Deep Conditioning, Part II

Part I dealt with the whys and wherefores of deep conditioning or intense conditioning. Now we're getting into the nuts and bolts.

How deep? It's probably a misnomer to call a rich conditioning treatment or a high-protein treatment "deep conditioning." Most of the things you put on your hair act on the outer surface - the cuticle. Ingredients like oils and emollients and cationic conditioners that soften, add flexibility, seal in moisture, increase lubrication, proteins that form water-hugging films are intense conditioners.

©Sciencey Hair blog 2014

But some ingredients actually do penetrate into the cuticle layers and may go even deeper than that. Those ingredients include Cetrimonium bromide and Cetrimonium chloride, panthenol, hair-penetrating oils, amino acids and peptides. If your hair tends to get too soft with conditioners - these are ingredients you might want to include in deep conditioners in small quantities or not at all. But if you need extra softness that lasts - look for these ingredients in your deep treatments! 

Porosity - The Starting Line: Bleached or quite porous hair takes up more conditioner by adsorption than unbleached hair. Anywhere from 8 to 20 times as much conditioner is adsorbed by bleached hair than by unbleached hair - the larger number is for hair bleached twice.

If your hair is porous (bleached, highlighted, permanent or demi-permanent color) and it feels dry or looks dull often; if it is damaged by swimming or sunlight or high heat hair styling or chemical straightening or curling, then it will adsorb a lot more conditioner than somebody whose hair has not experienced those things. Finer (narrower) hairs tend to be more easily damaged by these exposures than coarser (wider) hairs. 

©Sciencey Hair blog 2014

More porous hair can tolerate a lot more deep conditioning than less porous hair without becoming overly soft. 

Before you apply: Apply a (water-based) deep conditioner to freshly washed hair from which you have squeezed excess moisture. Clean hair lets the conditioner have the best contact with your hair for the best end result. Too much water in your hair might dilute the treatment and certainly could make a mess if you're leaving the treatment on for a while.

©Sciencey Hair blog 2014

Application: Whether you're deep conditioning just the lower portion of long hair or every bit of your hair - you need every hair to have good contact with the conditioner you use. Section your hair - even if it is short you can work in sections. Apply your deep treatment to each section and smooth it in with your fingers. If you've ever made paper mache, you know how to smooth the plaster over the strips. This is how to apply the deep treatment to your hair. Alternatively, you can comb a deep treatment into your hair, but a comb can't feel how saturated your hair is with the treatment, so double-check that no strands are left behind by smoothing your fingers over sections to make sure your treatment saturates every bit of every section. This step is important! Good coverage means a better end result.

Make sure the areas that need the treatment the most, get the most treatment applied to them.

Concentration: Greater concentrations of cationic conditioner (or protein) in your conditioning product equals more conditioner adsorbed to the hair - but you rarely know what actual concentration is present in a product you buy. If you suspect a product has a lower concentration of conditioning ingredients based on your results, you may be right. 

That concentration of "active ingredient" determines how much "conditioning" will adhere to your hair, but it's not as simple as:  "Product A has 5% cationic ingredients and Product B has 10%, therefore your hair gets twice as much conditioning from product B." Depending on the cationic ingredient in question as well as its concentration there can be just a little more or a whole lot more adsorbing (adhering) to your hair when the concentration of cationic ingredient is higher. And even more if there is cetyl alcohol or cetearyl alcohol or oils in your deep treatment. 

Take-away message: Let your hair tell you which product works best for you - even if that product does not work well for other people - or vice versa.

©Sciencey Hair blog 2014

Time: Leaving a cationic conditioning ingredient or protein treatment  on longer can lead to greater adherence (adsorption) of conditioning ingredients on your hair. 30 minutes of deep conditioning can give you twice as much conditioning for your hair ingredients as 5 minutes can. If your have porous hair or are experiencing lots of breakage, you might want to go the full 30 minutes. If your hair does not soak up lots of oils and conditioner, you probably don't need as much time. But you never know until you try it! This applies to protein treatments as well; some people with porous hair or fine hair can do 30 to 60 minute protein treatments with heat with no ill effects. Others with more coarse hair or lower porosity hair can only use a protein treatment with heat for a few minutes before hair becomes too soft or too rough.

