How to Reverse Hair Relaxer

Video Transcript

"Hi, my name is Lauren, and I am here to discuss, how to reverse a hair relaxer. First, you need to know the signs behind hair relaxers, and how it actually relaxes the curl. Your hair is made out of keratin protein, as is the outer layer of your skin, and your nails. Keratin protein has three bonds, your hydrogen bond, your salt bond, and then your disulfide bond. Your disulfide bond is what is going to predict the texture of your hair, and how much curl you are going to have. Two sulfur atoms are going to attract towards each other. Those sulfur atoms are going to keep working their way towards each other, and then they're going to create a curl. The farther distance that those sulfur atoms need to travel, in order to reach each other, the curlier and kinkier your curl is going to be. It's going to be more of a spiral, because of the amount of coils it's going to take, and the hair is going to coil around itself. Hair straighteners ultimately break these disulfide bonds. They break down the bonds, and then they encapsulate each one of these sulfur atoms, with an outer shell, so that way they can no longer attract to each other, and wind up keeping your hair more like straight. The one thing with hair straightener, is once you break down these proteins, and then you build them back up, it is very hard and very damaging to actually bring them back to where they are. One thing that you can try to do, in order to reverse your hair straightener, is shampoo your hair before you are allowed to. You're normally supposed to wait about 48 hours, before shampooing your hair, or doing anything of that sort. Go home and shampoo your hair right away. I've also heard that olive oil is actually a very good thing, and can help do it. Ultimately, it will not bring your hair back to the texture that it was, because you have rearranged the protein bonds within your hair. The best way for you to get your hair back to its natural texture, is allow your straightener to grow out, get frequent trims every 4-6 weeks, in order to cut the remaining straightener off, and just allow your natural hair to come back in. If you wanted to re-perm your hair, in order to get your curl back, you could, however, I do recommend consulting with the stylist first, and making sure that your hair can undergo yet another chemical treatment, and that is how to reverse chemically straightened hair."