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Perhaps if we took better care of it, it would grow strong and healthy with no scalp or hair loss issues. The list of things we do to abuse our hair include:
Using ridiculously harsh chemicals on our hair like hair relaxers, dyes, and perms. Unfortunately it doesn’t end here.
We love to sear our hair straight. Yep, we use hair straighteners with all sorts of fancy materials that promise to distribute temperatures of 200°C of heat more evenly on our hair. We would never apply that amount of heat in any form to our skin. There’d be dire consequences if this were ever tried on the skin. So why do we do it to our hair? Because there are no nerve endings in it and because it is dead?
Nails have no nerve endings in them either, and like hair are also dead, yet in the 21st century we haven’t come up with a way to apply direct heat at high temperatures to our nails. I say this incase you think I’m discounting UV nail lamps. They can get warm when left on too long (the ones without timers), but generally they don’t emit any heat.
When hair starts to break or remains stagnant at a particular length we wonder would we could be doing differently. Highly alkaline chemicals like relaxers raise your cuticles. When your cuticles are raised they become weak and your cortex, which is what your cuticles are designed to protect becomes exposed to the elements. It becomes dry and brittle and at risk of falling off at the slightest provocation. This provoking act could be you brushing your hair, running your fingers through your hair. Just manipulating your hair in any shape or form.
We also abuse our hair when we wear hair extensions. And like dry brittle hair that has been relaxed, dyed or permed, - the penalty for wearing hair extensions is hair loss. Harsh but true. Hair extensions, regardless of how they are fitted cause hair loss. They are always tight. It doesn’t matter if they are glued in, fitted with micro-rings, Brazilian knots or sewn in. They have to be tight to keep the hair in place and as close to your scalp as possible to make them look natural. This requires some pulling on your own hair which puts your hair follicles under pressure. Doing this over and over, especially back to back results in hair loss. The hair falls out of the follicle and the follicle is left damaged from all the pulling and struggles to create another hair. It may or may not grow back even if you used hair growth products. It all depends on how long you have been abusing it. If you haven’t been doing it for long, or have taken breaks between hair extension applications, you have a much better chance of regrowing your hair.