Hot yoga and parched hair

Written by Shai Dhali, owner of Pome Hair Studio.

My hair today is wavy, silky, light and airy now that I don’t do hot yoga. I used to have hair like this 3 years ago before I started hot yoga classes. After that I had crunchy and dehydrated hair that was embarrassingly frizzy without product. I didn’t realize it was due to hot yoga classes until I met an extreme example.

The extreme case: A client complained her hair’s texture had changed. It felt rough and synthetic as if she had been at the beach and hadn’t washed the salt out of her hair for days. It was also snapping off and that wasn’t due to bleaching. After many questions, we connected the problem to her extremely hot yoga classes where she sweat so much a few times a week that it dripped off her hair onto her mat. After her classes, she waited to rinse out her hair at home instead of immediately at the gym, and when she did rinse or shampoo it, she didn’t use conditioner.

Here’s the problem: heat opens the hair cuticle and sucks out the moisture. Heat and exercise cause sweat and the sweat is salty; salt dries out the hair. For the woman with the extreme case, it meant that even the new hair growth that is usually the most supple, was parched; normally it’s just the ends of hair that are in the worst condition. Since she was reluctant to make changes, the most I could get her to do was to add a moisture rich conditioner to her home routine. She later reported back that her hair was no longer sucked dry to a synthetic state.

The Yoga Multi-Tasker

As an experiment, I put a deep-treatment cream in my own dehydrated hair during heated yoga classes. By the end of classes my hair was always bone dry, with or without the treatment, but the difference occurred after I rinsed out the treatment and my hair was supple.

So for my clients hooked on warmed/hot yoga, I recommend the deep-treatment creme as maintenance and protection in the heated yoga room because it’s non-greasy and very low-scented so it won’t bother others. (It has 80% naturally derived ingredients including argan oil and rice protein to restore elasticity.)

However, don’t expect it to repair what’s already damaged if you keep repeating the cycle like I used to do. The damaged hair never got a chance to improve for good because I kept going back to the heated yoga room each week. The treatment protected the hair from being parched but it didn’t get a chance to restore the lustre. (If you sweat a lot in extremely hot yoga this may not work for you because the conditioner could end up sweating onto your face and getting into your eyes.)

If you’re having dry hair problems not due to colouring, there are many reasons why it could happen. Please book an appointment for a hydrating treatment and we’ll also discuss ways to improve your hair. Details and Prices

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