Temperature: 95°F (35°C) temperatures for deep treatments can almost double the amount of cationic conditioning ingredients that adhere to your hair compared to the closer-to-room-temperature 73°F (23°C).  95°F (35°C) is close to body temperature - so wrapping your conditioner-soaked hair with a waterproof cover, then a towel or hat to keep the body heat in might get the job done. That is actually preferable for people who have sensitive scalps because adding much more heat to your scalp can send you into a flare-up of itchy scalp unhappiness. Otherwise - wrap with a warm, wet towel, sit under a hooded dryer on low heat or in the sun. If you're doing a quick deep or protein treatment, just keep your plastic-wrapped hair under the water spray while you shower. Don't wrap your ears in with your hair - that's extremely loud.

©Sciencey Hair blog 2014

Pre-shampoo oil treatments, a special situation: Here are several rather different scenarios in which a pre-shampoo oil treatment may be better than a water-based deep conditioner, or at least as a supplement to or a prelude to a water-based deep conditioning treatment. Pre-shampoo oil treatments are left on for a few hours or overnight (2-8 hours) before shampooing or cleansing the hair and are applied to dry hair.

1) Lower porosity hair: Maybe everything seems to build up on your hair or regular conditioners just seem to make your hair limp. Pre-shampoo oil treatments have "removal of excess conditioning" built into the technique. They give your hair the lubrication and weight it needs without leaving build-up. You may still need a rinse-out conditioner to detangle.

2) Hair that contract (shrinks) when wet - tightly coiled hair. A water-free oil pre-shampoo will not cause shrinkage that would encourage tangling. It will give your hair lubrication, softness and flexibility and well as resistance to swelling in water and buffer it from the shampooing that follows.

3) Hard water. Conditioning ingredients that have positive charges and shampoos that have negative charges interact with the minerals in your water and may encourage build-up on your hair. For the most part, oils do not interact with minerals in hard water. Oil before shampooing also is a good pre-treatment if you plan to use a chelating shampoo (containing EDTA or citric acid, for example) for hard water.

4) Long hair with normal to oily scalp and dry ends. Pre-shampoo oil treat the ends of your hair only.

©Sciencey Hair blog 2014

Over-doing it: Over-conditioning is a real possibility. Your hair may become too stretchy, too soft, limp, curls may fall, or you may have a feeling of residue in your hair. Over-proteining can leave hair rough and stiff or overly soft and limp. In either case, you chose products or ingredients that were wrong for your hair, or perhaps were the wrong concentration (too much rich conditioner, too much oil, too much humectant, too much protein), you left it on for longer than necessary for your hair, or you didn't need to use heat if you did.

Under-doing it: On the other hand, if you don't get enough out of your deep treatment, you may need to leave it on the full 30 minutes, or use heat if you did not, increase oils or use more conditioner or more humectant or choose a more balanced conditioner or use some protein.

Summary!

You want the deepest, most intense conditioning:

Use a deep conditioning treatment on freshly cleansed hair with the excess water squeezed out.

Work in sections and smooth the treatment over each section for good coverage.

Add oils or full-fat yogurt or mayonnaise or choose conditioner with oils and humectants like warmed honey. Use protein if it works with your hair.

Leave the treatment on for 30 minutes.

Use heat to keep your conditioner-coated hair near body temperature.

©Sciencey Hair blog 2014

Your hair is lower porosity or conditioners or oils seem to sit on top or make your hair limp, oils just make it greasy, butters leave tacky residue: 

1) Pre-shampoo oil treatments to get around the build-up problem, soften and lubricate your hair, adding a little weight for controlling flyaways.

OR

2) Post-cleansing deep treatments with conditioner: Add hydration-boosting ingredients like warmed honey or protein (protein for fine and medium or porous hair, only sometimes for coarse hair), use oils sparingly or choose a product that is not heavy in oils or butters. Leave the treatment on for 3-5 minutes with heat or without heat if you're afraid your hair will become too soft. Adsorption is also how build-up is born so while your lower porosity hair doesn't grab on to a lot of conditioner, you might want to limit your exposure.

3) Skip the creamy and oily stuff entirely and deep-treat with protein (like gelatin), warmed honey mixed with water, aloe vera gel mixed with warm water and a little glycerin (make sure the pH is 4.5 or 5), get some Hydroxypropyltrimonium honey (Honeyquat) and add 3-5 drops to any of these.

