May 2002
Dear Paula,
I have seen several ads for hair dryers that claim to produce something called ionic conditioning. What in the world is ionic conditioning?

Caroline, via e-mail

Dear Caroline,
According to the companies who market these hair dryers, they are intended to produce millions of extra positive ions (the very thing that all hair dryers produce anyway and that are supposedly unhealthy for you!). Purportedly, the research (unpublished by the way and unavailable for scrutiny) indicates that if you dry an individual's head with a regular hair dryer on one side and then use a positive ionic dryer on the other side, the side dried with the ionic dryer will almost always be shinier, softer, and smoother. The claims continue by explaining that using the ionic dryer will help eliminate frizz and flyaway ends. Finally, to clinch the sale, an ionic dryer is supposed to work faster than your everyday garden variety blow dryer by tightening the cuticle layer of the hair, causing it to look better.

Hair does have chemical bonds that are more accurately called ionic bonds. Not surprisingly, ionic bonds occur between ions. Ions and ionic bonds are relatively simple to understand, if you know that ions are molecules that have small electrical charges. These charges are positive (called a cation) or negative (an anion) and they either repel or attract each other. Opposite charges attract and similar charges repel. Hair has a negative electrical charge and so is attracted to things with a positive charge. Hair becomes flyaway when positive ions (static electricity) are conducted through the body (electricity can pass through people) and build up. The negatively charged hair responds by standing on end when the positive charge moving through the body and out the top of the head. If you diminish or eliminate the static charge flowing through the hair, your hair will calm down. If the surrounding air is cold (or you have the hair dryer set on “cool”), the second you shuffle over the carpet or some other fabric, static electricity will be generated again, and your hair will react as if you had never used the ionic blow dryer. At best, these can make hair temporarily smoother and less frizzy, but there are too many variables beyond our control to sustain this effect. Ionic hair dryers are an option, but their claims are based more on enticing marketing than on scientific reality.