hair damage through a microscope

[frizzalot]

Pre LHC I used to blow dry my hair beyond dry after washing, shampoo only - piled on top of my head and vigourous scrubbing. I'm also guilty of ripping plastic combs through my hair. I've straightened my hair maybe 7 times in the last three years. My current head of hair has not been coloured or bleached.

After reading up on the LHC and other sources, I decided my hair must be pretty damaged, I assumed that my ends must have cuticles sticking up all over the place.

I read the damaged hair article by nightshade a few months ago and I was fascinated by the micropsopic hair images.

So this morning I bought a microscope

I was pleasantly (very very very) surprised to see that my hair in fact is not as damaged as I thought. I pulled the a strand of hair slowly accross the slide so I could see the whole length, and honestly the ends looked no worse than the roots. Only a few of cuticles were standing up. I did this with a few strands just to be sure.

The hair on my head is probably less than 5 yrs old. My younger sister's hair is past classic and never been cut, only trimmed a few times. She doesn't blow dry or straighten, she uses shampoo and conditioner. I checked her strands the same way I did with mine. The hairs were nearly the same as mine, apart from where she ponytails it, there were quite a few cuticles sticking out in that area. And one bit dipped in like a spoon.

So then I got one of my strands and straightend it with a hair straightner, I pulled it through while clamping down the straightner as tightly as I could and even let it bake ( ~30 secs) between the plates.

Back under the microscope, I couldn't see a difference.

Next I pulled the same strand between my finger nails (to scrape it) a couple of times in the opposite direction of cutile growth, I knew this because one end still had the root bulb thing on the end.
Under the microscope, I couldn't see any sticking up cuticles, but there appeared to be scales all over the slide. They most likely fell off the strand and my finger when i was positioning the strand under the microscope.


I took these pictures with my phone camera looking into the microscope, they aren't as clear as the real thing, but they came out pretty good.


photos of my hair
You can see a few cuticles sticking up









photos of my sister's hair
with the spoon dip, I think the wiry thing to the left is thread


you can see a cuticle sticking up to the left


a whole cuticle chunk sticking up


the root bulb thing - looks yuckky



I don't feel as bad to straighten my hair as I was before, though I probably will only do it twice a year to check my actual length.

I really really expected my hair to look likes those in the article mentioned above, I guess those must've been extreme cases under lab conditions.


Any thoughts?

btw I'm an engineer, not a biologist. I know this wasn't the most controlled or accurate way to go about doing this experiment

[Heidi_234]

Those are pretty amazing pictures, and I wish I had access to an microscope as well.
Just a quick note - it seems like your microscope is not as strong as the one that did the pics from the articles, perhaps you don't really see the cuticles for how they really are. But it looks rather smooth and shiny otherwise.

[frizzalot]

Yeah I think that too, it only has 20x-40x zoom

~but for now i'll pretend that my hair is just fine, can't see damage= no damage


ETA- i just checked from the original site those images are from, they are taken with electron microscopes, a wee bit out of my budget!!!

[SpeakingEZ]

frizzalot, I just need to chime in and say please don't take straightening lightly. A couple times a year using protectant on a low setting isn't that bad, but throwing caution to the wind isn't the best way to go, either. I couldn't tell that straightening was damaging my hair until it was too far gone. Now I have to grow out about 8 inches of damage (6 to go!). It's the nastiest thing I've done to my hair and I regret it every day.

Granted, I was doing it 3 times a week, but by hair was destroyed in less than 2 years. It took until last month to see my first half inch of growth because it just kept breaking.

[Quahatundightu]

Oooh that's so interesting! I wish I could see my hair under a microscope... why I didn't try while at uni I have no idea!

[naereid]

That's very cool. But those bits that stick out look more like dust particles than raised cuticles to me... I might be wrong, though.

[Heidi_234]

I second SpeakingEZ. I was flat ironing my bangs every morning when I had them. They looked good and shiny and healthy, and kept behaving even months after I stopped. But at some point the damage really took over, even though I was treating them in the nicest LHCest way possible. I had such a hard time growing them out, because the straightened part used to tangle and split and snag and what not. I think I managed to grow them out just because I eventually trimmed away all the abused length.
I'm not touching the flat iron ever again. I prefer bad hair days.

[hendrix.co]

I would love to see more pictures of any LHC member with access to a high quality microscope....Just a thought.

[Kathie]

Heidi 234, was it your article that mentioned that flat ironing can cause the inside of the hair to reach such high temps that it boils and explodes out of the hair causing a break point!?
The top portion of my hair is heavily foiled/bleached and I use to straighten it after every wash (2-3/week) to tame the frizz. I’ve stopped now- well, a couple of weeks ago.
I’ve started SDing, and while split-ends are not too much of a hassle- I have heaps of hairs that are broken, sometimes in more than one place, a few inches up the shaft! I really think its caused by straightening.
I use to use a heat protectant- but I wonder if they really do any good? Heat is heat and I can’t image that a product coated on the hair can act as a shield to stop heat penetrating beyond the hair surface.

[Kathie]

I would love to see more pictures of any LHC member with access to a high quality microscope....Just a thought.

I often work with fluorescence and confocal microscopes--- I'll take a look at some hairs in the next week or two... I dont know if it will give much detail because the hair will be glowing. Worth a look though!