Use a deep conditioning treatment on freshly cleansed hair with the excess water squeezed out.

Work in sections and smooth the treatment over each section for good coverage.

©Sciencey Hair blog 2014

Hair somewhere in between? Impatient?

Heat and longer conditioning time both can double the adsorption of conditioner to your hair. Let's say your blob of deep treatment contains 20 units of conditioning. These numbers are purely hypothetical for illustrative purposes.
Then we'll say If you just put it on and rinse it right out, you get 10 units of conditioning. 
If you want to double that to 20 units of conditioning, you can 1) leave the conditioner on with heat for 5 minutes or 2) leave the conditioner on without heat for closer to 30 minutes.
Maybe you use heat (shower cap, under shower spray) for 3 minutes and get 15 units of conditioning. 

You actually have a lot of control when it comes to deep conditioning and intense protein treatments. 
Sometimes getting these treatments to work for you is just a matter of getting the ingredients, application and timing right.

Journal of Cosmetic Science Vol. 4 No. 3, 259-273 September/October 1992

Assessment of the substantivity of cationic quaternary compounds to hair by potentiometric titration using the surfactant electrode.

NGHI VAN NGUYEN, DAVID W. CANNELL, ROGER A. MATHEWS, and HANS H. Y. OEI, Redken Laboratories. 1992

Journal of the Society of Cosmetic Chemistry Vol. 4 No. 5, p. 85-94 1994

Adsorption to keratin surfaces A: continuum between a charge-driven and a hydrophobically driven process.

C. R. ROBBINS, C. REICH, and A. PATEL

Journal of Cosmetic Science, 60, 85–95 March/April 2009

The effects of lipid penetration and removal from subsurface microcavities and cracks at the human cuticle sheath

MANUEL GAMEZ-GARCIA

Chemical and Physical Behavior of Human Hair 

Robbins, 1994. 3^rd Ed. Springer-Verlag, New York

Deep Conditioning, Part I

Note: This series applies to Protein Deep Treatments too!

This is the first of a two part post. Today's post is about how deep conditioners work and who needs one. Part two is about how to use a deep conditioner to get the most out of it.

Deep conditioning on wet hair is applying conditioner to freshly washed hair to leave on for a few minutes (or longer). You could put a deep conditioning treatment on unwashed hair, but because you'll get the best result from having the conditioning treatment in complete, unfettered contact with your hairs. It's better to deep condition clean hair and get rid of the dust and dirt and pet hair, twigs, leaves and other junk first.

©Science-y Hair Blog 2014

A pH level of 7 (or at least around 7 and above 5) has been shown in laboratory testing to promote the most adherence of conditioner to your hair. It is best to stay between pH 6 and 7.  Most store-bought conditioners will already be in this range. If you start adding acidic or alkaline ingredients, get some pH test strips and test the pH of what you're adding. If you want to maximize your hair's uptake of conditioner, you want control of the pH.©Science-y Hair Blog 2014

Normally (non-wet) hair has a net negative charge - more negative charges than positive charges. Especially normal porosity and porous hair. For most of us, hair below ear or chin length is normal porosity. If you color or highlight your hair, brush it often, spend a lot of time in the sun or swimming pools, or it is very long, the ends are likely to be porous.©Science-y Hair Blog 2014

The more porous the hair, the more easily dehydrated it is. And the more negative charges it has. Porous hair also has gaps in the cuticle "covering" that are temporarily patched in by this adhering of conditioner to negatively charged surfaces.

©Science-y Hair Blog 2014

Dry (not wet) hair has more negative charges 
thanpositive charges.

What's the deal with negative charges?

Conditioning ingredients have positive charges that allow them to interact with negatively charged hair. Like magnets, positive is attracted to negative. The conditioning ingredients adhere (technically accurate term: adsorb) to your hair temporarily and do not rinse off. This leaves a layer of conditioning behind to help reduce friction in your hair and add softness and flexibility.©Science-y Hair Blog 2014

What sorts of ingredients have positive charges?

