How to Use Water to Treat Your Curls
Our body is made up of 60% water, which is why it makes sense that water is one of the most essential elements involved in the composition, health, and control of hair. As it turns out, different types of hair respond to water and moisture very differently. Eyebrows and eyelashes tend to completely repel moisture, while underarm hair absorbs moisture incredibly well (which benefits the many deodorant companies out there!)
The hair on your head, which is the hair that people care about most, responds to water, moisture, and atmosphere really quickly. The hair on our heads is our crowning glory, and with proper care, it can genuinely enhance our appearance. Because hair responds well to water, proper hair style management really comes down to how well we are able to manage the moisture balance of our hair.
As I’m sure everybody has noticed, weather and the atmosphere really affect our hair. That’s because our styles are so dependent on the balance of moisture in the air. For some reason, we have learned to style our hair with heavy oils and waxes: these seem to control the shape of the hair, they add shine, and they make hair appear to be controlled and in place. This appearance, however, is cosmetic: it is common knowledge that oil and water don’t mix well together, so in high-moisture surroundings, oils and waxes do a worse job at controlling frizz. Hoping to control the frizz, people add more and more product to their curls, and the product builds up. This makes hair harder to style, and impossible to control.
So how exactly does moisture affect the hair?
As the seasons change, many curly-heads find that their hair changes as well – and this is because of a change in moisture in the atmosphere. As a general rule, the more moisture there is in the air, the tighter and bouncier the curls become. For this reason, summer is the ultimate season for people with looser curls, as their curls get bouncier and more voluminous. Think of what happens to your curls when you’re at the beach! But for people with tight curls, winter is their best season – when it’s mostly dry outside, tight curls bounce much more easily.
All seasons can be easily managed, once you learn how to control the moisture balance of your hair to correspond with the atmosphere. We all hear about moisture in the skin and how skin needs to be conditioned in different weather conditions, but hair responds even more quickly to moisture than skin does. Hair reacts immediately!
In order to have complete style management all the time, for all seasons, and in all weather conditions, we at Curly Hair Solutions have found ways to control frizz by working with moisture, and not ignoring it. We avoid ingredients that block moisture, and we have added ingredients that embrace and work with natural moisture, both in the hair and in the atmosphere.
How does healthy hair work with water?
Healthy hair has the ability to not only absorb water, but to also retain it.
One of the biggest misconceptions about curly hair is that it is dry and damaged. That is an assumption that people make when they look at curls, and see the flyaway ends. They then assume that all of the hair is like that. When you look at un-styled curly hair, it looks frizzy because that is the nature of hair with open cuticles.
Open cuticles always give the appearance of dryness. They cause frizz, and look like they’re flyaway pieces of hair – and if it’s everywhere, the hair looks dry and brittle. But once you close the cuticles, or (more likely) fill them with water when you wash your hair, your hair never looks frizzy or damaged. Wet hair is never means frizzy hair.
Water serves as the lightest, cleanest, and most effective moisturizer. It penetrates the curls, filling the cuticles, and makes your hair look fresh and clean. It’s only when the water dries that the hair starts to look frizzy again. We at Curly Hair Solutions encourage you to learn how to use water to treat your hair. You’ll be shocked at the outcome – and considering our body is made up of 60% of water, you’ll agree that it only makes sense to use water to help your curls.
Our research is all about working with water. Every ingredient that we use in our products has to be water soluble. This means that it has to be able to penetrate properly into the hair cuticle. The size of the molecules in each ingredient is important as well, as the molecules have to be small enough to ensure absorption. This is the reason there is such a difference between cosmetic products and therapeutic products: Cosmetic products have large molecules which cannot be absorbed, thus weighing down the hair and blocking moisture from entering the hair follicle. On the other hand, our products, which are therapeutic, have ingredients with small molecules. They enter the hair follicle and work from within, moisturizing the hair naturally and not weighing down the curl. Our ingredients strengthen broken hair, and have a positive reaction to the overall hair scalp in terms of health and shine.