The Reason Hair Tangles and How Conditioner Helps: What Do You Think?

[pinchbeck]

The following is copied and pasted from Yahoo Answers:
Your hair is made of protein called keratin.

Between proteins, some bonds form called sulfur bonds, where atoms of sulfur within the protein structure bond to other parts of the protein. This causes tangled, frizzy hair.

Some conditioners are designed to break these.

Prior to reading this I read hair tangles because the hair's cuticle layer has been roughed up due to: heat, chemical processing, shampooing, dryness, etc. Could the above information also be a cause?

[Sissy]

I do not know abut I'll keep watch of this thread to find out. Good question!

[Fractalsofhair]

That is why your hair curls. A shampoo to break up the sulfur bonds would breakup curls, which a lot of people view as frizz.(IIRR. It might be hydrogen bonds that cause curls.)

[blendedchaitea]

Woah, a conditioner that broke disulfide bonds would a perm-in-a-bottle every time you used it! You can manipulate the hydrogen bonds in hair to give different styles (getting it wet, using a flat iron or curling iron, etc.), but manipulating the disulfide bonds causes permanent changes in the hair structure. That's where tough stuff like ammonium thioglycolate comes in. Little knots and tangles are caused by friction, and conditioner reduces friction between the strands.

[Pierre]

Two of the twenty amino acids in the alphabet, cysteine and methionine, contain sulfur. Cysteine forms disulfide bonds. Methionine has a methyl group on the sulfur, whereas cysteine has just a hydrogen, so two methionines don't make a disulfide bond. This does not cause frizz; it causes toughness, just as vulcanizing rubber makes it tough.

There is no etymology for "frizzy" in Wiktionary. It looks like a derivative of French "friser", which means "to curl, to graze, or to skip in printing". (If you graze a hair with a blade that isn't sharp enough to cut it, it curls. I don't know what the printing sense has to do with the others.) "Frisé" is also said of a kind of kale that has the leaf margin much longer than the rest of the leaf, so that it curls up fractally.

Curliness of hair is caused by the hair growing slightly faster on one side of the follicle than the other. Straight hair has just as many disulfide bonds as tightly curled hair. The quoted statement is nonsense. Curly hair can be straightened by rearranging bonds, but that damages the hair.

[spidermom]

I have no scientific explanation for it, but it is no surprise that hair tangles. I would hate to thread a loom that had threads as fine as my hair. It would be a mess!

Basically I think tangles are caused by the cuticle being roughed up, which happens because of mechanical as well as chemical damage.

[rhubarbarin]

Tangling is mysterious. I have about 8-10" of damaged, brittle hair that is covered in white dots and breaks off in chunks, yet my hair doesn't tangle at all. I do use lots of conditioners and moisturizing leave-ins.. but even when I don't as an experiment, no tangles. Meanwhile so many members here with hair that is in beautiful condition and who take lots of care with conditioners, oiling, and combing, have awful tangling.

[mira-chan]

Woah, a conditioner that broke disulfide bonds would a perm-in-a-bottle every time you used it! You can manipulate the hydrogen bonds in hair to give different styles (getting it wet, using a flat iron or curling iron, etc.), but manipulating the disulfide bonds causes permanent changes in the hair structure. That's where tough stuff like ammonium thioglycolate comes in. Little knots and tangles are caused by friction, and conditioner reduces friction between the strands.

Yes to this. Any breaking of sulfide bonds in the hair would damage the hair.

The bonds are between amino acids in keratin, the main protein that makes up hair and nails. Any changes of it's bond structure breaks down (denatures) the protein. In perms (straight or curly) the proteins are denatured and then allowed to refold in the wanted shape. The proteins do not fold back as well. This is why the hair breaks off easier after.

Any conditioner that broke down these bonds would have relaxer chemicals in them, not so great for hair and will not help reduce damage. This conditioner would straighten curly hair not remove frizz.

A conditioner that protects the hair from damage will make the cuticle lie flat, whether the hair is curly or straight. Which means it will have a mildly acidic pH (for human hair) and most likely coating agents (oils, silicones) that will smooth the hair further.

I can also say that frizz does not cause tangles. I have very frizzy hair, and it doesn't tangle much.