This is a collab post with my friend and fellow scienstist @alexandrarriaga 💁‍♀️So you might think, you should always avoid blow drying because heat is damaging to the hair. That’s true, but wet hair is also more fragile and prone to breakage (than dry hair). Thus, a balance needs to be found. Water makes the hair swell. When the hair is wetted, the inner cuticles (hair surface) swell, but the outer cuticles remain rigid and do not swell. This leads to cuticle lifting off (is damage of the cuticle). This happens especially when a strain (like brushing, touching, moving) is applied to wet hair. All types of hair are more vulnerable and break more easily when they are wet. The problem during heat styling is the damage (cracking) of the cuticle due to heat. Although this happens only from around 50-60 °C. 👩🏻‍🔬An in between solution: Towel dry your hair. As wet hair is more vulnerable to breakage, gently (!) scrunch it to remove excess water, no aggressive rubbing! Blow dry time: Ideally, you hold the hairdryer about 15 centimeters from your hair head and start on a low air speed and temperature. Abrupt desorption of moisture (removal of water from the hair surface) from wet hair caused by blow drying may also cause deformation of the cuticle cells. A gradual change in drying your hair is better. As soon as the hair starts to become dryer, you can increase the speed and temperature. The hair should just not reach a temperature of 50 °C or more. The temperature of your hair is about 20 °C less than the temperature of the blow-dryer. 🙋‍♀️Also, never forget to apply a thermal protector before blow drying. If you don’t have time to blow dry your hair make sure not to go crazy with your wet hair and always apply a conditioner to reduce breakage. Do you blow dry or air dry your hair?