Transition season always has an impact on the quality and glow of your hair as each season, trends go viral on different platforms on the best products to use or the best practices to follow to keep your hair shiny and strong. While we all are left mesmerised and find ourselves blindly adopting those hacks, haircare experts insist that it may do more harm than good.
In an interview with HT Lifestyle, Dr Batul Patel, Celebrity Dermatologist and Founder of The Bombay Skin Clinic, revealed 5 mistakes that you might unknowingly make leading to hair fall in this transition season:
- Exposing your head directly to the sun, pollution, dust and rain. The UV exposure causes the moisture to be stripped from the hair and makes the hair dry and dull. Use of a hair UV protectant can help from causing damage.
- Going swimming without wearing a cap. This is the perfect time to go out for a nice swim or engage in some water sports. However, the chlorine in the water causes hair damage. Hence, protecting your hair with a good quality shower cap is essential.
- Brushing your hair when it’s wet. Wet hair is the most vulnerable and if you try to brush it in that state, it leads to breakage, split ends and damage.
- Using a lot of heat styling tools on your hair without a heat protectant. When you apply direct heat to your hair, the keratin proteins that give your hair strength and elasticity tend to break down leading to damage.
- Using very warm water during your shower and skipping conditioner. Hot water can lead to excessive dryness of the hair which in turn, makes the hair more susceptible to damage. If you skip your conditioner, your hair can lose its shine and also get frizzy. Furthermore, if you choose to style your hair in the absence of a conditioner, it could lead to more splitting and breakage.
Adding to the list, Dr Manoj Kutteri, CEO and Medical Director at Atmantan Wellness Centre, highlighted 5 common mistakes that lead to hair fall in transition season:
1. Dehydration
One of the major causes of hair fall is dehydration. We don’t always remember to drink enough water when the weather outside is colder and our body can go through water loss. One may notice thinning of the hair and unusual falling of hair during this seasonal shift. Dehydration can be easily reversed by increasing the water intake. Also another mistake we do is drinking too much of sweetened juices thinking that it will help us in managing the summer heat. However, these sugary drinks are going to do more harm when it comes to health of the hair. So improving the habit of drinking water more frequently can give you more lustrous and healthy hair and helps to prevent seasonal hair fall.
2. Binge eating or snacking
Most of us are always in a hurry to eat and lack time while having our meals. This can result in deficiency of key nutrients that are required for healthy hairs. We have numerous festivals that we celebrate and they come in every seasons. Food being an integral part of most festivals, we tend to consume different varieties of food as we go through different seasons. The essential vitamins and nutrients that you get from a healthy, varied, and well-balanced diet such as protein, folate, vitamin B12, riboflavin, Zinc, Iron etc. ensure healthy hair and skin. Poor nutrient intake and crash diet or fad diet with the intention of getting faster result can in turn result in severe hair loss. Absorption of these nutrients are also dependable on good gut health. Collagen is another most important protein that is required for the hair and need to be supplemented.
3. Dryness in scalp and not applying oil
Just like our skin, our scalp also tends to get dry. Dryness also result in poor circulation to the scalp not helping proper nutrition reaching to the hair. A head massage using oil is ideal for improving the dryness and also to help increasing the circulation to the scalp. Head massage can be done at least once or twice a week using coconut oil or almond oil.
4. Not taking care of the hair properly
Overdoing of hair care such as routine shampooing, blow drying more often, using heated styling devices, pulling the hair too vigorously etc. can all result in hair loss. Frictional alopecia is also common when one tries to rub the hair so intensely. Another mistake we do is to tie the hair when it is wet. This can cause tangling of hair which in turn result in hair fall. Haircare needs to be done gently and not using any intense product on the hair. Always use a conditioner after shampooing the hair.
5. Not managing the stress well
Stress is a major contributor for losing of hair. It can either be a physical stress, or a mental stress. Besides this the physiological stress on various organs in our body due to unnecessary medications such as medicines used for depression, NSAIDs, beta blockers, calcium channel blockers etc can cause thinning of hair and hair loss. Hair loss that happen due to medications may be temporary as they regrow once we stop the medication. However, on-going mental stress must be tackled by doing various stress management sessions and other modalities.
