Shampooing strips hair of natural oils. Brushing? Hair to snap at dry ends or tangles cutting strands midway up their length. Heated styling tools boil moisture inside the cuticle creating blisters which pop leaving craters behind. Bleach and peroxide chemically puncture into strands leaving super-elastic, spaghetti hair.

The grim tales of daily hair taming are not, thankfully, the full story. Natural oils brushed down from the scalp can help the cuticle recover, hair treatments, serums, conditioners, salon Olaplexs, Wellaplexs, the many other plethora of miracle plexs, and an increased awareness of what a kinder routine may look like, can all contribute to longer living locks.

A damage-repair cycle muddies the waters in knowing for sure what condition hair is in. Here are four at home tests to know for certain.

Porosity.

Imagine a hair strand as a cylindrical pipe. Inside this cylinder are round balls. The balls are colour pigment. To create a lighter canvass for the colour that's entering (permanent colour) or to remove the most colour pigment (bleaching) holes have to be chemically punched along the pipe for the colour pigment to seep out, and in the case of colouring, to push colour inside.

This kind of damage will last two to three months before significant recovery and is why hairdressers will recommend this wait time between bleaches. The more of a follicular swiss cheese your strands are, the more moisture they absorb, leading to frizz, tangling and snapping.

Pluck a single strand of dry, freshly washed hair from your head and drop it into a glass or bowl of water. If it floats you have low porosity hair. If it sinks you have high porosity hair.

If, like mine, it bobs for a bit, goes under and then ten minutes later decides to resurface for air, don't worry, there's a second test you can do.

Take a strand of hair and slide two fingers up its length towards the scalp. If it feels grainy with small, coarse bumps, the cuticle is lifted and you have high porosity, the less bumpy - the lower the porosity.

If hair is very porous it will be safer, if considering a colour or texture change, to wait 2-3 months dedicating that time to mummy-ing your hair with moisturising and repairing treatments to starve off snapping hair strands.

Elasticity.

Consider when you brush your hair or run your fingers through it, does it snap, tangle and pop?

Take a strand of hair at either end and gently stretch it out. If it increases to around fifty percent its original size before breaking in two, you have healthy elasticity. If it snaps at the right away (brittle) or stretches with very little effort, think "Bleaching my Hair Gone Wrong" YouTube videos, you have poor elasticity.

Low elasticity hair requires a strengthening treatment, look out for products with keratin or for a splurge look into a restructuring, bond repairing treatment such as Olaplex, Wellaplex, QUINOAPLEX R3, Schwarzkopf Fibreplex or any other plex.

Split ends

Take a lock of your hair twisting it between your fingers and inspect the ends. If single strands have omebically began to divide into two, sometimes three, you have split ends.

This is a problem because once they begin to divide they will continue to split up the shaft until snapping off leaving a much shorter strand. Reluctance to take an eighth of an inch trim every three months can lead to split ends creeping up and splitting off leaving overall shorter hair. Although the trim feels counter intuitive its actually preventing shorter strands in the long term allowing each strand to grow as long as possible.

If you find you have split ends it's time for a trim. Gentler handling of hair can help prevent split ends developing to begin with, limiting styling tools such as allowing hair to air dry and beginning brushing from the ends of the hair for more control when de-tangling allowing a smoother passage of the brush can also help.

Moisture and Shine.

Purchase a deep conditioner, lather it on your hair, wrap your hair in cellophane (cling film), leave it for a minimum of half an hour. If once washed and dried it still lacks shine and the ends are noticeably dry then hair is chemically damaged.

If you have ever had truly damaged hair you'll know, it feels like straw, has a lot of volume, dries unruly in record time, can snap at the touch and tangles constantly. When hair becomes this damaged there are two possible roads for it's future: snapping off close to the scalp normally with a lot of shedding in the shower or eventual recovery many months down the line.

The treatment? Stop shampooing your hair. Shampoo removes excess oil and dirt from the scalp but in this scenario, the hair and scalp have been stripped to a point where these need to build back. The natural oils produced by the scalp, known as sebum, will re-nourish the cuticles. If the hair can withstand it gently brushing these oils down, also massaging the scalp, will help oils down the strand's length and limit build up at the roots.

Ideally shampooing would be limited to once a week followed by a sulphate free conditioning, deep conditioning, wrapping hair in a towel to allow the heat from your head to help it penetrate and then a leave-in oil. A bond restructuring plex will help some but for severe chemical damage it’s time and patience.