The Weird Way You're Damaging Your Hair Every Time You Wash It

By Elizabeth Siegel, Allure

(Photo: Delphine Achard/WWD)

I'm a mask-loving healthy-hair fanatic. But a new piece of information has me washing my hair less often than I did a week ago and thanking Marc Jacobs for bringing back grunge hair with his spring show.

It turns out, there's an unavoidable healthy-hair saboteur that you encounter every time you turn on your shower. Water. Yes, water. You could import crystal-clear water that's bubbled up through Himalayan rocks and been bottled by mermaids, and it would still damage your hair slowly over time. "When you wet your hair, it swells from the inside, forcing the cuticle up. When that happens over and over again, you get breakage and split ends," says cosmetic chemist Randy Schueller. "Don't wash your hair more than you have to--whenever you can skip a day, that's great." (Or in my case, three days, if I'm being totally honest.)

So the next logical thought any person would have is: Seriously, now I have to worry about water damaging my hair, too? Kinda. But at least there are two ways to counteract the damage. Pre-shampoo--yep, that's a thing now--works like a sealant, "smoothing the hair's cuticle before it gets wet so there's less damage," says cosmetic chemist Ni'Kita Wilson. We like Nexxus Pre-Wash Primer. Another tactic is switching from shampoo to a cleansing conditioner, like L'Orèal EverCreme Cleansing Conditioner, which can help protect the hair from water, too, "because it coats it while it cleanses," says Wilson. It doesn't even have to be made by mermaids.

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