Re: Question for Professionals
Posted by Catherine Cartwright Jones on March 18, 1998 at 04:17:33:
In Reply to: Re: Question for Professionals posted by Leesa Hejazi on March 14, 1998 at 14:47:56:
I think exposure to sun and tanning may not be the right cues as to
where henna is going to take well...I spent awhile with a technical
book on skin this morning in search of a better understanding of how
henna takes..... I'm going to run through it here WITHOUT the medical
terms for all the bits, hope it helps EVERYONE in their search for the
holy grail of henna....
There's a lot of layers to skin...the layer henna acts on is the
outer layers, which are replaced every 4 weeks or so. These layers
are largely deceased, and there are new cells growing under them all
the time, and as the outer layer scruffs off, the new ones move up.
There are areas where this layer of recently deceased skin is very
thick...palms, heels, soles, elbows, cuticles, ...you know the
spots.(think of the palces you can scrape yourself without bleeding .
That is where henna sinks in deeply and lasts for a long time.
The more hostile your environment, (we're talking desert, and a
difficult, rural, agrarian life here) the more likely you are to have
more of your body with this protective layer, and the thicker the
layers of same are on your hands and feet. We pumice our heels, and
lotion our hands...we don't have lots of nice dead skin for henna to
grab hold of. Fingernail and hair are the same dead cells, just a bit
more specialized. Henna takes there just fine.
Some of the crashing failures I've had in henna were tries at
hennaeing tanned, lotioned skin. Hopeless. Exposure to skin isn't
exactly the cue to good henna results.....it's the buildup of layers
of recently deceased skin. (remember, you can pumice off a whole shoe
size of your heels without bleeding, and your hair or nails bleed
won't when you cut them....they're dead.)
Therefore when you run your fingers over a clients (or your) skin
before hennaeing, feel for the thickness of that top layer...it feels
different...the back of my hand has such a thin top layer, even the
best hennaeing won't stay a week... there's just not enough stuff to
bind to (I'm older, with the typical thinning skin of the post
menopausal). Close your eyes and feel all over your hand...feel the
different depths of the skin? That's the cue to where the henna is
going to happen.
There's also the secret to henna's use as a sunblock....the melanin
procucing cells are 2 layers below where the henna is darkening the
skin...acting like a little umbrella over the melanin!
Where did I get the deepest and longest lasting henna? A goatskin
drum head! It's lasted years without any change!
- Re: Skin Cietta 15:59:34 4/07/98
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