I had my hair straightened on Thursday night by a professional salon, and I have a TON of breakage I have come to realize.  I have naturally curly hair, very thick and corse.  I had highlighted it over 4 months ago, and was going to wait to highlight again 4-6 weeks after my straightening.  I've been having my hair straightened for years, but this is the first time at this salon that I went to.  And first I've experienced this much breakage.

The breakage is right at the scalp, and it starts at my hairline and goes all the way to the back of my head, is mostly on the very top.  It feels like someone actually gave me a buzz cut! I have breakage all over my head, but its just that this is the area where its the worse.  I have some hair still coming out, but I think the worst of it broke off when she actually did it. 

What can I do?  So far, noone has been helpful at the salon, I don't know what to do.  I think I'm going to have to ask for the owner? 

  I had my hair straightened on Thursday night by a professional salon, and I have a TON of breakage I have come to realize.  I have naturally curly hair, very thick and corse.  I had highlighted it over 4 months ago, and was going to wait to highlight again 4-6 weeks after my straightening.  I've been having my hair straightened for years, but this is the first time at this salon that I went to.  And first I've experienced this much breakage.

The breakage is right at the scalp, and it starts at my hairline and goes all the way to the back of my head, is mostly on the very top.  It feels like someone actually gave me a buzz cut! I have breakage all over my head, but its just that this is the area where its the worse.  I have some hair still coming out, but I think the worst of it broke off when she actually did it. 

What can I do?  So far, noone has been helpful at the salon, I don't know what to do.  I think I'm going to have to ask for the owner? 

What do you think happened? was it left in too long? I've read somewhere that petroleum products are often put on the scalp and on the hair line to prevent this...I've never had that done before either.  Do you think the stuff was on my scalp and shouldn't have been?

I've left a message for the manager to return my call, the owner doesn't take calls I guess..whatever.  

I'm lucky my hair is thick enough to cover this area that is thinner...right now it doesn't look bad.  But growing it out over the next 6 months to 1 year is going to be terrible!

Breakage is a common problem with products using ammonium thioglycolate, such as the products you are speaking of. Relaxers are not supposed to be applied directly to the scalp. Many safety warnings even say this, but it is often ignored by consumers as nonsense.

Most of the time, people will use a creme relaxer (i.e. lye or no-lye) and breakage isn't a very big problem for the majority of people (it's a risk a lot of people take, and often they get away with it!). However, ammonium thioglycolate is not a creme relaxer; it is completely different from lye and no-lye relaxers. The risk of breakage is greater. If your hair was relaxed with a lye or no-lye relaxer and you used this, it can cause breakage because the chemicals are incompatible. This only occurs at the overlap though. However, this does not seem the case since it broke so close to the scalp. Ammonium Thioglycolate can cause breakage by itself, or when mixed by an incompatible chemical.

Ammonium Thioglycolate can make your hair stiff once you neutralize it. Because of this, it should not be applied directly to the scalp, and especially not directly to the part line. You or the stylist may be inclined to do this, but don't do it, this never goes well. If it does get on the scalp, it will straighten all the way to the scalp. This sounds like a good idea at first . . . however, because it makes your hair so stiff it will have a tendency to break instead of bend.

This is very very bad. In general however, your hair doesn't bend too much unless you have it in a pony tail (thoroughly educated cosmetologists should understand this and tell you that you should not put your hair in a pony tail for a few days after a chemical relaxation process because it can cause your hair to crimp where you have the hair tie and it also puts too much tension on the still fragile hair and can cause breakage).

The one exception to the fact that hair not in traction does not bend very much in most places is on the part line! Wherever your part line is, the hair is under a lot of stress at the scalp because it has to be bent at such a sharp angle to go in the direction you want it to go.

On the top of your head, the hair may just want to stick straight up. But since people in general don't want this, we part our hair and comb it to the sides. Because the hair is under so much stress very close to the scalp, ammonium thioglycolate should not be applied directly to the scalp and especially NOT on the part line. This will result in the hair simply snapping off at the scalp. This can also occur on your hair line if you tie your hair back or comb your hair straight back before your hair has a chance to recover from the procedure.

The high occurance of hair breakage makes ammonium thioglycolate not particularly suitable for straightening hair, and is not appropriate for home use as a straightening chemical. Usually, the directions will have warnings not to apply the chemical directly to the roots. The client and the stylist should always heed the warnings on all chemical products or they will be in for a very unpleasant surprize.

Many of you may believe my comments are pure speculation. However, please understand that I had a chemical process like this done in a salon and the same thing happened. I am very good with hair, but I was reluctant to do this particular process on myself. I won't trust my anybody to do anything chemical to my hair again. I had been relaxing my hair myself and I thought maybe it wasn't getting very straight because I wasn't doing it right. So after letting my hair recuperate for 6 months or so,  I thought I would let a "professional" handle it and it would turn out better. Wrong! I was quite mistaken. It didn't turn out any straighter and my hair ended up falling out along the part line. Make sure your stylist knows what they are doing! If you are afraid of hair loss, ask them to be sure not to saturate the scalp with chemical and to keep it off of the part line. (This can be easily done with ammonium thioglycolate in a cream-like suspension.)

Don't worry though, your hair will grow back; the "snapping" off which was occuring shouldn't take out the root. It will definitely grow back. Take good care of your hair. Don't brush too much, this can rip out more hair. Everybody's hair grows at approximately the same speed, which however is not very fast. Avoid heat styling for now, that can cause more breakage and make your hair seem to grow even slower. Some chemicals may also shock the hair follicles out of their growing phase, so avoid chemical processes until your hair grows back.

Anyways, once your hair grows back, Happy Styling!

-Kennieth