5 Steps to Preventing Hygral Fatigue (What are Hygral Fatigue Symptoms?)

The Caribbean Secrets Cosmetics Blog is dedicated to educating our community about hair care tips, techniques, and history that will help maximize your curly hair's potential. Your curly hair deserves to grow, be more defined, and stay moisturized throughout the day. We feel that having healthy hair is important and is vital to the productivity in our communities around the world because when your hair looks good you will be more confident and perform better in everything you do. We want to be apart of your journey. Our aim is to give your hair-care regimen an extra boost because we value you and your curly hair. We hope that this helps!

Hygral Fatigue

What is hygral fatigue and how can I prevent it? There is a common misconception within our communities that washing and wetting our curly textured hair often is great for hygiene. The truth is, if you have curly textured hair, you will be doing yourself a disservice when subscribing to that method of cleansing. Not only will washing your hair frequently dry out your scalp, but constantly applying water to your curly textured hair may bring stress to your hair fibers causing hair breakage. This stress is called hygral fatigue.

When water is added to our hair, our hair shafts must expand to accommodate the additional water. However after the hair dries, our hair contracts and returns back to its normal state. This process of hair expansion and contraction under wet and dry conditions is both stressful and compromising to the overall health of our hair. Curly hair with higher levels of porosity tends to absorb more water when washing than any other texture making hygral fatigue especially damaging to curlier hair textures because curlier hair tends to have a higher level of porosity than straighter hair. This high level of porosity causes our curly hair fibers to swell considerably when wet, allowing our true length to show. Once dry, our hair appears to “shrink”. For some people, they can experience shrinkage so severe that their curly hair may have seemed to decrease in length by 75%! This process of constant wetting and drying is significant and can cause the cuticle to fray, split, or crack as this happens over long periods of time.

If you think you are suffering from hygral fatigue, what can you do to minimize it and prevent it from occurring? Should you completely stop washing/wetting your hair? Below, we will provide you the secret to preventing hygral fatigue in 5 simple steps. 

Step 1: Have the Right Mindset

Please keep in mind that the effects of hygral fatigue may vary depending on your hair type, genes, and lifestyle. So what works for one person may not work for another. Thus you must be open for trial and error.

Step 2: Determine Your Hair Porosity

Hair porosity refers to how well your hair is able to absorb and hold moisture. If your hair is highly porous then you are more likely to suffer from hygral fatigue because your hair is constantly expanding and contracting when in contact with water. To test your porosity apply the “Float Test”.

The Float Test: Take a few of your hair strands that may be left over in your comb or brush and drop them into a bowl of lukewarm water. Let them sit for a total of 2-4 minutes. If your hair floats after the time has passed, you have low porosity. If it sinks, you have high porosity.

Step 3: Protein

If after conducting the “Float Test” you discover that you have high porosity hair you should consider implementing a protein conditioner into your hair care regimen to reinforce the protein infrastructure in your hair. As explained in step 2, porosity refers to how well your hair is able to absorb and hold moisture. With a strong protein infrastructure, your hair fibers will resist excessive expansion when wet so that moisture can penetrate your hair shaft and stay in. A great conditioner that contains a great source of protein is Caribbean Secrets Cosmetics Crème.

Step 4: Pre-Shampoo

Before wetting or shampooing your hair, apply a polar oil to your hair. Polar oils such as Coconut Oil, Haitian Castor Oil or Hemp Oil protect the hair by binding to the hair’s inner proteins which will reduce the swelling of your hair fiber when in contact with water, causing less trauma as it dries. Applying a pre-shampoo helps your hair retain its natural moisture content and reinforces your hair fibers, making them stronger and more durable to minimize hygral fatigue. 

If you are in need of a reliable Pre-Shampoo use Caribbean Secrets Pre-Shampoo Treatment. Enforced with Pure Unrefined Haitian Castor Oil Caribbean Secrets Pre-Shampoo is the best product to use to prevent Hygral Fatigue.

Step 5: Stop Washing or Wetting Your Hair as Often!

It is recommended by hair care professionals that people with curlier hair textures should be shampooing their hair no more than once a week with a gentle formula that does not contain any harsh sulfates. Nevertheless this is up to your discretion.

We recommend wetting your hair less as well. When in the shower allow the steam and splashes of water to hit your hair but try not to put your head under the water more than 2 times out the week.

Stay Sexy!