The Beauty Denominator

In school you will learn the chemistry of shampoos, conditioners, perms, relaxers, haircoloring, and cosmetics. You’ll learn about peptides and polypeptide chains, about sulfur bonds, hydrogen bonds, and disulfide bonds. It wont be in depth, but it will be enough to make you pay attention so you will understand what happens to the hair when chemicals are used.

Peptide bonds are chemical bonds that form a chain as long as your hair and these are the strongest bonds in the cortex, the amino acids join together end to end to form this chain and that is what gives hair it’s strength. When a few bonds are broken the hair becomes weak and damaged and when the hair starts breaking off that means that a lot of those bonds were broken.

That brings me back to the subject I was posting about yesterday and the protein-silicone copolymer Keravis which is a trademark of Croda Inc. (International Nomenclature of Cosmetic Ingredients) or the INCI name is (Hydrolyzed Vegetable Protein PG-Propyl Silanetriol) and since the molecular level is low it makes it easy to penetrate the cortex and the larger molecules then coat the cuticle thus giving hair fibers more strength to resist breakage.

Croda is a large supplier of specialty chemicals to pharmaceutical and cosmetic companies to name a couple and they are noted for their contributions to the ethnic hair care ingredients that have furthered relaxer technology. I did a lot of relaxers in school and I hated all the damage I saw so I really appreciate these efforts. I really enjoyed checking out all of their products and the uses for each one.

There was a flexabrasion test performed between Keravis and D-Panthenol (Provitamin B5) which is widely used in shampoos to help strengthen the hair and combat split-ends and it has been proven less effective than Keravis as a hair strengthener. The hair gets really weak when exposed to humidity so it was also tested under increasing levels and once again it was proven to have strengthened the hair whereas D-Panthenol did not.

The flexabrasion tests were designed to assess the fatigue lifetime of a strand of hair through bending, straightening and abrasion (like rubbing the hair against each other) using special equipment the tests were performed using bleached hair and it was shown Keravis actually tripled the strength. This is very exciting because I simply can’t tell you how many people totally destroy their hair and then they seek help, but sometimes it’s just too late.

Keravis is highly recommended for reducing the damaging effects of chemical stress especially bleaching, but also coloring and perms and environmental stress that we incur on a daily bases. I saw today that Elizabeth Arden has a mascara out that incorporates Keravis in the formulation now that might be worth a try because my eyelashes definitely need some strengthening.

Also I saw that Italy is actually using Keravis + Titan in cookware to make a hardened PTFE, which is a versatile polymer, polytetrafluoroethylene and it actually allows the inside and outside to become exceptionally tough and will keep the non-stick on longer. It amazes me the uses for this product and I’m sure if I look a little harder I will find a lot more. Well, I think I have probably strained your eyes enough if you made it this far so I’ll shut this down.

To learn more about Keravis you can visit www.crodausa.com/datasheets/FeatureArchive/PCFeatureKeravis.htm