Chemical treatment for hair straightening

The first question that you need to ask yourself is whether chemical treatment is something that you really want to do. This is because chemical treatments are first of all not a permanent solution to curly hair. They have to be reapplied as your hair grows and this will eventually damage your scalp and hair. You are in fact going to set yourself up for some very unhealthy hair if you follow the path of using chemicals to treat your hair. Since you mentioned that your hair is not completely curly and only slightly curly, you might want to consider other methods of hair straightening. Although you can use heat treatments to straighten your hair, these too would damage your hair after repeated uses. Mix a little lemon juice and some fresh coconut milk. Allow this to remain undisturbed in your fridge for three hours. After you do this, you will find that a thick creamy layer has formed at the top. Apply this cream to your hair and comb your hair gently o ensure that it spreads evenly. Wash your hair after about 30 minutes. Use this method regularly to tame your unruly locks.

Chemically treating your hair to be straight is done with a formulation called a hair relaxer. Understanding their method of action requires a little understanding about the chemical composition of hair. Hair is made up of one of the toughest protein structures in nature called keratin. This keratin is bonded by a disulfide bond in a cross-linked polymer structure, molecularly. What this does is ensure that all the molecules that make up hair are tightly bound and woven together. The presence of a disulfide bond is also the reason why hair smells so bad when it is burnt because of the combustion of sulfur from the hair.

Relaxers work by breaking down the disulfide bonds since the strength of these bonds control hair curl. Once these disulfide bonds are broken, there is nothing to keep the hair with the lattice and the hair falls straight. Some of the chemicals that relax the hair are highly alkaline and the first generation of hair relaxers were made of a substance called lye or sodium hydroxide. These had the power to burn the scalp if they came in contact with it. Subsequent generations of hair relaxers improved this to the point where the less toxic ammonium thioglycolate. Relaxers will cause serious damage to hair and is even know to be a cause of alopecia.