Do You Need A Heat Protectant

You’ve probably heard the advice again and again: “If you’re going to heat style, you need a heat protectant.” 

Which might sound an awful lot like, “Please add another step to your already sprawling hair routine.”

But we promise: Heat protectant isn’t a fad. It’s not a sham. And more importantly, it does actually Do Something. 

For our heat protectant deniers, we took your burning questions to Laura, the chemist behind Hair Hero (Go-To’s hair oil and heat protectant). She also just so happens to have the best hair in the office.

Here’s everything you need to know. 

What Is Heat Protectant

“Heat protectant is a hair product designed to create a protective barrier around your hair cuticle,” shares Laura. “This barrier works to defend your hair against the damaging effects of heat styling, like blow drying, straightening, curling, or thermal brushes. It does this by essentially slowing down your hair’s heat conduction.” 

For our non-chemists, think of it like putting on an oven mitt. It can’t totally neutralise heat, but it delays and minimises its effect. 

Do You Need A Heat Protectant

If you’re heat styling, according to Laura, there’s only one answer: “Yes. Definitely,.” 

“Heat styling can cause major damage to even the healthiest of hair. Using a heat protectant helps protect against this damage.”

How Does Heat Styling Damage Your Hair?

Heat styling does wonders for the look of your hair in the short term. However, we regret to inform you that yes, your delightfully bouncy blowout can be incredibly damaging without a protectant in your corner. 

Heat styling damages your hair in multiple ways.

1. It disrupts your hair cuticle.
   “Your cuticle is your hair’s outermost layer, made up of overlapping cells. When these cells are heated by styling tools, they lose integrity, or weaken. This causes rapid moisture loss, frizz, and dullness. A damaged cuticle exposes the cortex (the middle layer of your hair strand), making your hair even more susceptible to damage and breakage.”

2. It affects your hair’s protein.
   “The temperatures reached during heat styling can alter the structure of keratin, the protein that gives your hair its strength and elasticity.” Translation: The core makeup of your hair fiber is altered to be weaker, which leads to more breakage, split ends, frizz, and tangles.

Hair Hero

Nourishing Hair Oil

Formulated with buriti and algae oil, Hair Hero tames frizz and tackles split ends, heat damage, and environmental stressors.

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Signs Of Heat Damaged Hair

Heat styling causes very visible damage to your hair. Which makes you more likely to rely on heat styling to keep your hair on its best behaviour. Which then leads to more damage. Some of these visible signs include:

• Dullness: Hair colouring is a science and, unsurprisingly, high temperatures will disrupt this science. By lifting the hair cuticle, the dye molecules can escape, accelerating colour fade. Not to mention, the toners your hairdresser so kindly concocts to get you that perfect shade are particularly sensitive to high temperatures. Heat styling can essentially ‘strip’ these toners to mess with your overall hair’s colouring.

• Dryness: Back to that lifted cuticle, while your dye molecules are escaping, so is moisture. High temperatures also strip away your hair's protective natural oils and lipids (think of these like your skin barrier). When they’re eroded, even more moisture can evaporate from inside the hair shaft.

• Split ends: The lack of moisture, the damage to your cuticle, and the changes to your protein causes splitting and splintering. Once it’s split, your hair can’t be fused back together, leaving it looking less smooth and shiny until your next haircut.

• Frizz: After all this, your hair will likely also experience frizziness too, thanks to loss of moisture, cuticle damage, and reduced elasticity and strength.

How To Add A Heat Protectant To Your Routine

Courtesy of the great scientists creating hair products these days, you can often find a hair styling product with a heat protectant already built in. 

“When formulating Hair Hero, we knew we wanted to follow the lead of its predecessor, Face Hero, and create an all-in-one type of product. Something that could nourish and soften both wet and dry hair, while providing effective heat protection,” explains Laura. “We developed a formula of conditioning agents that work to protect your hair from heat whilst also smoothing and strengthening.”

“These ingredients make Hair Hero perfect for days when you’re heat styling your hair, and just as perfect when you’re air-drying.”

Receipts! Timelines! Clinicals!

Naturally, we put our heat protectant (and nourishing hair oil) Hair Hero through its paces to ensure it actually protects your hair against heat damage. 

Here’s what the lab had to say: 

Hair Hero is clinically proven* to:

• shield the hair fibre during heat styling

• protect against heat damage and heat-related weakening.

• leave hair 22% stronger after heat styling

• reduce colour fade by 40%

*Compared to untreated control hair after one application and thermal shock at 232°C in an ex vivo study of 10 hair tresses.