Nowadays, consumers often change the style, shape and color of their hair. In fact, hair is totally linked with the concept of beauty, representing one’s personality, phases of life and identity, and also fashion and trends. Consumers change their hair style according to their moods and emotions. Unfortunately, the continuous changes and manipulation of the hair fibers yields significant negative consequences, as they alter their structure and incur deep damage. Also the simple daily grooming damages hair.
Processes like hair coloring, bleaching, straightening, perm and other chemical process, cause significant damage to the hair’s keratin structure, and additionally removes and alters the CMC (Cell Membrane Complex). The importance of the CMC is to keep the cohesion on the keratin structures of hair.
Also, the consumers keep changing and grooming the hair, and they are looking for products to protect and repair hair from the damages.
We can split the damages mainly in 3 types:
– Chemical damages (Dye, bleach, perm, straight, others)
– Physical damages (Daily grooming like, wash, comb, brush, others)
– External and environment factors (pollution, radiation, others)
The proposal of this study was to evaluate the difference among these damage factors.
Chemical damages
Those are damages caused mainly by chemical processes:
• Reduction on the cystine content
• Tensile properties reduced
• Increase in the diffusion processes
• Increase in the internal hair porosity
• Shaft discoloration
• Oxidation of internal structures
• Cuticle decementation
All those damages in the hair structure has consequences that the consumer can observe:
• Hair discoloration
• Porosity increase
• Worse texture
• Easy breakage
• Loss of movement
• Less shine
• Easier to permeate external materials
Physical damages (Daily Grooming)
Those are main damages caused by physical process:
• Cuticle decementation
• Cell Membrane Complex (CMC) removal
• Cracks on the cuticle surface
• Hair breakage during combing
All those damages on hair have consequences that the consumer can observe:
• Dullness
• Easy breakage
• Difficult to Comb
• Less shine
• Split end formation
• Loss of movement
• Increased Frizz