How long does chemically treated hair last before completely disintegrating

[clanless]

Whenever I see a classmate with former virgin hair come back with colored or straightened hair, I wonder, how long is the lifespan of such hair until it breaks off, frizz, or just completely disintegrates? Or, within a year, does the hair become so bad and frizzy that the girl eventually cuts it off?

These girls are probably not LHC members, even though they have hair that comes down to their chest. They style, curl, color...

It's possible to have healthy look hair that is chemically treated and maintain it for a year, but how about after two years, five, or ten?

I never had long hair before, never really thought about hair until I joined this forum, so I don't know. Enlighten me.

[Rufflebutt]

Depends on the hair. My hair is pretty healthy even though I used beat the living day-lights out of it. Straightening, dyeing, ect. I never wear my hair up either and yet my hair is hip length.

It's only recently that I decided to take better care of it. And even though my hair is damaged, I still get lots of comments about how healthy and pretty it looks. But damaged for me is healthy for others. I just have very resilient hair.

Some people have hair that looks noticeably damaged after one session of straightening. They just have more delicate hair.

[dulce]

I grew from a dyed pixie to hips,at shoulders stopped full dyeing but did 2 sets of highlights over the next year to blend my dye and growing out silver roots.My highlights are still in the last few inches of my hair and I conditioned them well and they are still very healthy .So they are several years old now and absolutely no disintegration.

[blondie9912]

There's a difference between some dye and completely disintegrating hair. If you get regular highlights, even on fine hair, I don't think your hair will ever fall out and break every time you comb it. Sure, you'll have some split ends and breakage, but nothing too major. I think it would take EXTREME hair abuse to have what would be classified as "disintegrating hair". For example, full headed bleach with 40vol, straightening every day, teasing/hairspray, etc.

[Venefica]

I dye my hair, I have done so for years long before I started to grow my hair long. I have healthy, strong hair at past classic length and I still dye my hair. I think the ends of my hair is about five years old or so, perhaps a little older and my hair looks like this:

http://img28.imageshack.us/img28/1413/img0337md.jpg
By ladynecro (http://profile.imageshack.us/user/ladynecro) at 2012-07-18

(Note my hair look a little shorter than it is in this picture since I have braid waves here.)

[sun-kissed]

I do not know about coloring, but my mother gets dark blonde highlights done in her almost black hair. Her hair is about APL, and the bleached strands tend to get damaged more than the natural hair when she is in need of a trim - I can see the ends fraying. And she has pretty thick, coarse hair too, not prone to damage.

Of course no normal person would really notice, I'm just hyper sensitive about hair.

[MonaMayfair]

As long as your hair's not extremely delicate, I would think it's possible to maintain chemically treated hair for as long as you like and still have it look good. Virgin hair doesn't necessarily look good anyway.

[Greenfire]

Depends on who does your hair. I had highlights and lowlights for 10 years with no problem, but then changed hairdressers and a series of mistakes has left me in fear of disintigrating hair.

Venefica, your hair is gorgeous, braid waves suit you!

[starlamelissa]

I color my hair, and its pretty damn long and looks very shiny and healthy. I color it with revlon colorsilk 42, roots only. I have a system that works for me, and I honestly dont think my dyeing is harming anything.

But, my goals are less than others here. I dont want to grow to my knees or ankles. Just tailbone, and Im at hip legnth now, so I dont feel like I need to stress about it.

[UltraBella]

I have had chemically treated hair for the last 20 years, lol. I have bleached, colored, curled.......

[Alvrodul]

It depends on the hair, I guess. I have fine hair that Does Not Like Bleach (ask me how I know :silly:) but tolerated dyes fairly well. I don't use chemical dyes any more, and in fact trimmed away the last remnants of dye last summer.
I did notice the difference in the hair between the parts of my hair that had chemical dyes and the parts that didn't - and after I trimmed away the dyed tips, I suddenly got far fewer split ends. :magic:
So for me the difference has been noticeable, especially as my hair got longer. When I did dye my hair, it was considerably shorter than it is now (APL or shorter).
The reason why I quit chemical dyes wasn't really concern for my hair's health - this was well before I discovered LHC. I have some allergies, and was frankly worried that I would develop an allergy to the chemicals in the dye (which I never did, fortunately. I'm not going backto the chemicals, though, especially since I discovered henna! :D)

[justgreen]

I'm getting fairly close to classic, just cut an inch off at my yearly hair cut. I get roots bleached every 4-6 weeks using 30vol, or 40vol whichever she has on hand. I have medium fine hair. I've been bleaching the top half of my head for over 15 years. Before that, the whole head.

