If a swim cap is supposed to protect your hair, why does water get under it so quickly? Although necessary, a swim cap isn’t the be-all and end-all when it comes to protecting your hair from chlorine.

There are other things you can do to keep this corrosive chemical from attaching itself to your hair. Read along as we define chlorine damage, discuss how to protect your hair and offer some product choices that can help.

What is Chlorine Damage?

To know how to protect hair from chlorine damage, it’s important to first understand what chlorine damage is and what it can do to your hair. Every time you swim in a pool without properly protecting your hair, chlorine bonds to the protein in the outermost sheath of your hair, the hair cuticle. Chlorine then dissolves this protective layer and damage takes place.

The effects are cumulative and depend on your exposure. So if you spend a long time in the water or swim frequently in a chlorinated pool, you might have more damage than someone who takes an occasional dip. Exposure to chlorine can result in:

• hair that’s overly porous and from which moisture enters and exits too quickly.
• dry hair that feels like straw
• hair that loses its elasticity and easily breaks
• damaged hair that splits form mid-shaft and at the ends, just by combing and brushing
• fading hair color
• chemically treated hair absorbing more chlorine, as it is even more porous than non-chemically treated hair
• a greenish hue to the hair due to metal residues in swimming pools reacting with chlorine

If you continue to swim unprotected, the chlorine will attach to the protein in the inner sheath and begin to corrode it as well. Once that happens, you could have hair breakage and hair loss. To avoid all these signs of chlorine damage from happening, it’s important to stop the chlorine from bonding to the hair.