Sodium Hydroxide

 

Tell me about your hair, and what you want to change about it.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Sodium Hydroxide (lye relaxer) is recomended for african american type hair. It is probably the strongest type of relaxer and can be very damaging even to healthy hair. You will still have to use a blow dryer and/or flat iron to make your hair straight. The only process that is designed to permanently straighten hair is Thermal reconditioning (also known as re-bonding). However it only works if your hair is wavy or has a really soft curl (Think Julia Roberts). Otherwise you will still have to blow dry to get it straight. It is also very expensive ($500-$1500) depending on hair lenght and texture. And you must make sure your stylist is a chemical expert or you will end up with mayor damage and hair loss.

 

How do I know? I've had them all done.

 

What type of hair do you have? If you have kinky, tighly coiled hair then sodium hydroxide would be the way to go. However like I said, it will not give you permanetly straight hair, you will have to blow dry, and your hair will frizz up in high humidity. It will however eliminate the curl, and reduce the bulk, but will not eliminate frizz, hence the need for a blow dryer to smooth and straighten the hair.

 

If you have soft curls then thermal reconditioning will give you the results you are looking for, but you must be very careful when choosing your stylist, and you must be prepared to spend a small furtune, as well as spend 4-6 hours at the salon when getting it done.

 

If you have really curly frizzie hair, then your best choice is a Thio relaxer such as Rusk anticurl, or Loreal Xtenso. Is a milder version of the thermal reconditioner. No heat is used and it is applied on wet, shampooed hair, instead of dry hair like the Sodium Hydroxide. It is less damaging than sodium hydroxide, but will produce far better results. However it will not work on really napy hair (such as african american hair) It will texturize the hair, loosen up and smooth out the curl. Once you blow dry your hair, it will be smooth, shiny and straight, even in high humidity. When you wear it curly, the curls will be smoother, softer and shinier, and will have looser curls. And the best part is that hair has body and movement, and opposed to looking stiff, like with sodium hydroxide.

 

Anyway, if what you are looking for is hair that will allow you to just step out of the shower, and dry up straight without the use of a blow dryer, Sodium hydroxide will not give you that, and any stylist that tells you it will is one you want to run away from. If anything, you will have to take better care of your hair, Do alot of deep conditioning, and blow dry all the time, since your hair will look aweful when left to air dry.

 

Hope that helps

 

Good luck and great hair

Shary

 

I personally have never seen anybody be able to achieve permanently straight hair with sodium Hydroxide or guanidine (calcium hydroxide) which is just as strong as sodium hydroxide, just a different chemical. They are simply not designed to produce permanently straight hair. The hair still has to be heat styled straight and the frizz and curl will come back with humidity. Plus you can't really wear it curly because it dryes stiff and frizzie. I recently moved to the caribean and I spend alot of time at my friends Salon, which is one of the most famous ones there. I see people every day get their hair relaxed with Sodium Hydroxide ( hundreds of them) and I haven't seen one who doesn't have to heat style. Even the ones with just wavy hair.

 

You can check out the post "best relaxer. HELP PLEASE" on this same forum. Steve T who is a TR and chemical relaxer expert gives a professional explanation on this.

 

Hanna, if what you are trying to achieve is hair that will allow you to just hop out the shower, and not do anything to it, Sodium Hydroxide will not do that for you. It is a harsh chemical and I personally will not put it in my hair. Thio will give you better results, but you will still have to style your hair straight, unless you get it thermally reconditioned (provided your hair has an s pattern soft curl).

 

If you have any questions you can ask Steve. He can give you all the answers you need. He is the best on the field.

 

I wish you beautifull hair

Much love, Shary

 

Yes Sodium hydroxide is the one with the lye in it. Question: did your hair stay straight and smooth when relaxed with it, or did you get that frizzie straight? Just curious. I have never seen anyone get permanent straight results with it. And when I got it done, my hair would dry stiff and frizzie.

 

The Thio that I use shouldn't really be combed, it should be applied with a tinting brush, if any combing is done it has to be done with a wide toothed comb with polished teeth (such as a mason pearson comb). Otherwise you might get that rubberband effect, or even cause damage. But that is true for any Thio. The hair should never be combed. Depending on the hair texture, some stilysts might even just use their fingers or even the back of the comb to smooth out the hair instead of using a tinting brush. But those are the real experts.

 

Hanna, if that is your hair texture, the Xtenso should have worked great. If it didn't, it was either applied incorrectly, the hair was not processed long enough, or the wrong formula was used. If they used formula 1 and that didn't work, then formula 3 should have been used. Unless you color your hair and they used formula 2, which never gives you the same results. I have super curly, super frizzie, type 3b hair(I mean stick your finger in a socket curly frizzie hair), and the Thio works great for me. If I can figure out how to post a picture here I will post a picture of how my hair looks. You would never believe I have curly hair. No one knows until I tell them. Even when I'm in the caribean, with the heat and high humidity, it will stay perfectly straight. That was never possible with a sodium hydroxide relaxer. My hair would turn into a frizz ball as soon as it got humid. So I don't think your problem was the thio. It was either the formula or the technique. If the person applying the treatment is not an expert, they might not process the hair long enough. My hair takes about 35-40 minutes to process. Most stylist will only process the hair for 20 minutes because that is what the instructions say. However the manufactures put that on the instructions to prevent un-experienced stilysts from overprocessing hair.

 

Also a word of caution. If you used a thio relaxer last year, and the treated hair has not been cut off, you can not use a Sodium hydroxide relaxer. The chemicals are not compatible, and using it will relsult in what is called a chemical hair cut. The chemicals in both types of relaxers, when combined form a substance that is comparable to Nair. So you can imagine what would happen to your hair. It will be destroyed. Once the relaxer overlaps the previously treated hair, is bye bye hair.  That is one way to find out if your stilyst is an expert on chemicals. If they don't know that piece of info, run away, and don't let them perform the service on you.

 

Anyway, with your curl pattern which is almost non-existant, Thio (when performed correctly) will give you straight hair, that is soft and smooth. Sodium hydroxide won't. 

 

Well I hope this helps

 

Good luck and great hair

 

 

 

 

What about you mzfrizz?

 

Heated thio gets hair straighter, is the Xtenso a heated thio?

 

Sodium hydroxide may work for you, try to get your stylist to do a test section for you to make sure your hair does not burn. Make sure the stylist only does the new growth, and I have to tell you that I am more than a little scared about even comming close to the previously relaxed hair with lye.

 

Heated thio should give you the results you want.