10 Signs You Have High Porosity Hair
Hair porosity is a hot topic right now, and for good reason! Tons of factors can affect our hair's porosity, from environmental exposure to bleaches and dyes to hair texture and genetics. Understanding your hair's porosity is important so you can tailor your hair-care regimen to better address your hair issues.
Hair porosity is tied to the integrity and tightness or looseness of your hair cuticles and simply refers to how well your hair can absorb and retain moisture. Generally speaking, low porosity hair struggles with absorbing moisture but excels at retaining it, while high porosity hair readily absorbs moisture but struggles to hold it in.
So how can you tell whether you have low, medium or high porosity hair?
Better Not Younger compiled 10 signs of high porosity hair, along with tips and tricks for dealing with some of the most frustrating symptoms of highly porous hair!
1.You Have Aging Hair
Our hair strands become more porous over time as our hair cuticles get more roughed up—it’s that simple. This can be due to everyday wear and tear, stress from environmental aggressors and years of using hot styling tools. This is why the length of your hair can also be a sign of whether you have high porosity hair: If you have longer tresses, your ends may be more porous than the hair that’s closest to your roots, since it has been around for the longest amount of time.
2. Your Hair Feels Rough
Rough hair texture is a major porous hair symptom because the roughness stems from lifted hair cuticles. Instead of a smooth cuticle, high porosity hair cuticles are damaged and raised, causing strands to feel rough and bumpy when you slide them between your fingers. This rough texture also means your locks are more prone to frizz and dryness.
3. Your Hair Lacks Shine
Roughness and dullness often go hand in hand, and both are telltale signs of high porosity hair. To ensure your moisturizing hair-care products are able to do their job properly, it's vital to seal those lifted cuticles! Using a heat protection product to tame strands and seal moisture into the hair shaft will help dull locks appear shiny and healthy! We love the power of our nourishing No Remorse Heat Protection & Taming Spray, which uses avocado oil to lock in shine and help shield hair from heated tools.
4. Your Hair Feels Dry (Even After Moisturizing)
If you have high porosity hair, you've probably dealt with dry tresses despite your best efforts to moisturize. In fact, when we’re dealing with dryness, we tend to pile on conditioning products. Overloading our hair strands with product not only leads to buildup but disrupts the balance of protein and moisture our tresses need to repair our hair.
The key to moisturizing highly porous hair is to hydrate with products that not only deeply moisturize but also seal in that moisture. This is why we recommend using a repairing conditioner after each wash, and swapping in a deep conditioning treatment once or twice per week. If you're dealing with exceptionally dry hair, try smoothing a dime-sized dollop of our ultra-rich Hair Redemption Restorative Butter Masque onto just the mid-shaft and ends of your hair after shampooing to hydrate, add silkiness and lock in moisture.
5. Your Hair Breaks Easily
Another sign of high porosity hair is brittle hair caused by moisture overload. When we oversaturate our hair with water it causes the hair shaft to swell, and when our hair dries, the hair shaft contracts. This frequent swelling and unswelling of our hair shaft is called hygral fatigue and can cause structural damage to our hair, namely weaker, more brittle strands. Overwashing and over-conditioning can both contribute to moisture overload—and the more porous your hair, the more prone you are to it.
To help strengthen brittle tresses, try our Wake Up Call Volumizing Shampoo and Conditioner. Designed to hydrate and add volume without weighing hair down or drying it out, this duo is clinically proven to reduce breakage by up to 98% versus regular shampoos.
6. Your Hair Dries Quickly After a Wash
Does your hair seem to air-dry in no time after a wash? That's one of the hallmark signs of high porosity hair. The porous nature of the strands lets the water enter the hair shaft more easily, but it also quickly escapes so it takes less time for hair to dry. While this may be great for those days when you’re short on time, if your hair doesn't stay wet for long, it's a safe bet that your hair products aren’t being given the chance to do their job—and conditioning products that help seal your cuticles to lock in moisture are in order.
7. You Battle Frizz Constantly
If humidity makes your hair frizzy and puffy—rather than causing it to fall flat—you're probably dealing with high porosity hair. The lifted cuticles on porous hair allow moisture in the air to seep in, resulting in frizziness and unruly strands! To protect your hair and fight frizz, try adding our No Remorse Heat Protection & Taming Spray to your high porosity hair-care regimen! It contains avocado oils and amodimethicone to decrease porosity and seal the raised cuticles on porous tresses to prevent frizz!
8. Your Hair Tangles Easily
A big sign of high porosity hair? Constantly combing out tangles. Highly porous hair tangles more easily because the rough, raised cuticles allow strands to connect (tangle) with each other more easily than smooth, low porosity strands.
Pro tip: To avoid damaging your hair while detangling, use a comb and go slowly, working from the ends of the hair and moving toward the scalp. (Even though our mothers were right about a lot of things, detangling our hair as kids by starting at the scalp and vigorously brushing down wasn’t one of them!) Gentle detangling from ends to scalp helps prevent breakage—and pain! Click here for our detangling guide for all hair types and textures.
9. Your Hair Lacks Elasticity
As we age, our skin and hair lose elasticity, and this is especially true for high porosity hair! This loss of elasticity is due to lowered collagen production in our bodies and hormonal changes during and after menopause. If you've noticed that your hair has become more prone to breakage over time, adding a supplement to increase collagen can help! We love our tropical fruit-flavored Power Within Skin & Scalp Collagen Gummies for a boost of marine types I & III collagen to support healthy, supple skin and hair during and after menopause!
10. You Have Curly Hair
Certain hair textures like curly hair are naturally more porous. This higher porosity is due to the shape of the hair strand and the cuticle layer being raised and open. The more bends and curves in the hair strands, the more gaps between the cuticles—and the easier it is for moisture to escape. We love how the specially tailored curl-reviving 5-plant butter and oil blend in our Bounce Back Super Moisturizing Conditioner for Curly Hair locks in deep moisture to help revive and strengthen curls!
Tell Us: Do you have high porosity hair? Share your high porosity hair-care regimen in the comments below!
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Better Not Younger knows that understanding our hair's porosity is important! That's why we formulated our entire line of products to address the unique concerns of low, medium and high porosity hair types. Let us help you find the right products for your aging hair's unique needs!