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A hair dryer that overheats can cause more than a few bad hair days. Tresses exposed to the too-hot air of a clogged dryer will form gas bubble - cavities in the hair shaft - that are actually an early stage of combustion. The result? Kinky, brittle and unmanageable hair. Some doctors initially thought these cases of "bubble hair," as it's dubbed, were caused by trauma to the hair, combined with a genetic defect. "But new research shows that overheating damages the hair shaft, no matter how healthy it is," says dermatologist Susan Detwiler of the University of North Carolina Medical Center at Chapel Hill. Dr Detwiler had one patient with terrible patches of dry, unruly hair near her scalp. The woman didn't have a perm, swim regularly in a chlorinated pool or use hot rollers. She did, however, use a hair dryer twice day. When Detwiler examined the styling device, she discovered that it was clogged with matted hair, causing the air coming from it to reach a temperature of roughly 580°, compared with about 300° in unclogged dryers. Detwiler went on to expose hair from 16 adults, a cat and three dogs to high heat. She found that all the samples formed gas bubbles when the temperature climbed above 350°. |