You’ve been coloring your hair since forever, maybe even dabbled with a perm or two!
And now when you look in the mirror the once smooth and defined tresses are much more frayed and damaged. But you cannot and will not stop. So how can you bring your hair back to life?
With unprocessed or virgin hair, the hair cuticles lay flat with no visible damage. All hair types (natural, curly, fine, straight, etc.) derive most of their integrity from healthy, properly paired, disulfide bonds. Disulfide bonds give your hair its elasticity and strength. But when hair is damaged via thermal, chemical, mechanical or environmental factors, these disulfide bonds are broken apart resulting in single sulfur hydrogen bonds. Left broken apart, the keratin starts breaking down. But if you can reconnect the bonds, strength and hair integrity is restored.
So, what can I do?
Besides letting your hair go au naturel, there are definitely some reparative products available, so don’t distress. Olaplex or K-18 to the rescue!
Olaplex
Your hairdresser may have provided an Olaplex treatment by mixing salon strength Olaplex into all colors and lighteners to lessen the damage caused by these services. At home, you can continue repairing your hair with additional Olaplex product. Olaplex restores the damage by repairing from the inside out. It will repair all types of hair damage, including that from high levels of heat from the hot tools you use.
Every time you use Olaplex you provide your hair more resilience and strength.
K-18
There’s also another brand available to you called K-18 Mask. It also works by reforming the disulfide bonds and reconnecting the keratin chains in damaged hair. But K-18 is more of a permanent treatment and doesn’t wash out during the shampoo process as does Olaplex.
When we wet our hair and shampoo the hydrogen bonds break, however, they reset when the hair is dried. For K-18 to work, the hair needs to be shampooed and wet (hydrogen bonds - broken) so the cuticle is open, creating an entrance portal to the inner structure of the hair.
The K-18 can then travel into the hair and release the amino acids. Once in the hair the amino acids work like a transplant, re-linking and repairing the broken keratin chains and disulfide bonds, in turn restoring hair back to almost virgin-like quality! K-18 then remains in the hair, no rinsing out and no conditioning, sealing itself inside the inner structure of the hair as it dries. K18 is designed to be used consecutively for 6 washes and then every 3-4 washes to maintain your healthiest hair possible.
If you use styling products while the hair dries, you just need to give K-18 4 minutes to activate. Then you can add products to achieve the finished style.
Both Olaplex and K-18 provide amazing results when you want to heal your hair at home.
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