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The outer layer of the hair consists of overlapping scales, called cuticles. These cuticles are like the shingles on the roof of your house—they protect what’s beneath it. As your hair is damaged from washing and drying and combing and brushing and perming and coloring, the cuticle starts to wear away. When this happens, your hair is broken more easily.

Conditioners strengthen hair in two ways. The most important thing they do is smooth the cuticle and help keep it in place. The “strengthening” effect can be shown by measuring combing force. The other effect is internal. Some ingredients, like panthenol, penetrate into the cortex, the middle part of the hair. By interacting with the proteins in the cortex, these conditioners can improve the tensile strength of hair. This type of strength is measured with an instrument that pulls on individual hair fibers (after they’ve been removed from your head, of course!) and measures how much force it takes for the hair to break.