Once, it was almost unheard of to dye or colour your hair for the sake of your appearance. Whether you were prematurely grey or you just fancied a change, it didn’t matter. That’s hardly the case today. Now, teens colour their hair for the fun of it and it’s relatively normal for anyone over 30 to admit they’ve dyed their hair (perhaps within the last six months).
But, just because it’s commonplace, that doesn’t mean that it’s healthy for your hair or scalp. And, you might need to be careful as hair colour could lead to hair loss.
Can Colouring Your Hair Cause Hair Loss and Balding?
Permanent (well, semi-permanent) hair dye penetrates the hair to transform the colour and appearance of your hair.
And, it’s perfectly reasonable to suspect that this process could contribute to or lead to hair loss. Fortunately, it’s not as dire as you think it might be. Unless you’ve gotten right down to the roots of your hair (and please don’t allow your stylist to do that), you haven’t messed with the chemistry that regulates hair loss… directly.
However, hair colour, even the high-quality stuff, will act as any chemical or styling product does. Usually, that leaves you with dry and damaged hair. And that most often leads to split ends and breakages. Enough of that treatment and you shouldn’t be surprised to lose more than 50-100 hairs a day.
What Can You Do to Combat the Effects of Colouring and Styling?
You probably already know that you shouldn’t be dyeing your hair every other day. But, there are steps that will minimise damage to your hair when you do colour it.
- Always turn towards the highest quality hair colours available. If you go to a stylist, feel free to chat this through (and be prepared to pay a little more than usual). If you buy box colour, look for anything that says it’s extra moisturising.
- Don’t allow your hair to be combed while you have hair colour processing on your head. This strips away more of the essential proteins in your hair and you’ll notice the damage and possibly even loss quite quickly.
- Always request a deep conditioning treatment as the hair colour is rinsed out; the sooner you can create an ideal environment for your scalp, the better.
- Turn towards a colour-safe shampoo and conditioner. These offer a lot more moisture than regular products and they work to revive the protein production you need.
- Make sure to maintain a healthy diet before and after your visit to the salon as this will help the hair bulb and shaft with growth.
And remember, it’s easy enough to cover grey hairs, but you will need to call in a professional if you need to cover hair loss (that’s us, by the way). We suggest considering the benefits of hair colour against the detriment it causes because it certainly won’t help if you’re already losing your hair.
