Wednesday, May 4, 2011

...AND as Biggie once said AND if YOU don't KNOW NOW YA KNOW ....YA KNOW...Ya know!!!:)

Let’s begin by briefly reviewing the chemistry behind your curlicious curls. You are born with either naturally curly hair, or straight hair (or wavy). The amount of curl, wave, or lack thereof, is dependent on the number of disulfide bonds between hair proteins found in the hair shaft; the greater the number of links, the curlier the hair, and the fewer the number of links, the straighter the hair.

Hair is primarily composed of keratin, a protein, which grows from the follicle. Keratins, and other proteins, are formulated in the cells of the hair follicle. All of the proteins become a part of the hair shaft and contain sulfur atoms. When two sulfur atoms pair up and bond, they form a disulfide bond. If the two sulfur atoms in the same protein are at a distance, and join to form the disulfide bond, the protein will bend. This is how your curls are created.
Andre Walker,Oprah’s beloved hair stylist, created a broad-spectrum hair typing system that classifies various hair textures and breaks each hair type down into 4 types with added sub categories. I believe this chart is especially useful when determining what products to use for your hair texture. However, you must realize that this system has its limitations. First of all, most curly women and girls have at least 2 different textures of hair on their head…this chart does not address this variance. Also there are so many different sub categories that can be added to all of the curly sections categories that could and should go beyond A, B, & C. Nonetheless, I do believe it was the first and is the best classification available to date.

****Much thanks to curls.biz.com for this wonderful break down :) *****

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