Does a Curling Iron Cause Hair Breakage?

Curling iron's heat damages your locks.

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Breakage leaves you with frizzy hair and broken flyaway pieces that sabotage your attempts at styling. Curling irons are one cause of hair breakage, but not the only one! You can safely curl and enjoy healthy, strong hair, proving that sometimes a girl can have it all!

Significance

Curling irons can lead to hair breakage, especially if used repeatedly and on high heat. In general, if you see smoke coming off that iron, turn it down. Same goes for flat irons. Heat dries hair, and unless you give enough restorative moisture back to your locks, they will snap off. If you use a curling iron weekly, you probably won't notice much damage. If it's more like daily, your locks are in trouble.

Other Causes

Plenty of bad behaviors can lead to broken locks. Too frequent dyeing or chemically relaxing your locks are major stressors, but even excess blow drying can harm hair. If you get hair extensions or braid your locks, the weight of hair pulling on your scalp can tear out hair. Once your hair gets dry and brittle, it's much more prone to break when handling, styling or sleeping.

Protecting Your Locks

Curl successfully by using a heat protectant on that mane and by turning down the heat on your curling iron to the lowest setting. Heat protectant sprays generally say heat protector or heat protectant on them, but some might use the word "thermal" instead. Shine serums also seal the hair follicle from damaging heat. Spritz locks before you blow dry or curl to safeguard hair from breakage.

Getting Hair Healthy

Deep condition hair weekly to restore moisture to damaged locks, using your favorite deep conditioning treatment. Use a moisturizing conditioner every time you shower to begin building strength slowly. Shampoo with a gentle shampoo that won't add stress. Trim brittle hair to slow the damage and refresh your tresses. As you adopt a healthy hair program and trim off damaged ends, you'll look and feel better.

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