PH and Climate: Metro Detroit Hair Care
Yes PH is key when choosing a hair care product for your hair but keep in mind that climate and outside elements of your environment can be just as important to your daily hair survival. As spring approaches, it is important to know about your area’s elements. Elements can be anything from “smog” to rain. April showers bring may flowers right? So what is in rain, and what do the flowers give off. Do these things affect your hair? YES.
Hair is similar to that of a roof full of shingles, in that hair has scales that can be lifted to add or remove things and needs to be put back in order to protect the core. Ph can alter this, and has been used to so in hair care for 100’s of years. A higher PH means it is alkaline and the shingles can be lifted, and a lower PH is acid and can lay them back flat. (At this website you can understand more about the PH of hair and what it is to continuehttp://www.hairfinder.com/hair/hair-ph-level.htm.) You would want your shampoo to be a higher Ph if you are using a deep conditioner to add the necessary ingredients in to your hair for proper penetration, these conditioners usually have a lower ph which then also balances out the hair and once they add the necessary items to your hair shaft then they are also neutralizing the Ph leaving your hair in better condition. This is also how hair color and permanents work.
Pure water is a 7 on the PH scale and that is most neutral. The Ph of hair is generally between 4.5 and 5.5 on the scale. So in short your shampoos and conditioners should balance out to sit between 4.5 and 5.5 on the Ph scale. One hair care company has taken the knowledge of PH to a new level;http://www.sojournbeauty.com/. But this is not the only thing that affects your hair’s PH.
Water being most Neutral on the PH scale does not mean that you should immerse your hair in water all the time, or that you should always expose your hair to rain water to “balance the PH”. (In Wikipedia they explain the PH of rain this way: The pH of rain varies, especially due to its origin. On America's East Coast, rain that is derived from the Atlantic Ocean typically has a pH of 5.0-5.6; rain that comes across the continental from the west has a pH of 3.8-4.8; and local thunderstorms can have a pH as low as 2.0.[72] Rain becomes acidic primarily due to the presence of two strong acids, sulfuric acid (H2SO4) and nitric acid (HNO3). Sulfuric acid is derived from natural sources such as volcanoes, and wetlands (sulfate reducing bacteria); and anthropogenic sources such as the combustion of fossil fuels, and mining where H2S is present. Nitric acid is produced by natural sources such as lightning, soil bacteria, and natural fires; while also produced anthropogenically by the combustion of fossil fuels and from power plants. In the past 20 years the concentrations of nitric and sulfuric acid has decreased in presence of rainwater, which may be due to the significant increase in ammonium (most likely as ammonia from livestock production), which acts as a buffer in acid rain and raising the pH.)
Basically we don’t know exactly what the PH of rain is on an everyday basis and so you should not use it as a “buffer” to balance your hair Ph levels. Also knowing that water by itself is too high for the hair, we can find that this results in the opening of the hair cuticle and so allowing for the “elements” to irritate your hair. Imagine having hard water, what would the PH be then? Well you can only safe guard yourself if you know you are balancing the ph with the correct shampoos and conditioners. You can test this with litmus paper and find out what the true PH is of your products. Also remember the May flowers, because these elements are being dispersed into the air and we only know that from our sneezes and the local weather provider, again the only way to know for sure you are protecting the 100’s of dollars spent on your hair color and hair maintenance is to balance the Ph properly by knowing the ph of your shampoos and conditioners.
Knowledge is power right? So knowledge of hair care is powerful strands? YES.
Comments