally-speaking, healthy hair (especially with your hair type) isn't going to break off if you look at it funny, but equally you do need to take some care with it to prevent breakage. It's possible the silicones are blocking out moisture and leaving your hair dry and fragile. It's also possible that your hair is prone to mechanical damage if you wear it loose a lot.

Vividwings
April 16th, 2020, 01:06 PM
Hmm, generally-speaking, healthy hair (especially with your hair type) isn't going to break off if you look at it funny, but equally you do need to take some care with it to prevent breakage. It's possible the silicones are blocking out moisture and leaving your hair dry and fragile. It's also possible that your hair is prone to mechanical damage if you wear it loose a lot.

Thank you! That makes sense. It's also possible that I'm not being objective about how fragile it is. I notice strands breaking when I try to put in, or take out, more complicated hairstyles like the amish braids I tried yesterday. The braiding doesn't break anything, but weaving braids together can catch stray stands and break them. There is a strong taper in my braid which is partially normal shedding, but has to involve some breakage since I only ever trim the ends. I almost never wear it down, either- it's up in a bun or in a braid. It gets frizzy and tangled when I let it down.

However, it's possible that's all perfectly normal, and I'm just overly concerned about it. :)

Bri-Chan
May 5th, 2020, 08:30 AM
I think my virgin hair could be low porosity, or on that side. After wash, my roots (I'm growing out my natural color, the length are bleached) look not soaking wet as they should be, or like my high porosity lengths. And they dry in like 10-15 minutes.
I dyed and bleached my own hair for 10 years, and retouching roots took always time because I need a lot of product and little sections to saturate the hair, especially if it's creamy. It's like it doesn't absorb easily. ACV rinses make my hair looks heavy. When I use a coney shampoo, I can feel the layer on the roots after the first wash, but on the length I use a coney conditioner almost at every wash (down from the ears) and I can't feel any layering there.
Oh, my hair doesn't look shiny.
Low porosity is here possible?

Ylva
May 5th, 2020, 08:42 AM
I have encountered a completely new... I don't know what to call it. It's not really a problem I guess. Point to consider?

Growing out my virgin hair, I knew it would be very easy-going in terms of CONDITIONER, but I didn't really think anything about shampoo. Now, it seems that finding a suitable shampoo will be the real challenge. It's not that my hair reacts adversely to them, exactly, it just feels sort of... rough. Naturally, my hair is very smooth and soft. So far, I seem to get the best results with the Urtekram rose shampoo (I don't remember which version), so I guess I'll go from there and try to figure out what my hair wants in terms of shampoo. If it's the protein-free one for normal hair, that's one indicator, I suppose. Most of the shampoo in my stash is from the bleach era so many of them contain protein. I'm just glad it isn't an actual problem, just in inconvenience! Otherwise, my boyfriend would be getting more shampoo than he bargained for.

Fethenwen
August 11th, 2020, 07:12 AM
I just figured that my hair also falls into this category after trying out the floating test. Finally after all these years of wondering why my hair gets build up so fast has an explanation!

Silicones never worked for me, made my hair stringy and got more and more dry.
Proteins made my hair a frizzy mess.
Coconut oil made my ends rough.
Shampoo bars are a nightmare to use after a few washes.

What works best so far is a lot of moisture. And also sls free shampoo.
ACV rinses works well, if I dilute it enough. About 2 tbs to 1 liter of water.
I am experimenting with rye flour washes, so far not much build up. But I might have to use clarifying shampoo at some point. I have hard water.
Oh, clarifying shampoos... I have both for deep cleaning and mineral removal :D My hair would be a mess without them. I clarify about once a month or less.

I do love oiling my hair, I massage it only on my scalp. Avocado oil works great with eo's. I do this a few times per month, mostly for scalp health and to increase hair growth.

skeletonous
September 23rd, 2020, 12:20 PM
Bumping this thread to see if anyone has any other product recommendations :waving:

I just ordered this product (https://www.etsy.com/listing/78550597/goat-milk-conditioner-all-natural-creamy) in hopes of doing a heated treatment or even diluting it for regular use. I have also found that if I put a drop or two of jojoba oil on my ends that my hair will soak it up after a while and won't look greasy.

Dark40
September 23rd, 2020, 03:41 PM
Well, I have figured it out that I have low porosity hair. Because, I haven't put any chemicals in my hair in 8 months. It doesn't take that long to dry. It only take 3 to 4 hours to air dry. It absorbs oils very well. But soon next month I'll be chemically relaxing my hair, and dyeing it. So then, I'll have high porosity hair.

Ylva
March 29th, 2021, 12:52 PM
I just spent about an hour outdoors in a drizzle. Much to my surprise, now that I'm back indoors, my hair isn't even wet. It just has this nice, cool, fresh feeling to it. Is this characteristic of low porosity hair, to magically not get wet in the rain?

Feral_
March 29th, 2021, 02:33 PM
I just spent about an hour outdoors in a drizzle. Much to my surprise, now that I'm back indoors, my hair isn't even wet. It just has this nice, cool, fresh feeling to it. Is this characteristic of low porosity hair, to magically not get wet in the rain?

