STYLE

Beauty

Feeling the burn? How to prevent and treat hair tool scorches

 

They say that beauty is pain, and that’s never more accurate than when you accidently burn yourself while doing your hair. Yeeouch.

The nasty burns typically occur on fingers and ears, but they're mostly just a painful annoyance — nothing too terrible. In some cases, though, a curling iron or straightener can do some serious damage. We rounded up a pain prevention plan to keep you ouch-free. (And in case you do get burned, we're here for ya with treatment tips.)

How to avoid getting burned:

1. Make sure to look when you’re picking up the iron. Grabbing it on the wrong side is the worst. But there is hope: some stores, like Sally Hansen and Sephora, now carry heat resistant gloves that you can wear while styling your hair to know for sure that your skin will be protected.

2. When you’re not using your hot tool, keep it in a heat resistant bag. That way, you can put it away right when you’re done and there will be no worries about you or your nosy siblings accidently burning themselves.

How to treat the accidental burns:

1. If you do happen to burn yourself, immediately run the burned area under cool (but not cold) water. This will ease some of the pain and help cool your skin. Do this for a few minutes at first, and then every 15 minutes or so until the pain has stopped and the burn has cooled down.

2. NEVER use ice for healing- it actually does more harm than good and can cause frostbite, which damages the skin even further.

3. After the skin has cooled, put alcohol-free lotion or aloe vera over the burn. This will help heal the skin faster. Typically, hair tool burns are small and won’t take long to heal, but you may want to put more lotion on for a few days afterwards to help the healing process move along.

Planning on following our pain prevention plan? Have any anti-burn tricks of your own? Let us know in the comments! 

POSTED IN , ,

by Alexa Matthews | 2/1/2016
share