Hydrolyzed proteins - slightly positively charged

Stearamidopropyl Dimethylamine

Quaternium-87

Behentrimonium Methosulfate

Behentrimonium Chloride

Dicetyldimonium Chloride

Distearyldimonium Chloride

Polyquaternium 55

Guar Hydroxypropyltrimonium Chloride 

Polyquaternium-44 

Cetrimonium Bromide

Cetrimonium Chloride

Palmitamidopropyltrimonium Chloride

Laurdimonium hydroxypropyl hydrolyzed wheat or soy or keratin protein

Polyquaternium-4

Polyquaternium-10

Cationic conditioner (pink + symbols) adhering (adsorbing) to the negative charges on hair at
the proper pH at left. Conditioner not adhering to hair at a too-low pH at right.

But wait! There's more to conditioning than positive and negative charges: When lipids (oily ingredients) are present in a conditioner formula (or when you add them), you get even more conditioning goodness adhering to your hair - more cationic conditioning and more softness and flexibility from the lipid. It's an interesting mutual enhancement of conditioning ingredients for an even better end result. The presence of lipids in a formula makes it a better deep conditioner. Lipids themselves are great hair softeners and lubricants.

©Science-y Hair Blog 2014

In most conditioners, the lipid is already present in the form of cetyl alcohol or cetaryl alcohol because this ingredient makes a nice creamy, thick conditioner with a soft after-feel. But other oils do the trick also, including plant oils or butters you might add to a conditioner. Adding extra oil to a conditioner really does turn it into a deep conditioner! Sounds like a money-saving tip to me. 

What else is good in a deep conditioner?

If you have porous hair - hair that always seems to soak up oil and conditioner, your hair will probably appreciate hair-penetrating oils in a deep conditioning treatment; coconut oil, sunflower oil, possibly grapeseed oil to help your hair avoid excessive swelling in water. Cetrimonium bromide and probably Cetrimonium chloride can penetrate the hair shaft slightly for a "deeper" conditioning effect, and so can panthenol and amino acids from hydrolyzed proteins.

If you have tangle-prone hair or tightly curled or coiled hair, just about any oil is a good addition because you need lots of lubrication to keep your hairs sliding past each other. Butters like shea butter can be good in some people's hair and cause build up or friction in other people's hair. Warm them so they melt and mix them thoroughly into your other ingredients.

Almost any hair can benefit from moisture-hugging humectants - warmed honey, aloe vera, glycerin (maybe, it works better in humid weather), look for Hydroxypropyltrimonium honey, Sodium PCA, panthenol, Hyaluronic acid.©Science-y Hair Blog 2014

Proteins: If your hair handles protein well (see this post about protein), it can be a good ingredient in or addition to a deep treatment. Hydrolyzed protein helps your hair stay hydrated. Protein in products slows moisture loss from your hair. Look for products containing hydrolyzed proteins, amino acids and peptides. Proteins carry a weak cationic charge, so they play by the same rules for heat and length of time that are coming in Part II.  

Salt? When salt is added to conditioner, it decreases adsorption (ahderance) of conditioner to hair. Instead of conditioner adsorbing to your hair, the salt does instead because it has more "charge." The salt blocks the conditioner. Salt may feel slippery and humectant-y once in a great while, but if used often it creates friction in hair. Salt attracts water strongly (creates an osmotic gradient and will pull water to itself from anything else that has water). If salt is in your water-based conditioner on wet hair, there's plenty of water for the salt. But left on your hair, the salt molecules will pull water from your hair. That's how it can act as a humectant in humid air, but in dry air - that salt will pull water right out of your hair. Have you ever salted eggplant to pull out the water before cooking it? Or salted cucumbers or cabbage before making pickles or sauerkraut? Salt pulls water to itself. Better not salt your hair too often.

Whose hair needs deep conditioning? Not everybody's. Lower porosity, un-bleached or un-dyed hair cannot adsorb much conditioner and it's more likely to accumulate build-up. 

I don't lump hair into categories readily because everybody's hair is so much alike - and so different! I think about hair at the microscopic level, at the "individual hair strand" level, and also about the forces acting on hair like whether it is straight or curly or kinking because force on hair is distributed very differently on and within tightly curled hair relative to more loosely curled or straight hair. 

©Science-y Hair Blog 2014

So whose hair needs deep conditioning?

