The Shocking Reason Your Hair Tangles Easily & What To Do About It

Persistent tangles are annoying. If you want to be kind to your strands, these snarls can take forever to work through; aggressively brush through those knots, and you'll risk manual damage. 

Extra tangle-prone individuals may have what experts call high porosity hair, which means the outer layer of the hair (also called the cuticle) is more sparse than it is dense. This makes it absorb water quickly, dry faster, and, unfortunately, tangle easily, too. 

"It works like Velcro; if your cuticles start rubbing against each other, that creates one of the causes of tangles," says professional hairstylist Adam Reed, founder of Arkive Headcare. 

"Of course, this depends on the hair type and how the cuticles sits," he notes, so not everyone prone to tangles will have high porosity hair and vice versa—but it's definitely a common reason. 

Some folks simply have high-porosity hair as is, while others have strands that become more porous as they become exposed to damaging factors like UV rays, hair bleaching, chemical relaxers, and so on. 

So if your hair tangles easily, it might be due to the highly porous cuticle; so you should take extra caution when styling it, as it may be even more prone to breakage.

Anyone who gets tangles often knows the temptation to rip them out with a hairbrush and call it a day. However, many folks with tangle-prone hair also have high porosity strands, which means your hair is even more sensitive to breakage.