Ugghh! Hair turning brown/red. It's damage right???

My hair always turned brown with red streaks and blonde around the edges in the summer...ever since I was a kid I've noticed it (since like 5th/6th grade) i didnt get a relaxer until highschool so i know thats not the reason....something about the sun just does it, in the winter is goes back to black...I never though my hair was damaged but it's interesting to find out that that may be a cause
 
This thread made me do some research. Found an article and it talks about how and why the sun make your skin darker, but lighten your hair. The article can be found here on a website called TheTechMuseum.org. One part of the article that intrigued me was this part

Similarly, the UV in sunlight oxidizes melanin into a colorless compound. This is why your hair gets lighter. Blond hair is really just colorless hair or hair with very little melanin in it.

But melanin isn't the only protein taking a beating in your hair. The sun is also clobbering other proteins making hair less manageable as well.

There is a chemical group on hair called a thiol. When thiols are unoxidized, the hairs slide easily across each other. When the sun oxidizes those thiols, it is a whole different story.

When a thiol group is oxidized to a sulfonic acid, the hairs tend to stick together more. So you get tangling that can't be repaired.

Once the thiols on hair have been oxidized to sulfonic acids, there's really no going back. All you can do is to treat the hair with conditioners and wait for new hair to grow in.
Click to expand...

So I guess in a way, as to answer the original question, your hair lightening can be a sign of potential damage. The sun is damaging protein in your hair including the color-producing ones (melanin) as well as the one's that help smooth your hair (thiols).


Maybe I should start wearing hats...
 
My hair was turning the same colour until one day I noticed my hair was the same colour as the bottom of my shower curtain! Lol!! , I live in a hard water area which has a high amount of rust from the high amount of iron in the water causing my hair and shower curtain to discolour. I started using a chelating shampoo once a month ( redken cleansing cream shampoo) and invested in a shower filter. My hair is much more manageable absorbs conditioner better so is more moisturised and the reddy brown colour has dramatically reduced. Hope this helps xxx
 
WOW! This thread is teaching me things I didn't even know. Sheesh............where would we be without the internet and LHCF? I had always known through word of mouth that relaxers turned your hair red but people simply acted like this was normal and pretty cool. Didn't know it was a sign of porosity and overprocessing. Thanks guys!!
 
My hair turns so red and brown... however I think that this is more natural than damage. I have brown hair (not black) so sun exposure does lighten/ make it red.
 
I live in FL and my hair was reddish/brown in areas. Those areas were the ones I struggled with most. It was very dry, tangly and hard to keep moisturized. I chopped ~3 inches a few months ago and my hair's health improved tremendously. I still have a small area of the reddish/brown hair remaining and plan to chop it gradually.

I previously heard and read that reddish/brown hair is said to be both a porosity issue and sun damage. Tbh, I'm unsure which is to blame. However, I don't feel that it was relaxer damage although I could be wrong. My hair isn't nearly as tangly as it once was since chopping those 3 inches.
 
My hair hair has a light brown/reddish tint to it. It's more pronounced at the ends. People sometimes ask me if i dye my hair. I've always attributed it to the sun because it gets lighter in the summer, and my hair is lighter on the top. The crown and nape are pretty dark, which are the areas that wouldn't see the sun much if i'm wearing my hair down or in a ponytial. I also have porosity issues, so maybe it's a combination of both.
 
Shoooooot! All this time I thought it was cute that the relaxer turned my hair a lighter brown! Well...ok....at 1st I thought it was some sort of fungus...gross?! I know! I knew it wasn't the sun cause I been wearing wigs 100% for almost 2 1/2 years now PLUS I didn't start seeing it until after wearing wigs 24/7; hence the fungus thought. Lol. So porosity huh? I'm ignorant when it comes to porosity so I'm going to have to do more research on what that means. Sigh....
 
For anyone whose hair is turning lighter due to relaxer getting on the ends u could try...

Firstly put a thick layer of Vaseline on the ends before relaxing. Per section hair because Vaseline makes it hard to part if huge sections are clumped together

And if during the relaxing process relaxer gets on the ends quickly slap on some neutralizing shampoo to that section of the ends to prevent processing.

I haven't been doing this for long but it seems like that shud work.

Ps: in high school my bang area turned COMPLETELY blond!! U complained to my hairstylist that I think I was getting over processed. She said " darling, you should be happy!! People pay me big bucks to get this color. Ur getting it for free!". Smh. And mind u I never officially cut bangs, my hair would just break off :smh:
 
When I went out west this past May, I used this spray in my hair. I bought it because I knew I'd been going through Texas, New Mexico, Arizona, and the Mojave Desert (that has to be what hell feels like...PURE TORTURE! :nono: )

92100.png


I was out in the sun for quite some time 4 days in a row, and I feel like it really helped to protect my hair. I sprayed it on my hair in the a.m. before going out, and mid-afternoon. It's very light and smells soooo good :spinning:

I used to get the dreaded brown hair, and some spots with red in it when I used to get a relaxer. The red showed up more when I used to flat iron my hair every day or had jobs working outside and didn't know anything about covering my head. Until I stopped relaxing, I never knew my hair was jet black. When I look at my hair under light, it looks dark brown now. My hair stylist said that you'll find a lot of dark-haired people whose hair is like that because that is the underlying pigment. Whatever. She also told me to comb my kinky hair every day. Heck no!
 
Bumping for additional input, feedback and thoughts on this topic. I'm still sporting a few reddish/brown areas. I will get rid of them gradually as posted upthread.
 
I personally like the red. I think mine is more of a natural color change from sun and I don't consider it damage. There are plenty of blonde girls I know with healthy thick hair. In winter their hair is a dirty blond but in summer it is a lighter Blonde with a bunch of highlights. I'm not worried about this at all
 
I still have it in my hair. I refuse to shave my entire head to get rid of it as well. *shrugs* I have porosity control & never use it. I may use it next week when I get my relaxer.
 
I am on the other end of the spectrum. I am natural and low porosity so my hair stays a reddish brown color because it does not stay hydrated. When my hair is hydrated it is a dark brown. As the water dries in my hair, my hair turns more red. It can look like two different heads within the same day or 2.

So the change in hair color can also come from dehydrated hair, which is related to porosity issues but not just high porosity.
 
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