Blow Drying vs. Air Drying Natural Hair

Hola!

I know it's been a while, the new baby is keeping me busy and we are still adjusting as a new family of 4 :). With a new little person in the house, I have quickly realized that I have even less time for myself, which includes very little time to do my  hair.  So last night I finally got a chance to give my hair some serious TLC. I did a hot oil treatment for about 3 hours (not intentional, but life got in the way), shampooed, deep conditioned and decided to blow out my hair. I don't blow out my hair often for one because it takes a while and I can never figure out how to style it after and two, I usually wear my twists for a couple days before wearing a twist out so I kinda get two styles for one! But I started my hair late last night so I didn't want to go to bed with wet/damp hair so blowing it out with the answer for me. With doing this, I started thinking if I wanted to incorporate blow drying my hair into my regimen permanently for the Fall/Winter when keeping my hair moisturized becomes a challenge with the cold weather. So I did some research and was a little surprised about what I found since the fear of heat damage is instilled in every natural from the moment we big chop lol!

via CurlyNikki

Mik says…I found a new study made in Korea that says that blow drying hair in a particular way is actually less damaging than letting it air dry. Could this be true? 

The Beauty Brains respond:
The study that Mik refers to was published in the Annals of Dermatology and it does indeed conclude that “Although using a hair dryer causes more surface damage than natural drying, using a hair dryer at a distance of 15 cm with continuous motion causes less damage than drying hair naturally.” 

How can air drying be bad for hair?
For the most part the article confirms what scientists have long known about hair: heat causes damage, especially damage to the shingle-like outer layer of hair known as the cuticle. But the surprising discovery by these authors is that air dried hair sustains more damage to the Cell Membrane Complex (CMC), the sandwich-y layer of proteins, lipids, and covalently bonded fatty acids that is the “glue” that binds cuticles together. Once the CMC is damaged cuticles can become dislodged more easily which leads to rough damaged hair which may eventually split and break. 

This finding is surprising since you’d expect the wash/dry cycle or the heat cycle to cause more damage to the CMC than air drying. The authors hypothesize that because air drying takes so much longer some internal components of the CMC are exposed to water for much longer time. This water exposure over time causes a buckling in the CMC layer. Blow drying removes the water more quickly so the CMC doesn’t have a chance to buckle.

While this is intriguing discover there are two major caveats: first, this is a single study and one should never completely believe a surprising finding that comes from only one study; more research needs to be done. Second, even though blow drying appears to cause less damage to the CMC, it does cause MORE surface damage. Therefore you’re trading one kind of damage for another by air drying hair. 

The Beauty Brains bottom line
The key finding from this study is that very long drying times may be causing heretofore undetected damage to hair. While it’s well known that fast drying at high temperature causes damage, it wasn’t recognized that slow drying at room temperature could be causing another kind of damage. Perhaps the best approach is one that minimizes drying time and minimizes temperature (e.g., using your blow drying on the cool setting.)

Now, I did not follow these "rules" while blowing drying last night since it was late and I was tired, but if I incorporate blow drying into my regiment for the cold months, I will be using much more care. I of course still used a heat protectant but I didn't let my hair air dry a little and I used it on a hot setting. But for what it's worth, my blow dryer does not get super hot even on the hottest setting. Right now my hair is just in some twists since I'm still on maternity leave and I'm not going anywhere today. But I have no clue how I will style it once I do need to leave the house, so I'm off to YouTube to watch some videos to get some ideas. Which styles do you wear on your blown out hair?