Bond Fusion, Olaplex and all the other “plex” bond builders have become big news.  However not all of them are created equal. After much research we settled Bond Fusion as the best of the bunch.

The Basic Chemistry

To make a choice you need to know how they work. To do this we need a bit of basic chemistry. Your hair is made of a protein called keratin. Keratin is special because it contains an amino acid called Cystine. Cystine in turn contains a free sulphur. These free sulphurs can bond to each other forming disulfide bonds. These disulpde bonds then link long chains of proteins. Rather like a stair case where the cysteine molecules are the rails and the disulphide bonds are the stairs.

The disulphide bonds  are responsible for giving hair is strength and its shape. When we straighten or perm our hair we break and reform them. Perms, straighteners and relaxers are not the only things that break them. Heat from styling, the sun and chemical processes like bleaching and colouring can also do it. Hence using your straightener to much is not such a good idea!

Normally once broken they take a while to reform which is why you can’t wash your hair  washing your hair straight after a perm.  Interestingly hydrogen peroxide which is used to reform them in a perm can also prevent them from reforming by capping the loose sulphur to form a sulphate that can’t bond with anything.

Bond builders basics

This is where the bond builders come in. These claim to be able to repair the disulphide bonds (stairs) broken in colouring, faster than the peroxide can cap them as sulphates. Most, like Olaplex  claim to be longer version of the disulphide bond stair that we spoke about earlier.  This creates a problem as longer stair is by virtue of its increased length weaker than a shorter one.

Which causes a further problem as once the stair is broken it can not be repaired again as the 2 ends of the stair are still very firmly attached to the rails. While the broken end will not bond with anything. This may be why they seem to loose its effectiveness after a while.

Why Bond Fusion is Better

Bond Fusion is different in that it has split the “stair” used in bond builders down into 2 separate parts. First you have a mounting molecule, Bond Builder  that seeks out and bonds to the broken stair ends.

Then you have the stair molecule, Bond Enhancer, that joins the joining the bond builder molecules together.

 

Now with other bond builders the home use treatment is just more of the replacement stairs. So while you are able to keep repairing new broken bonds you can’t re-repair broken repaired ones, for reasons explained. But with Bond Fusion when the stair molecule breaks using your Phase 3, you can recharge and replace any of the broken stairs. Keeping your hair in constant good condition