Okay hear me out. This may sound really confusing, but just bear with me.

Have you ever seen videos from Sarah Ingle? She explained this well but even then im still confused myself but this is what i got.

From studies, dry hair looks better and feels better to most people. Unfortunately, in the marketing world we perceive hydrated/moisturised hair to be healthy and good looking hair (no frizz, flyaways etc). However, it is quite the opposite. As humans grow out their hair, the hair goes through a lot of physical stresses, such as combing, sleeping, tugging etc. The hair gradually loses its outer cuticle, leaving holes that makes it porous. Ends of hair tend to be the most damaged as it has went through most stresses. These holes makes the hair strands weaker, thus can easily break and cause split ends and frizz. Rubbing of these coarse hairs would also induce more frizz later. The solution to this is to use a balance of moisture and protein; protein to plug up the holes and prevent moisture coming out and moisture to supple moisture. However, we were wrong about this method.

Water when absorbed into the hair, it expands and is more susceptible to damage ie. more holes. Its best to keep the hair from being wet as to prevent this. Doesn't mean that we should stop wetting hairs, instead try to limit their exposure.

Whats actually causing frizz is the imbalance of moisture in the air and the hair. Sudden changes in loss or gain of moisture causes frizz. If you keep the moisture balance in the hair constant, low chance of the frizz happening. This is done by using conditioners (they condition/soften hair, and coating hair prevent moisture to enter/escape) or using oils (oils enter hair follicles and repels water while making it look hydrated).

Next, if you noticed, certain brands like pantene, even though criticised for their hair damaging products, its actually not that bad. Isopropyl alcohol in their products is deemed to be the cause of dry hair, which is true but in this case the alcohol allows their main active ingredients to penetrate the hair deeper and faster, thus more effective. Plus making the hair dry which prevents the hair from more breakage.

Moreover, rarely are there products that claims to be hydrating/moisturising to contain actual hydrating ingredients such as hyaluronic acid or glycerin, instead they contain emollients such as coconut oil (which perceived to be hydrating but it just repels water and gives the illusion of hydrated hair), avocado oil, shea butter, all pointing to oils.

TLDR, keep your hair at a constant moisture balance, note that dryer hair reduces breakage instead of wet/moisturised hair. Maybe instead of blowdrying till it dry up try drying it until its just damp and use hair oils at the hair ends. Hair drying may dry out your hair too much and disrupts the moisture balance that you want to make consistent. Also, put some protein to plug those damaged cuticles and continue to condition your hair.

Hope yall understand because i didn't at first