http://www.xenna.com/product_curlaway.html - http://www.xenna.com/product_curlaway.html

Has anyone used this? How well does it work?

Little did you all know that the active ingredient is vinegar!

I have not use the actual product but I'm sure that it would work, since I use white vinegar on my hair for the same purpose, and it seem to be working, gradually (I love to experiment with my hair) to straighten. Vinegar should in theory have enough acidity to break the disulfide bonds in the hair, allowing for relaxation to take place. However, vinegar is a very weak acid, so this could only occur after repeated use, but it would never get your hair as straight as say a sodium hydroxide (lye) or calcium hydroxide (no-lye) relaxer without intervening with heat-syling products because keratin (the protein which hair is made of) is resistant to acids. Often, pill capsules are coated in keratin so that they do not melt in your stomach (and cause upset stomach!) but instead melt in your intestines where it is very basic.

I would agree that it is much safer however than other relaxers since vinegar is approximately the PH of healthy skin. Keep the product out of your eyes of course because vinegar can still burn mucus membranes! Like with any relaxing product, if you have an irritated scalp (i.e. dandruff, redness, etc.), you should not use it. If you normally use a creme relaxing product, do not expect the same results with a vinegar based product. The result is more along the lines of defrizzing and reduction of the curl. Creme relaxers and other relaxers (such as ammonium thioglycolate) are much stronger and deliver more dramatic and expeditious results but can be more damaging to both the hair and scalp. A Vinegar based product wouuld be more appropriate for non-afro-carribean hair types if you are wishing for straight hair in less time without excessive damage.

The vinegar will make your hair very responsive to heat and it is possible to actually blow dry your curls out with a brush and appropriate conditioning products to protect your hair from damage. (This may take some practice however.) Under normal circumstances, this would not work very well and you would end up with a poofy mess, but the vinegar in the product should modify your hair enough to make it comply with heat styling much more easily!

Here's how to do this with a blow dryer, which takes condsiderably less time than a flat iron:

After you wash and condition your hair, towel blot dry, and then add a high quality leave in conditioner, such as Zero-Frizz, Frizz-Ease, or Biosilk and massage/comb it through your hair thoroughly with your fingers. This should make your hair combable with a wide tooth comb (while it's still moist of course) into a straight configuration. Then gently brush a few times with a "prong" brush to make sure the conditioner is distrubuted to ALL of your hair. Be gentle though! Hair is fragile when it's wet. (Never brush moist hair without a quality leave-in conditioner, this never goes well. It can lead simply to poofy hair or even split ends. Don't use "bristle" brushes on curly hair because it is harder to get the brush through the hair and you risk ripping your hair, plus it puts a lot of stress on the cuticle which can damage it. Plastic "prong" brushes with smooth round tips generally work well.) If you run into a really stubborn tangle, dont force the brush through (although you shouldn't have tangles because in theory the vinegar made your hair super soft). Find it and gently work it out by hand, then comb or brush some more to make sure you have all of your hair conditioned thoroughly and completely.

Now that your hair is how you want it, start to blow dry down wards, away from the roots while brushing. But wait! Don't dry it entirely yet because it will dry unevenly and curl in the under layers.

After the top layer is mostly dry, flip all of your hair upside down. This is how you stop the underlayers from curling! With a brush gently smooth your hair straight again while continuing to blow dry downwards, blow drying away from the root in the same general location as you brush. (But do not place the dryer too close or else you can make your hair dry to quickly and cause "bubble hair" syndrome in which a water droplet inside your hair suddenly vaporizes and expands suddenly, forming a bubble and damaging the hair because the steam couldn't escape quickly enough between gaps in the scales of the cuticle.)

You will want to blow all around and brush every where so you can straighten all of your hair. Once the hair is dry where it is exposed, flip your hair back up again and then flip it to the side and continue blow drying and gently brushing away from the roots.

Once it is dry and straight on that side, flip your hair to the other side and do the same thing following the brush with the blow dryer but not getting excessively close with the hair dryer.

Finally, flip your hair back to how you had combed it originally and blow dry down wards while brushing it away from the roots. Make sure you style the back of your head too! Many people miss this and notice that they have some fuzzyness or nappyness on the back of their head. By now your hair should be dry and straight. This processed can be summarized as wash, condition, comb, brush + blow dry (flip, flip, flip, flip)

If your hair is very curly, the ends will still curl a little bit of course. But you should be surprised how much straighter you can get your hair just blow drying!

Also, an ionic dryer should make this work more easily.  However, Only a flat iron or creme relaxer could make your hair straight to the very very tips. Of course the vinegar in the product should soften any type of hair also, making heat styling easier no matter what type of hair, including afro-carribean. This is because ALL hair is made of the same basic material: keratin. (But if you do have afro-carribean hair I dont think the blow dryer method would work, but other methods of heat styling should still be a lot easier take less time than before :-D)

Anyways, this is just from my personal experience from my hair. As always, make sure to be safe with any hair product that uses acidic or basic chemicals to do things to hair. And, use quality conditioner!

-Kennieth