Updated January 2023 By Dr Jonathan Palmer
How Hair Colouring and Perming Works
First, a little hair chemistry!
Hair comprises 65-95% protein, consisting of primarily cysteine-rich keratin fibres found in both the cortex and cuticle. Keratin is rich in the amino acid cysteine. Cysteine contains a sulphur atom on its side chain responsible for making disulphide bonds (bridges) with other cysteines. These disulphide bonds make hair strong and resilient to most daily hair routines, such as heating, brushing and washing.
Another essential type of chemical bond in hair is the hydrogen bond. These are easily broken by water but are naturally reformed without chemicals. Hydrogen bonding is relatively weak compared to disulphide bonds but is much more numerous.
What Curling and Perming does to your hair
Many curling and perming treatments use chemicals such as thioglycolate that easily break disulphide bonds. This breaking and subsequent reforming of these bonds reorganise both the molecular and macrostructure of your hair, resulting in your hair being permanently restyled.
Using thioglycolates has been shown to cause a lot of damage to your hair, leading to increased porosity, breakage, mid fibre splitting and frizz. Often a weak peroxide mix is used to neutralise the activity of the thioglycolate, which not only causes hair damage by itself and lightens your hair colour.
What permanent hair dyes do to your hair
Peroxides remove the colour (pigment) from your hair. The peroxides interact with the colour granules found within the cortex but have off-target effects (side effects) that disturb both the cortex and cuticle of your hair.
Peroxide-containing products are highly oxidative and so cause massive free radical damage to your hair.
Damage caused by perm, curling and permanent dye products on your hair is accumulative and permanent.
Are you worried about your hair? Maybe because it is regularly dyed or straightened, don’t worry, we can help. Think you have high porosity, split ends or frizz. Get the look you want and reduce the damage to your hair using our complete hair health and beauty analysis.
If you have any questions about your hair or hair testing then please feel free to contact us and we’d be happy to help.
Getting The Complete Hair Analysis is the simple way to discover how healthy your hair really is and, importantly, to get the right products and advice for your hair. Only then can you unleash your hair’s full beauty and health potential.
Our tests uncover and quantify hidden heat damage, increasing porosity, cuticle damage, hair abnormalities, and much more. This hidden damage can lead to hair shortening, frizz, and breakage, including dull, hard-to-manage hair.
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Knowing your hair porosity is one of the keys to unlocking your hair's beauty and health - so your hair can look its best.
Healthy, beautiful hair requires using the right products and haircare practices for your hair porosity. Using the right products will save money and significantly improve your hair's texture, bounce, and colour, reducing frizz and split ends.
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Discover your hair porosity and receive expert advice to help you get the beautiful hair you deserve.
Healthy hair is beautiful hair.
With our Hair Porosity Plus we also include amazing electron microscopy microscopy images of your hair! See your hair in a new way!
We ship worldwide, including the US and UK. You should receive your kit within 3-5 working days, depending on your location.