“Life is too short to have boring hair.”

My first blog post on Fashion Shell. Welcome you all and hope you will enjoy this post…

Why do you think that women’s hair is one of the most important part for her look?

We all will agree that women’s hair enhances her personality. Women’s hair is the most important part of her appearance because it is the first most noticeable part of her beauty. Basically, we all will agree that a bad hair day is just a bad day (Ruggeri, 2018).

Having a good hair is a way, you show the world that you take care of yourself.  It is natural that people tend to like people who take care of them self.

There is a deep personal relationship between hair and self-esteem. This is evident throughout history, philosophy and even from different religions (Ellery, 2014). Hence having a hair which matches personality is one of the ways that you can start been classy.

There are lot of things we can talk about hair. Women can have long hair, short hair, curly hair, straight hair etc. There is no specific hair style to be classy because you can be classy in your own way.

I’m a straight hair girl. Actually, my original hair is wavy but I’m relaxing my hair for the past 10 years. My hair is now longer than 45cm.  Because of this I understand how hard and expensive it is to maintain a hair.

After a long research I decided to do a keratin treatment at home by myself. Keratin treatment is also called as a “Brazilian keratin treatment” or a “Brazilian blowout.”

I checked on the price with my salon and they said the keratin treatment for my hair will cost around LKR28,000.00/-. All the Sri Lankans who read this will understand that this is a big price.  I informed them that I need this only to my hair roots which is about 2cm grown from the skull. However they said that the solution is expensive. The solution which they use is “Alfaparf”.

During my further research I understood that “Alfaparf Milano” is one of the good brands used by good salons in Sri Lanka and it is expensive.

When you do a keratin treatment the main 3 products you need is the Starting Shampoo, Fluid and the Mask.

First will check what is “Keratin”?

Keratin is a protein type that will help to make your hair, skin, and nails. Keratin is found in your internal organs and glands. Keratin can also be called as a protective protein, it is less prone to scratching or tearing than other kinds of cells that your body produces (healthline.com, 2018). Humans have at least 54 functional keratin genes, which are divided into type I and type II keratins (Genetics Home Reference , 2020).

How to do the Keratin Treatment at Home

In my search for a product; I found that “Alfaparf Milano” fluid is very expensive for personal use. They informed that the fluid itself is LKR24,000 for a bottle of 250ml or 500ml (I can’t recall the ml properly) and they didn’t have the home kit available.

Some YouTube videos said that it is not good to use the left over products later. Hence there was no use in buying the product in such large quantity as it is for my personal use. Then I found “KATIVA” keratin treatment home kit. This was LKR8,500.00/-. This contains the fluid / the treatment mask bottle of 150ml, Shampoo bottle of 50ml and Conditioner of 30ml.

Below are the steps:

Step 1 – Wash your hair well with the Shampoo. Only with shampoo and do not use conditioner. This step is important because the hair should be very clean and oil free to conduct the treatment.

Due to this reason the hair should be washed in two steps. First you apply shampoo wash the hair and again apply shampoo and wash the hair.

Step 2 – Section your hair to 4 or 6 sections depending on the hair volume and apply the treatment mask. There are more instruction on how to apply the mask on the instruction paper with the product. Please follow the instruction manual correctly.

The tip is that; please make sure the hair is fully covered with the treatment mask.

Then leave this for 15 minutes.

Step 3 – After 15 minutes; comb the hair to remove the excess cream with the comb.

Step 4 – Dry your hair with the blow dryer. This is important because you need to blow dry your hair completely because you need to flat iron the hair with the product in the next step.

Stem 5 – Flat iron your hair according to the temperature instructions given in the manual with the product. The tip is that, this is the step that damage your hair during this treatment. Also the hardest step when you do it alone. I did this treatment alone and it was very very hard for me to iron the entire hair well in equal sections

However you can’t skip this step because without this your hair will not get the maximum straight look from this process.

Hence please have a proper idea and iron your hair well in small sections.

Once done; leave the hair for 5 minutes

Step 6 – Wash the hair well with conditioner. Use lot of water because you need to rinse the all the product. Once done; use the hair dryer to dry the hair.

The Product manual don’t say it but I left the hair carefully and washed it again after 3 days.

