If you are interested in healthy hair and want to grow your hair long, then ceramides can be considered one of the most important aspects of your hair care routine. If you are leaving this out of your regiment, you want to reconsider the benefits. So you may be wondering what are ceramides? You may have heard about it, but are not sure of what they are and what exactly they do for your hair. No worries…I will explain it to you.
Ceramides are essentially a fatty lipid that make up our hair and skin. In the hair, they function as the glue that holds our hair together. When you take a strand of hair and look at it under the microscope, you will see hundreds of tiny scales. In healthy hair, the scales lie flat. However, in hair that is damaged or over-processed, you will see these scales appearing straight and lifted away from the main cortex. This gives your hair a dull and lifeless appearance.
Ceramides hold these scales together and keep them lying flat where they belong. What this means for your hair is that the precious moisture and protein that you have been adding stay locked into your hair strands where they belong instead of escaping through open, raised cuticles.
After incorporating ceramides regularly into your hair care routine, you will notice that your hair is smooth, softer & noticeably shinier due to the hair cuticles laying flat. Increased usage will help you have much healthier hair in the long run because you will be able to maintain your protein and moisture balance better.
After repeated usage and healthier hair, many people start to wonder if they need to keep doing protein treatments at all. The increased health of your hair makes it seem as if all you need to do is keep using ceramides and moisturizing for nice healthy hair.
The truth is your hair needs all three. Think of it as a nice equalized balance that you want to keep in place. Instead of eliminating your protein just cut down on the amount of protein treatments as well as spacing them out.
So, how do you get ceramides in your hair? Well, they occur naturally in oils such as wheat germ oil, hemp seed oil and sunflower oil. Ceramides are also synthetically manufactured and can be found in many hair products. Some great ones to try include Sidal’s S.O.S Ceramidas, La Bomba deep treatment for hair, HASK cerafix ceramides repair, Redken extreme rescue force as well as Wild Growth hair oil.
Go ahead and try out ceramides for yourself, you will be pleasantly surprised!