If you've noticed changes in your hair recently, it's not just your imagination. Lots of things can change the texture of your strands through the years. Over time, it's possible for your hair to become more curly, straight, thin, or coarse.
The bottom line: Several factors can change the color and texture of hair throughout your lifetime. They include stress, chemical hair treatments, heat styling, genetics, aging, medical conditions and illness. and pregnancy.
Over time, your hair may become curly, straight, thin, or coarse. Many things can make hair change texture.
An increase in androgens in females can actually change the shape of the hair follicle from round to flat and this can instigate a change in texture from straight to curly.
Perhaps, you have noticed that your natural hair has become curlier, straighter, thinner, or coarser over time. As you grow older, your natural hair is bound to change. Stress, diet and hormonal differences can also cause changes in your natural hair texture.
Lots of traits are statistically rare: Left-handedness (just 10 percent of the population!), curly hair (11 percent!), and blond hair (4 percent!), to name a few. But of the more than seven billion people on the planet, only 2 percent can claim to have this one special trait.
A single hair has a normal life between 2 and 7 years. That hair then falls out and is replaced with a new hair. How much hair you have on your body and head is also determined by your genes. Nearly everyone has some hair loss with aging.
Hormonal changes like pregnancy, puberty or menopause can cause your curl pattern to change drastically. The shape of your hair follicles defines your curl pattern and texture, so when your body goes through a major hormonal overhaul, it can also change the shape of your follicles, thus changing your curl pattern.
As you age, your curls can loosen, change their shape or even form new curl patterns due to hormonal and environmental factors. Or maybe you're experiencing curly hair for the first time in your life as your aging locks change the shape of your hair follicles.
If you have curly hair and have ever brushed through it, you'll know it can really easily become a frizz ball. However, many women with looser curl patterns are just discovering that their hair isn't actually frizzy, it's curly and they've just been treating it wrong.
Hair changing from straight to curly often indicates a hormonal shift within the body. Factors like menopause, pregnancy, puberty, and even taking birth control, can have a drastic, switching effect on your hair's texture. Hormonal changes alter how your genes are expressed, so changes here can make a big difference.
When your hair is dry, frizz can happen when it absorbs moisture from the environment. Even for healthy hair, high humidity environments can lead to frizz when your hair absorbs excess moisture where an anti-frizz moisture hair barrier spray can help. Over-styling damaging the hair cuticle and causing frizz.
4c hair type has the tightest curl pattern of all the curly hair types. Strands are formed in tight, springy, ringlets. 4c hair tends to clump more at the ends and is even more prone to shrinkage than 4b hair. According to CURLS, 4c hair can shrink up to 75% of its length!
There are two ways to train your curls: finger coiling or twisting strands of hair together. This is a personal preference; experiment and do what works best for you! I usually leave the deep conditioner in my hair for 45-60 minutes. I found that it is best for me to use a protein treatment.
Focusing on curls that look particularly warped or dry, use your fingers to re-twirl or slightly scrunch them until they bounce back into shape. If your second day curly hair feels really dry, add a light spritz of a leave-in conditioner before layering on your oil and finger coiling.
3A hair is made up of well-defined and springy curls that have a loopy, “S” shaped pattern. Their circumference is the size of a piece of sidewalk chalk. 3A ringlets have a fine to medium texture. This curl type benefits from lots of body and movement, but is prone to frizzing and dryness.
In Your 20's
Overuse of heat tools or over-processing hair (say if you're a chronic dye-er) can make it dry, brittle, and prone to breakage. "Hormones also play a large role in hair texture at this age," she adds.
"Hair grows on average a half an inch per month on all types of hair," Pullan says. "If you have hair that is six inches long, the ends are a year old. And if you have shoulder length hair, that means it's two years old. And that alone ages hair and dries it out," Pullan says.
The life cycle of the hair
The life cycle of a hair can be broken down into three phases: anagen, catagen and telogen. A hair is renewed 25 to 30 times in our life span, with an average cycle lasting around five years. As this comes to 125 years in total, we ought to have full heads of hair for our entire lives.
Type 1A hair is very straight and fine, with no hint of wave or curl. As it is so straight and fine, when the natural oils travel to the ends, it tends to cause it to look like oily hair. It is the rarest hair type and is common among women of Asian descent.
Hair type 1A is super-straight. It doesn't even hold a curl! 1A is the rarest hair type. It is usually found on people of Asian descent.
Natural red hair is the rarest hair color in the world, only occurring in 1 to 2% of the global population. Since red hair is a recessive genetic trait, it is necessary for both parents to carry the gene, whether or not they themselves are redheaded.
Type 5 hair typically refers to natural, multi-textured hair with a mixture of frizz and curls within its fine strands. In its natural state, you'll find that type 5 hair ranges from loosely coiled to tightly coiled, usually with S or Z-shaped curls that would typically fall under the 3A to 4C hair type categories.
Compared to silkier hair African-American hair contains more lipids, or fats, but the lipids are less bonded which is why the hair loves oils so much. Along with that, the follicle size is much thicker and it has a flattened elliptical cross section causing it to be curlier than other hair types.