March 2009 Archives

Since some of you may have some general questions lingering about permanent waving, I'll quickly go over some generalities that might some common issues:

Let us take a look at the basic chemistry of permanent waving (technically called the "redox" process) to understand how hair is permanently curled or waved.

The redox process has two basic phases: reduction and oxidation. During the reduction phase, approximately 20% of the hair's cystine bonds are broken into cysteine (or half cystine bonds). It is in this phase that the hair assumes its new configuration. In the oxidation phase, 80-90% of the broken bonds are reformed to lock in the new curl formations.

I recently received a request for more information about permanent waving, which I must admit, was a bit of a surprise since I haven't noticed many stylists performing the permanent wave service lately.

Avlon's permanent wave system is the Ferm Permanent Waving System, which consists of a 4-step system along with various maintenance products depending on the need.

I figured that it would be nice to start a mini-series on the topic and cover the topic more in-depth.

But before getting down to the chemistry of permanent waving, which is technically my favorite part, its probably a good idea to quickly go over the history of the permanent wave.

Trace elements usually get overlooked since thay have an average concentration of 100 parts per million in a sample, but it still is good to know for general knowledge purposes that even our human hair fibers contain certain trace elements such as sodium, potassium, magnesium, calcium, strontium, zinc, iron, manganese, mercury, cadmium, lead, arsenic, selenium, silicone, and phosphorous.

The overall amount of these trace elements is less than 1%, so there really is no need to start shaving your hair off. These elements may have been incorporated during the synthesis of the hair follicle and are embedded in internal compartments of the hair.

However, some of these same trace elements may also be on the surface of hair due to environmental pollution. During the straightening of curly hair fibers with No-Lye relaxers that consist of a mixture of calcium hydroxide and guanidine carbonate, hair fibers do adsorb significantly higher levels of calcium ions.

Washing the hair with hard water can also leave mineral deposits (such as calcium or magnesium) on the hair. In an instance like this, The KeraCare De-Mineralizing Wipes would be a good product to use after washing with the hard water, in order to ensure that the hair has been cleansed of mineral deposits.