No, we’re not talking about your fingernails. The cuticle is the outer layer of each strand of hair on your head. It’s what rules the look and feel of your hair and protects the inner layers. When the cuticle is raised, the hair strand is completely exposed, vulnerable to damage across every layer. A raised cuticle means rough, frizzy hair that’s likely to have split ends and breakage. Most products don’t address this, giving you a head full of raised cuticles, every time you shower. Let’s explore why this happens - how do cuticles become raised?

The health of your hair is ruled by chemistry. When the chemistry of your head is unbalanced, you can expect bad hair day after bad hair day. The core of the issue is pH balance, which tells you how acidic or alkaline your hair is. The natural pH of hair is 4.5 to 5.0. When hair becomes too acidic (lower than 4.5) the cuticle contracts and breaks. When hair becomes too alkaline (higher than 5.0) the cuticle opens, leaving it vulnerable. Most shampoos on the market, even the most popular, have too high of a pH balance, which allows your cuticle to open. Pure water, with a neutral pH of 7.0, will do the same harmful thing. That narrow sweet spot of 4.5 to 5.0 is critical to maintain, or else each strand on your head will be opened up and exposed to multiple dangers.

Hygral fatigue occurs when you shower while your cuticles are raised or damaged. The open, outer layer of your hair offers no protection as an excess of water slams each strand and swells them. When you dry your hair the moisture is rapidly forced out of each strand, creating a violent change of state from soaked to dry that further damages the entire strand. Unfortunately, most women allow hygral fatigue to happen every time they shower, letting water flood their hair and then quickly drying it, unknowingly doing real harm with their beauty routine.

A hidden danger many women are unaware of is drying with a towel and blow drying. Both can be equally as harmful to your strands of hair, but they are also common methods to dry. When most women finish drying with a towel or blow dryer, they see a head that is frizzy and tangled, but no longer wet. If you picked a strand of that dry hair and put it under a microscope, what you would see is a rough, damaged outer layer of hair. Every press of the towel acts like sandpaper and every second of blow drying is like a flamethrower - yes, both methods dry, but they are rough, hot, and forceful, chipping away at your cuticle and leaving hair the opposite of how it should look.