• Bleached hair (highlights, "lightener," hair dyed with permanent-color or demi-permanent color)
• Very long hair that feels dry and rough on the ends
• Hair that tangles easily (it may be straight, wavy, curly or tightly coiled)
• Hair that is experiencing a lot of breakage (at the ends, mid-shaft splits, or anywhere else)
• Hair that is acting frizzy or poofy or flyaway and needs weight and/or slip to pull itself together
• Hair that feels constantly dry
• Hair that has spent many hours in the full summer sun, in swimming pools, in salt water, in dry wind
• Hair that feels dry, rough, inflexible and dull
• Hair frequently straightened or curled with high-heat styling tools (high heat blow dryer, curling iron or straightening irons)
• Hair that has been chemically straightened or curled

In Part II: How to use a deep conditioner to get the most benefit, how to deep condition low porosity hair - and more.

Journal of Cosmetic Science Vol. 4 No. 3, 259-273 September/October 1992

Assessment of the substantivity of cationic quaternary compounds to hair by potentiometric titration using the surfactant electrode. NGHI VAN NGUYEN, DAVID W. CANNELL, ROGER A. MATHEWS, and HANS H. Y. OEI

Journal of the Society of Cosmetic Chemistry Vol. 4 No. 5, p. 85-94 1994

Adsorption to keratin surfaces A: continuum between a charge-driven and a hydrophobically driven process.

C. R. ROBBINS, C. REICH, and A. PATEL

Journal of Cosmetic Science, 60, 85–95 March/April 2009

The effects of lipid penetration and removal from subsurface microcavities and cracks at the human cuticle sheath

MANUEL GAMEZ-GARCIA

Chemical and Physical Behavior of Human Hair 

Robbins, 1994. 3^rd Ed. Springer-Verlag, New York

Do Cold Water Rinses Make Hair Shine?

Ever hear this one:
"Rinse your hair with ice cold water to close the cuticle to make it shine."

Ever try it? 

And then there's the opposite - that very warm water makes your hair's cuticles "open up."

I don't get along with the notion that "cuticles open and close" like doors or window blinds because it implies that the cuticles have some method of creating their own motion. They don't.  If a cuticle is "open" it's actually elevated from the hair surface as a result of the whole-hair swelling in water or other solutions, or it is damaged by chemicals or friction and broken but has not yet torn completely off.

I had to test it myself and I'll admit my tests are not complete (if I wanted to spend all day working with 50 to 100 hair samples and perfectly controlled conditions that would be ideal - but I'll leave that to people who get money to do this sort of thing).

The "Cold Water Makes Hair Shine" notion is just that - a notion. It's an assertion which is difficult to measure on your own hair. The eye can be tricked - I mean, if you just put your body or head through a cold water rinse to make your hair shine, will your assessment of the shiny-ness of the end result be biased by your desire for it to work?  It would be difficult to avoid not seeing what you want to see.

Shine breakdown: I'm going to be looking for a change in porosity because "closing the cuticles" implies reduction of porosity. Shiny hair is lower porosity hair or hair which has had it's porosities temporarily filled in with conditioners or emollients and proteins. 

There is another element of shine which has less to do with cuticles and porosity. When the hair as a whole has a greater reflective surface, hair shines. In order to do that, hairs need to line up neatly with each other. This has more to do with curl pattern, the "slip" in hair products you used, whether you wear your hair is worn straight or smoothly coiffed or tousled or worn naturally curly, and whether your individual hairs are smooth or textured.

There are some standard facts about hair and oils and heat that apply to this question:

1) Warm to hot water assists in removal of oil and soil from hair - including sebum - with but also without detergent.

2) It is more difficult to remove oil and soils (dust, dirt) in cold water.

3) Heat: Dry heat causes cracks in cuticles which tend to develop into chips and ultimately break away as they wear and weather. Hot water heats in a different way which is not necessarily well-studied in hair because hair product manufacturers are more interested in shampoos and conditioners and styling products and curling or straightening irons and blow dryers than hot water.

4) Warm water (heat) speeds up reactions such as diffusion of solutes (proteins, amino acids) in and out of hair; heat liquefies and "thins" more solid or more viscous oils. Things happen faster in heat, in this case oils and proteins are lost from your hair or removed if that's what you're after.

For this project I chose low, normal, and higher porosity hairs and photographed them in room temperature water, in very cold water and in very warm (shower temperature) water.