Tips:

I’m not a specialist in hair styling. I’m a banker by profession, so my process can be not very perfect. The final outcome of my hair was not wow but I learned the below tips to do it correct the next time.

• I cannot comment about the product, because this is the only product I have used so I can’t compare this with any other products. I have always done my hair relaxing from the salon during the past years with their professionalism so maybe the product is good and it is just that I should have enhanced the process. However I will not comment about the Product.
• I applied the treatment mask without any hand gloves. It was all ok at that time and I though it will be hard to apply the treatment with the gloves. However my hand stated to react to the chemical after about a day or two. The skin in my palm started peeling off. It is all ok now, but I would recommend to use some hand gloves when working with the treatment mask.
• I said my outcome was not wow. The top part of the hair showed some results, straight look in the roots. Then I started to realize that I should have done the ironing well. The places that I was able to iron well showed some results. It is very had to iron the entire hair well in small sections when you do it alone. So I would recommend you to get some help if there is someone at home for this step.
• Do the ironing in an open environment. This is where the toxic smell is released and it is not good to inhale this. It can cause cancer, if you inhale this for a long time. So, make sure you do the ironing in an open place to minimize the risk.
• Take care of the hair properly after the treatment is done with proper shampoo and conditioner. 

 Scientific Side of this Process

The keratin treatment cream contains formaldehyde (or another chemical that releases formaldehyde). The combination of formaldehyde, heat, and compression all react with the keratin in the hair and makes curly or wavy hair more relaxed (Platt, 2013).

There is a risk in dealing with formaldehyde. Formaldehyde is a colorless, strong-smelling gas that causes health problems when inhaled, sprayed into the eyes, or absorbed through the skin. There are high levels of Formaldehyde getting released when it is heated.  Repeated exposure at high levels of Formaldehyde can even cause cancer (Platt, 2013).

Formaldehyde is a very dangerous chemical. Almost all these keratin treatment products contain formaldehyde or some chemical that contains formaldehyde. The following chemicals are all considered formaldehyde by Occupational Safety & Health Administration (OSHA): methylene glycol, formalin, methylene oxide, paraform, formic aldehyde, methanal, oxomethane, oxymethylene, or CAS Number 50-00-0 (Platt, 2013).

I couldn’t find any details or a proper product which is formaldehyde free in Sri Lanka during this research.

Trust the article helped you to enhance your knowledge about what is keratin treatment and the background to it.

The above are details which I have found through my own research and experience. Hence please use the details appropriately and please contact your own professional advisor before making a decision if you have any sensitive issues.

Thank you very much for reading and will meet in another article.

Thank you and stay safe!

Yellow Seashell

Sources

Ellery, L., 2014. Hair and History: Why Hair Is Important to Women. [Online]
Available at: https://www.huffpost.com/entry/hair-history-why-hair-is-_b_5567365?guccounter=1&guce_referrer=aHR0cHM6Ly93d3cuZ29vZ2xlLmNvbS8&guce_referrer_sig=AQAAABntwsYNLzpqOvFz5Q84rT8HbI7hahEiOBLGtwsEzP_XYzzGL8wUDdbSDOA31WfmTp24U_dXi4DJ7x60NgKVGRUWivhT_O9ONJpx2KWmTi9[Accessed 9 8 2020].

Genetics Home Reference , 2020. Genetics Home Reference. [Online] Available at: https://ghr.nlm.nih.gov/primer/genefamily/keratins[Accessed 2020 8 15].

healthline.com, 2018. Healthline. [Online] Available at: https://www.healthline.com/health/keratin
[Accessed 2020 8 15].

Platt, I., 2013. What’s the Deal with Keratin Treatments?. [Online] Available at: http://www.center4research.org/whats-deal-keratin-treatments/[Accessed 2020 8 15].

Ruggeri, N., 2018. Ten Reasons Why Your Hair Is the Most Important Part of Your Look. [Online]
Available at: https://santaclaritamagazine.com/2018/01/ten-reasons-why-your-hair-is-the-mostimportant-part-of-your-look/[Accessed 9 8 2020].

Picture Source

Thank you for the wonderful featured image by Yoann Boyer – Unsplash

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