I think so! Did you have less frizz too? If it’s raining I often don’t bother with a head covering now, just keep my hair in a bun or plait. Since sebum only, my hair repels water a bit like animal fur, with no frizz, and dries super quick.

Ylva
March 29th, 2021, 03:29 PM
I think so! Did you have less frizz too? If it’s raining I often don’t bother with a head covering now, just keep my hair in a bun or plait. Since sebum only, my hair repels water a bit like animal fur, with no frizz, and dries super quick.

I think I actually did have less frizz, but then again, it's hard to say because I always have lots of frizz not least because of what's growing in after my big shed. The way you describe SO makes me think of my wolfdogs' self-cleaning fur.

Feral_
March 30th, 2021, 05:13 AM
I think I actually did have less frizz, but then again, it's hard to say because I always have lots of frizz not least because of what's growing in after my big shed. The way you describe SO makes me think of my wolfdogs' self-cleaning fur.

When I used to use shampoo if I got caught in shower I’d have frizz, like a bad perm just on the top of my head. Yes I guess SO isn’t too dissimilar to dog fur - hope I don’t have a massive seasonal moult like them though! Would love to see some pics of your wolfdogs :heart:

Ylva
April 1st, 2021, 09:46 AM
When I used to use shampoo if I got caught in shower I’d have frizz, like a bad perm just on the top of my head. Yes I guess SO isn’t too dissimilar to dog fur - hope I don’t have a massive seasonal moult like them though! Would love to see some pics of your wolfdogs :heart:

I'll try to post some one of these days! :)

baanoo
April 1st, 2021, 06:38 PM
Feral, your hour is developing super powers; it’s so impressive

Feral_
April 2nd, 2021, 04:26 AM
Feral, your hour is developing super powers; it’s so impressive

Lol baanoo sometimes it feels like it’s got a life of its own! :whip: Seriously though I think it’s the sebum, being throughout the length now it is much easier to live with.

maddie9
April 2nd, 2021, 04:48 AM
I suspect I may have low porosity hair; I know for sure that my hair hates silicones. But I'm still not sure and I have a few questions that might help me figure it out, if someone on here has the answers?

First, I did the float test and my hair floated no matter how much I pushed it down into the water or how long I left it. However, I found that if I cut a shorter piece of hair (say, 1 inch) off of the length that was in the water, and pushed it down so that the surface tension wasn't holding it up, it did sink. What does this mean? Is my hair strand simply floating because its long and fine? When you do the float test, are you supposed to use a shorter piece of hair? Do people have different results based on the thickness (and therefore weight) of their hair?

My other question is about coconut oil. Some of you have said that it makes low porosity hair feel rougher, but what could be the reason for this change in texture as opposed to just coating the hair and making it oily?

Feral_
April 2nd, 2021, 04:58 AM
I suspect I may have low porosity hair; I know for sure that my hair hates silicones. But I'm still not sure and I have a few questions that might help me figure it out, if someone on here has the answers?

First, I did the float test and my hair floated no matter how much I pushed it down into the water or how long I left it. However, I found that if I cut a shorter piece of hair (say, 1 inch) off of the length that was in the water, and pushed it down so that the surface tension wasn't holding it up, it did sink. What does this mean? Is my hair strand simply floating because its long and fine? When you do the float test, are you supposed to use a shorter piece of hair? Do people have different results based on the thickness (and therefore weight) of their hair?

My other question is about coconut oil. Some of you have said that it makes low porosity hair feel rougher, but what could be the reason for this change in texture as opposed to just coating the hair and making it oily?

I’m no expert on porosity however I understand the float test is inaccurate. I think a freshly cut hair will likely absorb more water which might be why it sank :confused: Coconut oil is one of those oils which for some can feel sort of crunchy, almost like a gel in the hair. It did for me. Others on here love coconut oil though! I prefer babassu oil and mix it with shea butter, but I’m only oiling the last 1” of my wet hair tassel (in a plait) every now and then, so not a regular ‘oiler’.

maddie9
April 3rd, 2021, 03:35 AM
I’m no expert on porosity however I understand the float test is inaccurate. I think a freshly cut hair will likely absorb more water which might be why it sank :confused:

Thank you, Feral. What you said about cut hairs absorbing water makes sense.

Another test I've seen is the one where you run your fingers upward along one strand of your hair. Doing this, I noticed that the majority of my hair is really smooth and silky feeling between my fingers, so probably low porosity. The strands also repel water and when wet they still get drops of water beading along them.

But on the other hand, I have some strands of hair that feel a lot rougher and bumpy when I rub them between my fingers, and not just at the ends but along the whole length all the way to the scalp. So now I'm wondering if it's possible for your head to grow hair in different levels of porosity? :confused: These strands are the most unruly ones as well. It always disturbs me when I smooth my palm along the back of my head and I can feel the bumpy texture, it drives me crazy because the rest of my hair is like silk.

Wendyp
October 30th, 2021, 08:51 AM
So I did a porosity test 3 hours ago and my hair is still floating :disbelief:
There was product on the ends but not on most of my hair. I'll have to figure out how to get a few only shampooed hair and do the test again, but likely I have low porosity hair that hates humidity because I already have moisture issues.