What is Hair Porosity? And How To Do The Porosity Test?

Hello girls, today we will talk a little about hair porosity; If you have been in the curly and afro world for some time, you will surely know what we are going to talk about and if you don't know, then I invite you to read the details that I will give next.

Surely you have already heard someone say: “this mask is for high porosity” or “this mask is for low porosity” and you remain in the air as if wondering what they are talking about…

The porosity of the hair is the way in which your hair absorbs and retains hydration and depending on how the cuticle of your hair is, it can be of three types:

• Low porosity
• Mean porosity
• High porosity

Low Porosity: is when the cuticle is very closed, which prevents moisture from entering and when it enters, it does not come out easily, which is why the hair takes many hours to dry. Although this type of porosity hair is healthy, it tends to suffer a lot from dryness, so it is not recommended to use proteins, since proteins are for sealing and this porosity does not need it.

For the care of low porosity hair, you should use moderate heat to make the cuticle open and thus enter the hydration and when you wash your hair do it with lukewarm water and the last rinse with cold water or room temperature and It is recommended to use natural oils to moisturize such as olive oil, almonds, argan, coconut, among others. You must use products where the main ingredient is water and that do not have proteins of any kind.

Medium Porosity: this type of porosity is the one that we should all have since it has the perfect balance where the cuticle is slightly open which allows hydration to enter and stay without much effort . For care you can use your products normally and you can use proteins once a month or every two months, so the cuticle stays in balance.

High Porosity: In this type of porosity, the hair has a cuticle that is too open, which means that hydration is not maintained, since when it enters easily it also comes out easily, that is why we must use proteins ( such as egg, oatmeal, rice, milk, yogurt, ect.) to seal it and keep it.

This Porosity must be very careful since the hair has suffered damage by heat, chemicals or external agents. Proteins are the best ally of this porosity and we must use cold water when washing the hair and not use heat.

POROSITY TEST:

To do the porosity test you should only wash your hair with shampoo that has sulfates, since the strand must be very clean and without any product, then take one or two strands of hair before adding the conditioner and put the strands to dry. When they are dry, place the strands in a glass full of water and do not touch it so as not to damage the test, now just wait between 5 to 10 minutes and the result will be your type of porosity.

• If it remains floating you are low porosity
• If your hair is in the middle, you are medium porosity
• If your hair sinks to the bottom you are high porosity.

This was my porosity test and as you can see my porosity is medium/low

I hope this helps you identify your porosity, in the next article I will be sharing some masks for each type of porosity.