[torrilin]

These girls are probably not LHC members, even though they have hair that comes down to their chest. They style, curl, color...

It's possible to have healthy look hair that is chemically treated and maintain it for a year, but how about after two years, five, or ten?

Don't think of it as all one thing first off.

My hair tolerates dye fairly well. I've got the really easily sunbleached ash blonde/ash brown sort of color, so even when "natural" there is always going to be a lot of color change. A 10 or 20 vol hair dye does not change my hair texture appreciably off natural, or much of anything else besides color.

But heat styling? DEATH. My hair can't take it. One use of a blow dryer leaves me with noticeable damage 6-12 months after. Curling irons and the like are even worse.

Styling covers pretty much all hairdressing techniques, ranging from minimal damage stuff like pin curls (a somewhat old school heatless way of curling hair) to teasing (dates back to at least 1700, probably a lot further, and super damaging) to more modern stuff like hair spray, hair gel and electric flat irons.

For my hair stuff like teasing is right out. I'm a finey and just like my hair can't take heat damage, it can't take the mechanical damage of teasing. But there are tons of methods to get the same look with no damage by using other stuff like hairpieces to bulk up your natural hair.

Styling products are largely ok in my hair, mostly because it ignores them entirely :P. Very few products will convince my hair to do things it's not interested in. Some styling products like curl cremes, styling gels and leave in conditioners encourage my hair to do more of what it does naturally, and they work fairly well. But on the whole, my hair will just fall flat and be super slick to my head if I attempt to force it to do unnatural things.

Heatless styling techniques like pin curls work pretty well on my hair. It tends to not stay curled, but the techniques are not damaging.

I can get my hair to BSLish while using heat. Not sure if further is possible, don't really want to deal with the fallout to find out. BSL with heat is really unpleasant. BSL without heat is super easy care and is my idea of "normal" hair.

BSL with regular dye use again, super easy care.

I doubt I could make it to BSL if I were teasing my hair regularly, but if I wanted those sorts of styles I'd learn to use hairpieces. (I don't.)

For every technique just about, there's someone whose hair doesn't tolerate it and someone whose hair can't live without it. So depending on the woman you're looking at, her routine may range from super damaging and limiting her hair growth, to not at all damaging. On average, it's probably medium damaging, and while it'd prevent them from reaching terminal, it's probably not dramatically limiting their hair growth. Very few people seem to have a true terminal at waist or less.

[palaeoqueen]

Depends on who does your hair. I had highlights and lowlights for 10 years with no problem, but then changed hairdressers and a series of mistakes has left me in fear of disintigrating hair.



Similar story here though it's never been very long so I can't say for sure that I wouldn't have started to see damage at some point. It's certainly disintegrating now though :(

[ravenreed]

I have dyed my hair most of my adult life. I got to waist length before I ran into difficulty. I think that most people get into trouble because they do multiple things that are hard on hair, and all that adds up. Yes, I dyed my hair, but I almost never heat styled or used styling products that dried my hair out.

[dwell_in_safety]

I have hair that's been dyed three times. Currently growing it out, but for now it still exists. It's a bit less soft and shiny than my virgin hair is, but it's also older than my virgin hair, and other than that there is no difference. It still lacks split ends for the most part and is certainly not disintegrating. I would estimate the ends as being three years old.

[pink.sara]

I've used multiple bleachings with 40 peroxide, soap caps, stripping, box dye, hairstyling frequently with a blow fryer etc. It's currently 25 inches long the ends are 4 years old and I don't have splits or Velcro bits.

It's been classic before with multiple applications of bleach and almost daily heat and survived looking great.

It depends on your hair I guess :shrug:

[Venefica]

Thank you Greenfire. :D

I should also mention that I never bleach my hair I only dye it and I stretch the time between colorings as much as I can.

[petali]

I guess my hair is super-delicate, then. I still have tons of splits and breakage. Even with my gentle handling, I still get ~10 pieces of breakage every morning by combing with a wooden wide-toothed comb. Lucky girls with strong hair!

