Repairing damaged hair with lost curl

A while back I tried out a different developer for the hair color treatment I use. I thought it was supposed to be more gentle than the regular one, which has a kind of strong ammonia smell.

It ended up not having as strong an odor but damaging my hair. After the first time using it I noticed that the curl was kind of gone but attributed it to the fact that immediately after a color treatment hair can sometimes take a few days to get back to normal.

But it never really fully got back to normal. Subsequent color treatments with the same developer only worsened the problem until finally I switched back to the original, more-intensely-odorous-but-less-damaging developer.

But the curl was not coming back. After yesterday when I attended a public event with my hair kind of effed up I knew it was time to take serious action.

Today after I awoke the first thing I did was a deep condition treatment. I left the deep condition on my hair for around an hour but it didn’t help. My hair still had that rough feeling which comes from the cuticle being damaged.

In the past that would usually go away with heavy conditioning but this time no. I then went back and tried another product for another deep condition treatment but the result was the same.

I finally went online and found a video “Quickly get Natural Curl Pattern Back after Bleaching and Heat Damage| Restore Hairs Curl Pattern” in which she recommends the product ApHogee Keratin 2 Minute Reconstructor.

Luckily the local Sally Beauty Supply carries this product. I went and when I got home immediately tried it in the shower. When applying it to the hair it forms a kind of thick goop. You have to keep working it through the hair. I use my fingers like a comb and just keep going along the hairs from the roots to the ends – I should note I think its important to only go in that direction and not from the ends towards the roots.

I left it on a good couple minutes, continuously working it through with my fingers and making sure as many hairs were getting coated with it. It was probably longer than a couple minutes.

I then rinsed and used my tried-and-true go-to conditioner: Aubrey Organics Honeysuckle Rose, which I condition with and then apply more as a leave-in.

The result is really good. My hair is way better than it was after the first couple deep condition treatments which essentially did nothing for the damaged cuticles.

But now my hair is soft and some if not most of the curl/wave pattern has come back to it. It looks a lot better and there are no flyaway frizzy strands like before.

Because of my hair’s length the upper part tends to get more relaxed and the ends have more curl. Right now I would say that it might be slightly more relaxed than it had been before. I’m not sure if that’s just natural from gravity or damage – but – I actually like the slighly-more-relaxed look!

People have suggested to me over the years to straighten my hair and I’ve always been reluctant to. This is as close as I’ve gotten to it and I kind of like it.

I’m really grateful for the video.