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monsterna
July 6th, 2011, 06:41 PM
Okay, I made another post about protein in ingredients, and I brought up glutamic acid (an amino acid - a building block of protein). One person said that glutamic acid will not act as a protein on my hair, while another person said it would.

I wanted to know if anyone knows for sure, because I'm wanting to know if I've gotten rid of all products with protein, even though my conditioner has glutamic acid in it.

I started a new thread since I think it sort of needed its own, but also just bumping an old one may not have garnered as much attention from people who might be able to help me. :) Thanks in advance!

Anje
July 6th, 2011, 09:58 PM
According to this blog (http://thenaturalhaven.blogspot.com/2009/06/size-matters-protein-conditioning-part.html) (I haven't read the research articles yet, sorry), proteins need to be in specific molecular weight ranges for optimal hair-protein-treatmentness. (Yes, that's the technical term. :D)

So ideally you have, say, a MW range of about 2000-10000 for optimal effectiveness, give or take. Glutamic acid's MW is about 147. So unless you've got a big, long, charged (!) polypeptide of glutamates, I'd speculate it won't do much. The charge of the molecule might come into play here, but since the pI of keratin looks like it's on the acidic side, I doubt they'll bind.

monsterna
July 8th, 2011, 09:13 AM
According to this blog (http://thenaturalhaven.blogspot.com/2009/06/size-matters-protein-conditioning-part.html) (I haven't read the research articles yet, sorry), proteins need to be in specific molecular weight ranges for optimal hair-protein-treatmentness. (Yes, that's the technical term. :D)

So ideally you have, say, a MW range of about 2000-10000 for optimal effectiveness, give or take. Glutamic acid's MW is about 147. So unless you've got a big, long, charged (!) polypeptide of glutamates, I'd speculate it won't do much. The charge of the molecule might come into play here, but since the pI of keratin looks like it's on the acidic side, I doubt they'll bind.

All of that makes me want to cry, haha. Never good with chemistry. :) But thank you!