Supergirl said:
SS,
I made this discovery for myself quite by accident. The only "pat" answer I've gotten on it was from my (now former) hairstylist. I noticed the reversion after using Joico K-Pak a few days after relaxing. Then my "chemical mind" began to hypothesize after my hair reverted. It did not revert all the way back to it's 100% unrelaxed state, but nevertheless it did revert. K-Pak contains hydrolyzed human hair keratin. I don't have to tell you what hydrolyzed means since you have a degree in Chemistry. (one of my favorite subjects!)
Girl, I wish I had a degree in chemistry! I am an American Chemical Society scholar though (shout out to the Rice ACS chapter and Mr. Hughes) . . . so almost
Supergirl said:
So, SS do you believe in relaxer reversion at all and if so what do you believe causes it?
I believe reversion can and does happen in a sense—but I don’t believe that wetting or protein replacement
causes it. Reversion is simply improper sulfide bond breakage from the initial relaxer that begins to show itself over time. It doesn’t matter when, or what you wash you hair with at that following the relaxer—if the bonds have not been sufficiently broken, your hair will appear to “revert.†When I say revert, I mean return to the level of initial bond breakage (or curl level) the relaxer left you with. If your hair was relaxed 100% and all appropriate bonds broken, you would see no ‘reversion’ at all. There would simply be nothing to revert to. But if your hair only experienced say 90% proper bond breakage, even though your hair appears to be a swinging, bouncing, shining 100% bond broken head of bone straight hair, that first wash (and subsequent others) is going to reveal your true 90% degree of straightness. Your hair will not go back any further than your initial degree of bond breakage. This sounds like what happened to you at the salon. Joico and the other much stronger treatments like aphogee are all still temporary fixes. They shore up weak spots and damage on the
cuticle which is why they don’t last forever. If even a treatment with the most miniscule human keratin protein complex could act on the cortical layer- their effects would be permanent and you would only need to do them once… and maybe touch up the newgrowth. I am weary of any product claiming it "gets to the core"-- being a consumer, you'd never ever know the truth behind it no matter how many figures they list on the bottle.
Now the water part is interesting. I agree with you on the wetting part, and the chemists at Alberto Culver confirmed that. They told me that relaxers destroy hydrogen bonds in the cortex along with disulfide bonds and it’s the hydrogen rebonding after introducing water to relaxed hair that makes it appear to "revert"--- but this only happens if there is improper disulfide bond breakage in the first place. In the relaxing process, hydrogen bonds can be reformed, but disulfide bonds can not. The hydrogen isn’t somehow going in and reforming the new straightened, weakened (disulfide) bonds to reproduce texture. The kink is still there, just temporarily smoothed. I think the water actually stabilizes your hair, and helps it return to normal inside (hydrogen bond wise) . . . and in doing so helps reveal your true level of disulfide breakage. But this is just me speculating too-- I'm sure there's alot more to it than that.
I really don’t think there is a “wetting too soon†though. If bond breakage is there, it is there. The bonds are already broken/weakened in the relaxing process once you've neutralized. There is no waiting for bonds to reform after the process is complete like you would for a curly perm. Now if you want your hair to remain in the straighter state longer, before you discover just how well your sulfide bonds were broken then yes hold off on a wash. If 100% of those bonds were broken, nothing will happen. If 70% were broken, you are in for a treat! But your true level of bond breakage is going to reveal itself eventually—whether you wash that day or 4 months from then. Hair with 100% broken bondage will never go back, no matter what you do. I’ve left the salon many times with hair that was bone straight—not a kink in sight. Until I got home and washed it.
I honestly believe that you cannot gauge the true success of a relaxer until after a few washes. This is when the true relaxed hair pattern emerges. But rebonding the hydrogen bonds does not affect your disulfide bonds or take you any further reversion wise than your disulfide bond breakage will allow- which is why you cannot “wash out†a relaxer. If even one or two disulfide bonds breaks- you’ll never get them back.
My hair is texlaxed, but you would never know it week one after the relaxer. It is after I have washed and dried it a few times that my pattern emerges. I know that my hair is not really relaxed bone straight, though it appears so. With all the precautions and oils and bases I load up on—there is no way my hair can come out bone straight.
So I enjoy it for like a week, and then comes the drama.
I really haven’t had the chance to really explore and internalize the ins and outs of where the hydrogen bonding issue fits into this though. The true mechanisms behind how simply wetting the hair brings out the true degree of “relaxed-ness†in and of itself fascinates me. And that means I need to get out more.
They are still separate processes, and seem to work in tandem.
Supergirl said:
I have another theory too about reversion. (I can only speak for lye relaxers on this too--I have not had a no-lye since 2000) I think that wetting the hair too soon after the lye relaxer causes reversion. I used to wait 2 weeks after relaxing to shampoo and condition at home. ('cause my hair would be so laid, I didn't want to mess up my style) But that was before joining LHCF. So in 2 weeks, I'd shampoo and go on about my business, no problem. But after joining LHCF and becoming healthy hair happy, I'd shampoo and condition 3-4 days after relaxing. I'd get reversion--even without using a heavy protein, after I discovered that. So I started waiting a week and not having any problems.
You also have to keep in mind that each relaxing experience is different and independent of the others. One touch up may yield 80% bond breakage while the subsequent one yields 100%-- its hard to say what going 2 weeks before the wash or going 3 days will do in either case because we have no way of knowing the degree of bond breakage until we wash. It is very hard to compare. It may be that you new, healthier LHCF cared for newgrowth was stronger and less resistant to your chemicals.
Or like me, the base started getting heavier and heavier.
On Shamboosie, I have never experienced the horrors of no lye relaxing nor have I seen or read any other evidence supporting his "locking" claims. Perhaps he meant a lye relaxer can be further broken down bond wise (corrected)-- I'm sure he didn't mean you could just put them back together again.
Supergirl said:
I know that with curly perms, one is to wait 72 hours before washing the hair. So if the results of the ammonium thioglycolate perm can be altered days after the procedure, but not weeks after the procedure then how come the same cannot be true for sodium hydroxide? I'm not being a pest either.
I am not too keen on curly perms, girl. I know they are a totally different chemical and work on the hair in a totally different way than sodium hydroxide or no lye relaxers do, rendering the two processes incompatible. From what I've found, in a thio perm, the hydrogen and disulfide bonds are broken just like with a relaxer--- but the disulfide bonds are physically reformed again with the help of the rollers and time. I’m thinking adding water at this point would affect the hydrogen and disulfide bonding and disrupt the hair from settling into its new curly state. I read that in these kinds of perms, the new curl pattern is actually held in place by the hydrogen bonds in the hair temporarily-- until the disulfide bonds completely reharden and reform. This seems to be why there is a waiting period. If you wash your hair and break up the hydrogen bonding before the permanent disulfide bonding kicks in—you’ll jack up the curl. In a relaxer, you aren't waiting for bonds to be reformed b/c their breakage is what you are after. Hey SG, thanks the super intelligent discourse girl
There is still so much to learn about all of these processes and its nice to see we are all taking steps to get a better understanding. Gotta love hair care girls and God bless the people who are reading through these winded posts!