[Kayleigh]

I've dyed my hair so many times I lost count, bleached at least 3 times and had a perm. I always had major split ends (even if I had just cut it) and everybody always blamed it on the dye. But then I turned around my haircare routine. The last time I had it cut was nearly 9 months ago, and that was when I got it bleached. Since then I've dyed it twice. I'm happy to say I can't find any split ends, while I used to have them all the time.
But then again.. you shouldn't come near my hair with any heating device, cause I swear you could see it breaking off when you do.

The way I see it is you can't undo damage, you can only prevent more. I for one wish I had never starting dyeing in the first place, it certainly hasn't done my hair any good.

For consideration.. My sister once bleached her hair twice in a week, it burned her scalp and fried her hair. It didn't fall out at the root though, but did break off near the root. She had to shave her head, there was just no saving it.

[jojo]

I think you can still have damaged virgin hair, if it's abused by heat and rough treatment, the same as you can healthy dyed hair that's treated nicely. I was not aware that hair could disintegrate as such :confused:

[angelgypsy]

I'm lucky in that I am hispanic and have a lot of hair. I stopped with chemical treatments about two years ago, when I did my last chem color. Before that I had a perm and that is still growing out. My ends are pretty damaged from the last of the perm and soon I intend to get a cut to get rid of some of that. So now I'm chem free, and have virgin hair again except for the tips.

I recently colored twice with Henna, since I have salt and pepper and wanted that to blend into the dark, but also love the bright red that the silver has turned, like copper thread! Over the years with lots of coloring, some bleaching, and even an occasional perm my hair has generally taken the abuse fine. I don't tend to use much in the way of heat, rarely blow fry (thanks for that one, pink.sara!) so that helps. But I agree that it has as much to do with what kind of hair you have as anything else.

[MiamiPineapple]

I have chemically treated my hair since 7th grade and the only time it turned to mush was when I overprocessed it trying to get black dye out. Color is not always bad, but too much can be.

[mzBANGBANG]

My hair disintegrated after years of dying it black and then attempting to go blond again. It was literally gum in my hands at the salon. They gave me a great conditioner and I babied the ever-living-daylights out of it. I think because of my youth at the time, I was able to bounce back. Probably the most astonishing hair recovery in the history of the world.

If I were to do this now, I would more than certainly have to shave it off. My hair has become more delicate as I have gotten older.

[long&blonde]

I dyed my hair from 15 to about 54. Several times monthly. Black or dark brown to white blonde:several times. Never used the two process kits that require toners however. Just drugstore single process permanent haircolor dyes. Any time I'd dawn the doors of a hair salon(for face framing layers when younger) the stylists would freak,tell me my hair was going to fall out. It never did. It turned green,orange,purple and ketchup red accidentally(I'd correct myself w/another box permanent dye over top it). It turned to a mush of spaghetti on me, oh, 6 times life maybe? I'd do deep condition,leave it in for a few days,then deep conditioner as only shampoo,no heat, a couple weeks. My hair would bounce right back. I truly believe,if you don't do the bleach that requires toners, and you stop & do few weeks deep condition only, when hair turns to mush:chemicals won't disintefrate your hair. Of course:that's if you don't perm/don't use heat,blow dryer,or flat iron,or hairspray. Chemical colors only? Hair better off without them:but I don't think they sentence you to hair disintegrating. I do think its another "salons want you to believe this". So you go to them(for your chemicals.lol) Not the drugstore.

[clanless]

Kayleigh what is helping your hair from getting split endds despite dyeing your hair?
I bleached my hair before, I really wish I knew about the coconut oil pre-oiling. I bleached once and my hair got damaged, but the other times I've bleached and dyed my hair, they didn't get anymore damage once I began coconut oil. But that first time I bleached, everything went downhill.

People tell me my bleached hair is healthy and nice looking, but IMO, it's horrible.

[kidari]

I have had waist length hair that was bleached and toned with teasing and heat styling and regular use of hairspray. It depends on who does the processing and what they use and how they do it as well as how thick and strong your hair naturally is.

[spookyghost]

I dye my hair, I have done so for years long before I started to grow my hair long. I have healthy, strong hair at past classic length and I still dye my hair. I think the ends of my hair is about five years old or so, perhaps a little older and my hair looks like this:

http://img28.imageshack.us/img28/1413/img0337md.jpg
By ladynecro (http://profile.imageshack.us/user/ladynecro) at 2012-07-18

(Note my hair look a little shorter than it is in this picture since I have braid waves here.)

Your hair looks so silky and soft! Love it:)