Relaxing News About Damaged Hair

EMBARGOED FOR RELEASE: Tues., Sept. 9, 4:00 p.m., PDT/7:00 p.m. EDT

For further information, contact:
Jim Bohning, 202/872-6041
Las Vegas Convention Center, N118
702/732-5868 (phone); 702/892-3262(fax)
Fri., 8/12: Phone: 702/774-0025
FAX: 702/774-0027

RELAXING NEWS ABOUT DAMAGED HAIR
How and why relaxers crack open the hair cuticle, and polymers that help prevent it

LAS VEGAS, Sept. 9 -- Whether you perm, straighten, style or just brush your hair, you're eroding its protective cuticle layer and, eventually, breaking hair strands. Now scientists have, for the first time, figured out the step-by-step chemical effect of hair relaxers on curly hair, leading to new uses for polymers to protect your hair. The new research was presented here today at a national meeting of the American Chemical Society.

Chemist Ali N. Syed, president of Avlon Industries in Chicago, says his research group found that hair relaxers do their work by breaking about one-third of the chemical bonds that twist strands into curls, usually by hydrolyzing them with a 2 to 2.4 percent emulsion of sodium hydroxide (NaOH). But an image analysis system allowed the chemists to find that the emulsion not only coats the hair but invades it, causing it to swell up to 50 percent more than its original size. During the rinse step, your hair swells yet another 20 to 30 percent because of a sudden surge of the osmotic pressure inside the hair.

That second, abrupt increase in diameter is the final straw, and it is at this point that most of the damage occurs, says Syed. The hair cuticle cracks and ruptures, creating hot spots of negative charges in its protein structure.

On learning the mechanism, Syed and his colleagues researched the literature to find polymers or other materials that could minimize the swelling. They found a group of polyamides that contain several (instead of the usual one) positively-charged groups along their polymer chains. Tests demonstrated the polyamides not only curbed the swelling and rupture, but also left a film that gave relaxed hair more shine and smoothness. The Avlon researchers believe the polymers act as a sort of restraining net: their many positive charges attach to various negative charges on damaged hair, and are even absorbed into the cortex of the hair itself. The company is marketing the technology as Affirm(tm) FiberGuard(tm) Relaxer System.

Men and women have experimented with hair-styling products for thousands of years. The first "sculpting gels" were extracted from seaweed or tree sap, such as karaya gum from India. Some of these early products are still in use today, but are modified to make them less heavy and more water-resistant. Modern research laboratories manipulate the length, bulkiness, charge, and other properties of polymers to mimic or enhance hair's own protective lipid layer. This covalently-bonded sheath, once damaged or lost, can be repaired temporarily by the ionic- or hydrogen-bonding polymers.

Paper COLL 34 will be presented by Dr. Wagdi Habib, Avlon's Director of Research and Development, at 3:30 p.m., Tues., Sept. 9, in the Convention Center, Room N117, Level One.

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The national meeting of the American Chemical Society, the world's largest scientific society, will be held in Las Vegas, Sept. 7 - 11. This paper is among 4,500 presentations that will be made.