hi it's Michelle from Lab Muffin beauty science and today we're going to
be talking about hair more specifically I'm going to be talking about what
olaplex is and how it works olaplex is a brand that's been huge in
the hair world since it came onto the market in 2014 it's the reason why my
hair is currently this dusty purple color and still attached to my hair
after a single 8 and 1/2 hour marathon hair session it's pretty much
revolutionised hair bleaching and it's spawned a billion imitations there's
actually a lawsuit going on right now over whether or not there's been an
infringement of olaplex's patent now I'm not an employee of olaplex I'm not
being paid by olaplex I've never met them I have nothing to do with them I'm
just a cosmetic science nerd and there's a lot of cool science behind the product
let's get started
olaplex is a brand of hair products that contains a special active ingredient
that can join up the broken bonds in hair it can be added to hair coloring
products to minimize damage or it can be used as a separate repairing treatment
the active ingredient in these olaplex products is called bisaminopropyl
diglycol dimaleate and it looks like this
this little guy is the reason why olaplex works to restore hair that's been
damaged from too much bleaching too much heat styling or just being beaten up
over time but to understand how it works we're going to have to have a closer
look at the structure of hair and what happens when you bleach it if you've
ever looked at hair products you'll know that the word protein is thrown around a
lot which makes sense because hair is mostly made of protein it's mostly a
protein called keratin which you've probably heard of before nails are made
of the same keratin as hair proteins are really long chains of amino acids
and keratin contains a whole bunch of an amino acid called cysteine which is
special because it contains sulfur atoms which has the symbol s these sulfur
atoms can make two bonds and when they're oxidized like from being exposed
to oxygen in the air they'll form bonds with each other like this it's like
they're holding hands these are called disulfide bonds because
they have two sulfurs sometimes they also called cystine inside the hair all
of these microscopic little disulfide bonds join the hair together like glue
so you end up with really strong hair this glue also sticks hair together and
gives it its shape whether it's curly or straight
the reason that natural hair is colored is the melanin pigment which has a
structure which looks a bit like this
in chemistry this is called a conjugated system with alternating double and
single bonds and this means that it's really good at absorbing light black
hair for example absorbs all of the colors of light but if you break this
conjugation the melanin pigment can't absorb light anymore so it ends up
looking white within hair bleach there's an alkali like ammonia and hydrogen
peroxide to break up the melanin but it takes a bit of time for the bleaching to
work and because the bleach mixture is super reactive it can react with other
bits of your hair in the meantime such as your strong keratin proteins in
practice after about half of the disulfide bonds in your hair can be
broken during a severe bleaching session normally if you expose your hair to
oxygen the sulfur-sulfur bonds will eventually form again but just to really
mess with your hair hydrogen peroxide can actually cap off the sulfur so it can't
form these disulfide bonds again to mess up your hair even more peroxide can also
react with other amino acids and it can also break up the peptide bonds that are
joining each of the amino acids together in your hair and so eventually you end
up with weak brittle damaged hair the ingredient in olaplex which is
bisaminopropyl diglycol dimaleate can actually join the sulfur atoms in your
hair back together again it reacts with the sulfur atoms through a reaction
called a Michael addition and it acts as a link between the two sulfurs the two
maleate ends of the olaplex complex joined to a sulfur atom each and the
bisaminopropyl diglycol part joins it all together so you end up with joined
up sulfur atoms the really nifty thing is that this reaction between the
olaplex ingredient and your hair happens much faster than the reaction where
hydrogen peroxide caps off the sulfur and stops it from reacting so when the
olaplex is mixed in with the hair bleach and applied to hair it actually forms
these bridges and stops the capping reaction from happening so the damage
during bleaching that's usually irreversible isn't irreversible anymore
which is pretty cool it's so good at preventing damage that my course black
Asian hair could be dyed to white in one long sitting without it all breaking off
I can still hear style it I can gently comb it while it's wet and it doesn't
break off when I brush it before olaplex came along I wouldn't have been able to
get my hair to this color while leaving it in a reasonable condition to make the
bleached hair even stronger there are a few more steps of olaplex still with
the same active ingredient and the same mechanism of action after bleaching with
step one there's step two which is applied to your hair for 10 to 20 minutes after
the bleach is washed out this joins up more of the cysteine sulfur atoms after
that there step 3 which is a take-home treatment with a lower concentration of
olaplex which is applied for about 10 to 20 minutes again and then rinsed out
there's also a new shampoo and conditioner imaginatively named 4 & 5
that also contain the same active ingredient and they work the same way
it isn't just bleaching that you can use olaplex for it will work whenever broken
disulfide bonds are an issue which is a lot of things pretty much all types of
hair damage will break sulfur-sulfur bonds for example if you use high pH
alkaline products like hair dye or high pH shampoos if you have thermal damage
from using too much heat on your hair like hair curlers and hair straighteners
and blow dryers if your hair gets exposed to visible and UV light from the
Sun when you brush and style your hair especially when it's wet and fragile you
can end up with lots of mechanical damage this also happens if you
vigorously rub your hair dry with a towel if you use other chemical
treatments on your hair like perming and straightening in all of these cases an
olaplex hair treatment can help repair the damage it will soften and strengthen
damaged hair and it can restore the texture of natural curls you can even
use it to tame beards the bonds that the olaplex forms in the hair are claimed to
be permanent and supposedly it won't wash out but like the original disulfide
bonds they can still break so over time your hair can still deteriorate in
condition and that's all for today if you want to find out more you can look
at the olaplex blog post that i've linked in the caption which has a bit
more detail about all of this if you enjoyed this video I would really
appreciate it if you liked it and subscribed to my channel you can also
find out more about the science behind other beauty products in my blog and you
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time for more beauty science