How to maintain protein and moisture balance in your hair?

Protein and moisture are usually pitted against one another when people start talking about hair nutrients. But instead of seeing them as contradictory elements of hair nutrition, we see them as the natural complementary forces that help maintain your hair at its proper state. While not widely known, experts in the field have been confirming that protein and moisture forms a symbiotic relationship in haircare and should be considered together when talking about hair products and treatment.

In Luxshine’s hair care section today, we will address the topic of protein and moisture balance in your hair. What are they? How do you know what you need and the signs that might mean you need one kind over the other?

What does protein and moisture balance look like?

Some of you might not be familiar with this concept so we think it is important that we clearly lay out what is the balance between these two vague ideas. Protein-moisture balance is something you achieve when your hair gets enough protein, hydrations, and all the necessary nutrients so that your hair doesn’t suffer from any breakage. But to get this elusive goldilocks level, you actually would need to get to a perfect balance where nothing is too much or too little. Too much protein will lead to breakage while too little protein will get you to the same spot.

This is why you need to get the protein moisture balance level to just right. Once you successfully put your hair in this balance, your hair will reap a lot of wonderful benefits like the hair becoming bouncy, shiny, and retaining its moisture level well. Your curls will also appear defined and feel bouncy. Additionally, you don’t have to worry about hair growth since the balance will fiend off breakage issues.

Why is protein and moisture balance important to one’s hair health?

What is protein?

Protein makes up more than 90% of our hair strands. So that it is without a doubt a vital component of your hair’s health. Protein plays the role of repairing and strengthening your hair. Our day-to-day life can cause a lot of damage to the natural protein in our hair. From hair coloring, to expose your hair to the sun, to heat treatment, the damaged protein will eventually lead to breakage issues. That is why getting protein from hair product will help you supplement and repair your hair structure

What is moisture?

The moisture in our hair is the secret component that keeps the hair lush and lustrous. You can see whether or not the hair has enough moisture by just looking at its natural state. Is there a beautiful sheen or does the hair look matt and lifeless? Hair without enough moisture will appear frizzy, dull, and of course, breakage.

Two elements synergistically work with each other

As you can see, both elements play a significant role in helping the hair grow healthily. Our hair is naturally porous with a certain level of compromised cuticles. This means that your hair can have a problem with maintaining its moisture level if there are no supplemental proteins in our products. Reinforcing your hair with protein can actually help your hair with hydration issues and so improve its luster and shininess. As you can see, these two factors have a lot to do with each other and they influence each other in a feedback loop. To get the hair to the right balance, you will need the correct methodology to assess your current hair‘s needs.

How to determine your situation when it comes to protein and moisture balance?

To solve the puzzle that is your hair’s nutrition and hydration needs (which is constantly changing), you need to understand two other important measurements of your own hair: porosity and elasticity.

Check your hair porosity

If you want to know your porosity level, please take a spray bottle and start spraying water onto a section of your hair. When the hair has a problem with getting the water in, then you will have low porosity hair. With hair that is low porosity in nature, the water will start beads up on your hair.

On the contrary, when you have high porosity hair, your hair will soak up the water quickly. Another possible scenario is you can see the water sitting around before finally getting soaked up after a few minutes. When you can observe this, then your hair will most likely be of medium porosity.

Check your hair elasticity

To check on hair elasticity, all you have to do is the stretch test. Simply wet your hair a bit, get a strand of your hair, and then hold your hair firmly at the root with your right hand. With your left hand, gently stretch your hair. 

• If your hair stretches a bit and then can bounce back to the original length then the elasticity is great. 
• However, when you find your hair doesn’t stretch at all or break off easily when there is too much force involved, your hair may have low elasticity
• Otherwise, your hair may stretch and stretches to infinity and then finally break off, it should belong to the category of poor elasticity.

A chart to rule them all

If you know exactly your level of hair porosity and elasticity, you can ultimately decide how much you need moisture and how much protein to add to your routine. Please refer to our Luxshine chart below so you can quickly discover the change you‘ll need to make.

So have you clearly identify your own hair’s need? We hope that by doing those tests above, you will have a clear idea of how to best care for your hair and achieve your hair’s nirvana. After all, who is not a fan of unproblematic, long, lustrous, and shiny hair? Ultimately, you can even apply this knowledge in caring for your 100% human hair weaves and wigs.