General impressions:

Cold Water (roughly 45-50°F / 10°C): There is little difference in the hair between room temperature to cold water. Some hairs seemed to have a more dramatic swelling reaction in cold water than room temperature water.  No hairs seemed to show a reduction in porosity which would be indicated by flatter-lying cuticles when viewed on the "edge" or by decreased swelling in water compared to room temperature water.

Warm-hot water (roughly 100°F / 38°C):  In warmer water, some hairs are evolving bubbles and showing increased swelling. This makes sense because heat speeds up reactions and makes oils more liquid. Proteins and oils can diffuse in and out via porosities in the hair more readily so the very warm (hot) water speeds up any swelling with water that will occur. We see bubbles evolving around hair when water is moving into the hair and things inside the hair are moving out. So maybe the hair is more porous in the warm water, and certainly porous hair is especially vulnerable in warm to hot water.

Conclusions:

Cold water does not decrease these hair's porosity so it should not make the hair shine more. It may be detrimental to some people's hair.

Warm water may cause hair to swell more rapidly than room temperature water. Swelling in hair has an ultimate side-effect of elevating the cuticles so they stand out more than usual. This might cause hair to act more porous temporarily, but not to the extent that soaking in concentrated detergent, acids, or bases does. Hair that is already porous may become more vulnerable in warm to hot water. So yes - that does sort of make cuticles open up - and I'll add that while they're open, they're losing their native proteins and other goodies which are rinsing down the drain.

Hair returns to its original state when its temperature returns to normal.

My impression: Keep out of the really hot showers and save "ice-cold water over the head" for the coaches of winning football games. Or would that be Gatorade? Or would that be basketball?

If you swear cold water works for you - go for it. I don't have any love for being in ice-cold water. It turns my toes blue. I could not find any research supporting the cold water rinse it (and I probably never will - it's not exactly a marketable product). I could not produce lower porosity (therefore shinier) hair with cold water. That satisfies my curiosity.

This is a kinking, curly hair (curl is pencil-sized, kinking is fairly close together) of low-normal porosity in the room temperature, cold, and hot water treatments. In the "before" room temperature photo at left, the cuticle lies closely to the hair. In the cold water photo (middle) the blue arrows indicate elevated cuticle scales where the hair is probably swelling during the shock of the cold water. At right the blue arrows indicate where the hair is swelling in the hot water.

Coarse hair with low porosity in room temperature water (left). Cuticles lie flat and tight to the hair surface. In cold and hot water, there is little change. This seems to be common in coarse, low porosity hair, it tends to resist just about everything. And that is a good thing. Especially if you like hot showers.

Porous hair in room temperature water (left) and cold water (middle). There is little difference in the elevation of cuticles between these two temperatures. At right in hot water, the hair is swelling more, the cuticles are slightly more elevated and tiny bubbles are evolving at the hair surface.

Friction, Breakage and Hair Shedding

Updated: June 2016

Science-y Hair Blog © 2011 by  Wendy M.S. is licensed under CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 

There are any number of serious reasons your hair can suddenly start to fall out - illness, thyroid disease, nutrient deficiency, extreme physical stress or many other diseases or medications. These are important to consider. Hair loss is a signal of something wrong.

I'm skipping the more serious problems and going right to the things you put on your hair!

Let's talk about friction. You need friction to stop on roller skates, on a bicycle, in a car. Smooth ice = low friction and you just keep going when you try to stop. Rough pavement = plenty of friction to slow your motion and your tires wear down over time.

Friction is an issue for anybody with more than a half inch of hair because there is a lot more to hair care than moisture or protein or whatever the bottle or shampoo or conditioner says a product is for. Some people have healthy hair that doesn't need a lot of extra help staying hydrated, but it does need extra lubrication. The longer your hair is, the more lubrication you need. Tangle-prone hair needs more lubrication.

