If you have naturally coarse hair in this day in age, you may have had a relaxer or two, or three, or 4^x124 to straighten it.  Petroleum jelly is applied to the scalp and sometimes around the ears, serving as a barrier that protect those surfaces from the corrosive relaxer. (However we purposely corrode our hair. How strange is that?)

The relaxer is then applied to the roots of the hair.  You let it sit between ten and fifteen minutes (or if you scratched your scalp to death, you’d be lucky to get past two minutes) praying to the heavens above that your scalp doesn’t transform into the lake of fire.  There are two type of relaxers that straighten the hair. There’s the lye relaxer, and the no-lye relaxer.

Lye relaxers contain the chemical sodium hydroxide.  Although a very small concentration of lye is used on certain foods, a higher concentration of lye, like those used in relaxers, is also used in metal polishers, laundry detergent, oven cleaners, pipe cleaners, and various other household cleaning products.  It can easily dissolve through surfaces like fabric, plastic, and even skin.  When it seeps through the hair, it breaks the S-S bonds that are meant to protect the hair, causing the hair to lose it’s natural structure.

No lye relaxers either contain guanidine hydroxide, lithium hydroxide, or potassium hydroxide.  Although they’re a milder version, they are known to do the same type of damage.

Another collection of chemicals in the no-lye family are ammonium bisulfate, ammonium sulfate, and ammonium thioglycolate.  Rather than breaking the bonds like the other relaxers, these chemicals find a home in the core of the hair cuticle, weakening it over time, and stripping it away of all of its moisture and oils.

All the chemicals listed above are corrosive.

cor-ro-sive/ [kuh-roh-siv]
A corrosive substance is one that will destroy or irreversibly damage another substance with which it comes in contact.

Relaxers damage the hair follicles inside and out.  Once straightened, they cannot be reversed.  Why?  Because they’re permanently damaged.  Yep, it sounds like corrosion to me.  I can’t believe how we would do this to our own hair for any reason.

To prevent further damage, it is required to shampoo to wash out the relaxer, and restore the hair’s natural PH balance.  It is then followed by a condition that restores the moisture that the relaxers stripped out, and washed again.

According to drugs.com, this is what both lye and no-lye based relaxers can cause:

Eyes, ears, nose, mouth, and throat

• Loss of vision
• Severe pain in the throat
• Severe pain or burning in the nose, eyes, ears, lips, or tongue

Gastrointestinal

• Blood in the stool
• Burns of the food pipe (esophagus)
• Severe abdominal pain
• Vomiting
• Vomiting blood

Heart and blood

• Collapse
• Low blood pressure that develops rapidly
• Severe change in blood acid levels — leads to organ damage

Lungs

• Breathing difficulty
• Throat swelling (may cause breathing difficulty)

Skin

• Burn
• Holes (necrosis) in the skin or tissues underneath
• Irritation

My daughter’s grandmother, a cosmetologist for nearly two decades, can no longer wear or apply relaxers.  The combination of the fumes, along with the relaxer seeping through her pores, caused her to break out, and even made her breathing more difficult.   It was so severe that she would often have to be treated with steroids.

Prolonged use of relaxers can also cause scarring alopecia, where the hair follicles are damaged beyond repair, or completely wiped out.  It is believed that although experiencing hair loss that could be the early stages of alopecia, black women are covering up the hair loss with weaves, or wigs, rather than seeking proper treatment.

Many of us have even experienced the damage first hand.  How many of us haven’t wiggled around like we caught the Holy Ghost in a southern church on a warm sunny day, after applying this junk to our heads?  How many of us haven’t had to deal with scabs on our scalp, sometimes oozing with blood, or clear pus?  There is a reason why these things happen, and it isn’t because the relaxer “isn’t being applied right.”  It’s because it shouldn’t be there.

“Natural Relaxers”
Since the 90′s, there has been a trend of “natural relaxers” marketed towards black women.  Take the now extinct relaxers Rio Hair and Copa for example.  Although they were supposedly so natural that one could eat it [and die], they contained high levels of sodium hydroxide.

Another “natural relaxer” called the BODIpHIER Natural Hair Relaxer, contains a weak chemical called sodium carbonate, a chemical that is often used as a substitute for lye in various products.  It isn’t strong enough to be corrosive, so it doesn’t break the S-S bonds.  HOWEVER, it also isn’t strong enough to make the hair super-straight.  Black women who want to achieve bone-straight hair tend to not be satisfied with these products, claiming that it doesn’t make their hair “straight enough.”  As a result, many of them go back to the stronger, harmful chemicals, and the cycle continues.

Is It Really Necessary?
We are so beautiful naturally, so why do we do this to ourselves?  Is it really necessary?  I feel that we are so brainwashed that not even factual articles such as these will make us stop relaxing. Why do we rather apply harmful chemicals our scalp, permanently damaging our hair’s structure, rather than learning how to manage it natural?

Do you think this dangerous method is worth it simply because you like the “straight look,” or because you feel it will make you more attractive?  Let me know your thoughts.