How Do Perms Work?

Video Transcript

"Hi, my name is Lauren and I am here to discuss how do perms work. First thing to know is that your hair is made out of keratin protein. Keratin protein consists of hydrogen bonds, salt bonds and disulfide bonds. Disulfide bonds are what predicts the texture of your hair, whether your hair should be straight or it be curly. What it is, is it's two sulfur atoms that look to attract towards each other. The farther apart those atoms are and the they need to come to get closer together the key to your curlier hair will be. If they are rather close to each other then your hair may only go in to a bit of a wave. If they're more far apart, it will as they attract, your hair will coil and will make your hair, your curl a lot curlier. Perms are basically the same concept. What it's doing is the solution that you put on for a perm after you wrap it in a rod, it is recreating your disulfide bonds and it is creating more disulfide bonds. The more disulfide bonds that you have within your hair, the curlier your hair can actually get. So when your hair is being permed and wrapped around the rods you are looking to create bonds. So you are breaking the proteins of your hair and then rebuilding them with your disulfide bonds that will give you a bit of more of that curl. And once you wash your hair, two days later, that curl will kick up because the water will help your curl actually and strengthen that bond. Remember when you do perm your hair not to wash your hair for the first two days. And that is how perms work."