Part 1 of 3
Science-y Hair Blog © 2011 by Wendy M.S. is licensed under CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 
I’ve long had questions about Olaplex and bond-building products. Some of you awesome blog readers do too, and asked if I would comment - but I could only speculate. I like to speculate - but it felt like grasping at straws because this is a new category of hair-care active ingredients without published research. ©Science-y Hair Blog 2024
Olaplex was developed by polymer chemists. The kinds of biopolymers I work with are damaged by the same things that damage hair. They can be repaired too, out in nature, but it takes quite an elaborate sequence of events to do that. ©Science-y Hair Blog 2024
NOW THERE IS RESEARCH! So I can finally write this post. It looks like more research is on the way.©Science-y Hair Blog 2024
By way of setting up the results, a little background:
Cosmetic Claims and Regulation
A cosmetic product can promise or suggest almost any benefit for a product with no regulatory consequences. It’s only when they claim to treat or cure a disease that the FDA (in the US, Food and Drug Administration) can step in. Cosmetics are neither foods nor drugs.
A product can claim to rebuild bonds in your hair whether it does or not. A bond-building product does not have to PROVE it rebuilds bonds, in order to SAY it does that.
Marketing stuff
Marketer: Dear consumer: You have broken bonds in your hair. More than just damaged, it’s broken. No product has ever existed that could fix it until now.
Consumer: What the #!*@ ?
Marketer: We can help, we have a product that rebuilds bonds in your hair.
Consumer: Take my money! ©Science-y Hair Blog 2024
At least, that’s what I learned in that one Marketing class I took!
I am being extremely cynical. Or am I? ©Science-y Hair Blog 2024
Science stuff
If you do all your work in a lab with carefully prepared chemicals, in a carefully controlled environment, you can hope for / expect a predictable result.
When we superimpose lab-controlled chemistry concepts on biological materials "in the wild" (you know - on your head), anything can happen. The thing you hypothesized would happen - may not happen. But you may still see a result. Just not the one you expected.
And that seems to be the story of hair bond rebuilders. A result, but maybe not the one promised. And maybe that's okay. ©Science-y Hair Blog 2024
So join me with a healthy dose of skepticism and optimism about bond-building products. And ultimately a happy ending for everybody involved.
The Bonds that Break
Your hair is a fiber, and just like string cheese or a natural-fiber yarn, it’s made of smaller fibrils. Down at the tiny level of proteins there are a few different bonds holding those microscopic proteins together. One of them is a disulfide bond - and that’s the one we're talking about. 2 sulfurs, bonded together in a protein helix.
What breaks Disulfide bonds?
- Permanent waves (perms)
- Alkaline relaxers
- Keratin straightening treatment/blowout
 |
| Chemically damaged hair. At center-top are cuticles lifting up and curled away from the hair. At the edges (fuzzy focus), cuticles can be seen standing away from the hair. |
- Highlights or bleaching
- UV light (sun exposure)
- Chlorine (swimming pools, chlorinated tap water)
- Excess stretching (pulling on hair)
- High heat styling (flat irons, curling irons)
- Permanent hair color
Is bond-(re)building a main priority?
Those now-broken bonds in hair cysteine can patch themselves up.
©Science-y Hair Blog 2024
They’re going to do that. Broken disulfide bonds = sulfide groups that want to reach out and grab something else to bond with (nucleophilic).
The promise of (some) bond-building products is that they will do this for you, leave nothing to chance, and avoid any damage from un-bonded cysteic acid. But do they?
Stay tuned for Parts 2 and 3 by signing up with Bloglovin for updates, (in the sidebar and below) or follow me on Facebook or Instagram.
References:
Chemical and Physical Behavior of Human Hair
Robbins, 1994. 3rd Ed. Springer-Verlag, New York
Barreto T, Weffort F, Frattini S, Pinto G, Damasco P, Melo D. Straight to the Point: What Do We Know So Far on Hair Straightening? Skin Appendage Disord. 2021 Jun;7(4):265-271. doi: 10.1159/000514367.
Hessefort Y, Holland BT, Cloud RW. True porosity measurement of hair: a new way to study hair damage mechanisms. J Cosmet Sci. 2008 Jul-Aug;59(4):303-15. PMID: 18818850.
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