Understanding Your Hair

An old shampoo advertisement used to end with the line "if you can't decide what to wear, begin with your hair". You might describe hair as the first, and maybe even the only, natural decoration that human beings are supplied with. As our most basic accessory, hair tends to be an area which both men and women focus on a lot when it comes to looking our best.

In this series of articles, we are going to take a look at a few different things that can help you ensure your hair looks its best every day. We have called the series understanding your hair, and really we could include a second title that says "and how to work with it." On any given morning, you can hear the anguished cries from many average neighbourhoods like Mississauga detached homes as people (yes, men AND women) try to figure out why on earth their hair won't work properly today. Hopefully the information in these articles can help you avoid such days as much as possible.

To begin, let's take a look at what exactly hair is, and what types of hair there are.

Hair is actually made up of three different layers, all of which are important to the overall structure. The inner layer is called the medulla, and it gives hair its strength. Of course, this strength is hardly on the scale of sheet metal crimper lovers can attest to the fact that hair can be easily manipulated.

The next layer of the hair is the cortex. At this layer, cosmetic applications to hair begin to show up. That home health services worker who takes care of your grandmother every week may have a poor dye job because the brand she used wasn't strong enough to penetrate the cortex.

Finally, the outermost layer of the hair is known as the cuticle. The cuticle is the area of the hair most exposed to the environment that we find ourselves in day to day. It's the accumulation of particles on the cuticle which can turn the clean flow from your shower into waste water grit removal is the basic purpose of our daily hair washing routine. That grit comes off of the cuticle layer.

The first step in working with your hair successfully is understanding which parts are being impacted by your activities. A product that claims to have colour that penetrates to the deepest part of your hair is overstating, and you might want to be wary of it!

In addition to the structure of the hair, in order to successfully work with your natural accessory you will have to know which hair type you have. Type is defined by several different categories. The first is texture; hair is fine, medium, coarse, or wiry. Obviously the finer your hair is, the gentler the shampoo you use needs to be (that's why we use organic baby shampoo for our littlest ones and their fine hair).

The next characteristic that defines hair is its shape. Hair is straight, wavy, or curly. The shape of hair can change naturally over time, and as every woman knows it can be manipulated artificially as well.

There you have it, the fundamentals of hair and hair types. Now let's get into actually working with what you have been blessed with!