Usually we want low friction in our hair so the strands slide past each other and don't tangle or rub off cuticles - especially the chipped or broken ones. Sometimes a little friction is okay to help maintain volume, but on a regular basis, friction can cause problems.
©Science-y Hair Blog 2013
What you probably already know:
If your hair rubs on other hairs, your shirt collar, a scarf or necklace or earrings or hair pins or ponytail holder, friction occurs. If your hair does this frequently (collars, ponytail holders) that area can become weakened and break. If you hair has a pre-existing weak spot like a tear or split, it can break with less force than usually required.©Science-y Hair Blog 2013

You'll see breakage as shed hairs shorter than your full length. If you slide your fingers over both ends, you will feel no bulge of a root on the hair. But when you have whole-hair shedding, the whole hair comes out, root and all. It's normal to lose some hairs every day. If you wash your hair once a week or every 2 weeks, you'll shed more hairs during washing than somebody who washes their hair every other day. It's the remarkable increases in shedding that indicate something may not agree with your hair.©Science-y Hair Blog 2013

Black arrows point to elevated cuticles on this porous hair. These are easily broken off with friction on the hair. Good lubrication in the form of conditioners, oils (and protein for some people) can help slow the process of cuticle breakage.

What you may not have known:
Sometimes we can have excess whole hair shedding - roots and all - from too much friction. When you see a lot more hair falling out, keep a close eye on it over time in case these simple solutions don't help. But before you panic - consider that your hair might be sticking to itself (friction), rubbing on itself, on your hands during detangling and washing, roughing itself up and yanking itself out by the roots. It sounds painful, but it doesn't feel like individual hairs being plucked from your scalp. What you do notice is a tangly, unpleasant feeling in your hair.

What sort of things create excess friction in hair? (In no particular order).

• Using styling products with a tacky, rough or sticky "finish" - some strong-hold gels, salt sprays, for example.
• Skipping conditioner or not using enough conditioner.
• Not doing oil pre-wash treatments on hair that needs them.
• Avoiding deep conditioning when you need it. 
• Using too much protein (how much is "too much" varies from person to person - but I don't recommend making hair gel from gelatin and using that to style your hair regularly).
• Coconut oil - for some people. Sometimes hair will become stiff, rough, crunchy or brittle from using coconut oil. I suspect this may be more a problem for low-porosity hair.
• Acidic or alkaline treatments. These can increase friction in hair. One needs to respond to that need for more lubrication.
• Too much washing, too much high-heat styling, excessive brushing.
• Chemical processing (highlights, permanent waves, relaxers, permanent hair color).
• Henna (especially right after using henna).
• Shampoos - especially sulfate-free shampoos without enough lubricants added.
• Too-high (alkaline) or too-low (acidic) treatments used in hair that cannot tolerate those things.
• Hard water residue

What to do?
Some of these are obvious, use more conditioner if you need it. If you're experiencing more tangling than usual, use an oil pre-wash treatment or deep condition your hair. If your styling products are making your hair tacky and tangly, try something else or use a leave-in conditioner and/or some oil with the product to see if you can reduce the crunch. Or apply the product to wetter hair to dilute it.

For hennaed hair - load on the conditioner, deep conditioning and oils (whatever works with your henna product), especially the first few weeks after hennaing.

For chemically treated or mechanically damaged hair: Your hair needs more lubrication from conditioners, oils, deep conditioning. If you're experiencing a lot of whole-hair shedding, you need to use these things far more than you have in the past

For shampoos: Many of the sulfate-free shampoos can create excessive friction during washing unless they are formulated with lubricants. These shampoos make hair feel tangly when wet and tacky. It's not that they're necessarily stripping your hair or overly harsh - it's a by-product of the sulfate-free detergent itself. Lots of ingredients have a unique "skin feel." Many sulfate-free detergents have a tacky skin feel. To manage that, product formulators often add ingredients to counter that an provide lubrication.

Ingredients that provide lubrication in shampoos. This has nothing to do with mildness, only with likelihood that the product is less likely to increase friction in hair:

• Salt thickeners (Salts thicken shampoos and make them feel slippery - sodium chloride, magnesium sulfate are examples). It's not necessarily the salt itself that's drying for some people, it's the fact that you can only thicken shampoos with a somewhat high concentration of detergents with salt successfully.
• Polyquaternium-10
• Polyquaternium-7
• Polyquaternium-44
• Silicones (Dimethicone, Amodimethicone, Silicone quaternium-18, "siloxanes") - See this blog post for more about silicones. The water-insoluble silicones provide the most lubrication, but the water-soluble ones can reduce that "sulfate-free detergent tackiness" a bit.
• Guar hydroxypropyltrimonium chloride
• Glycol distearate (makes shampoos "pearly" looking)