olaplex revisited

So, then, here are my questions. 

When you do a treatment with it, (as in, not adding it into bleach) what exactly are you doing- do you use it like a conditioner?  Do you need all the steps for that? 

You use it and it fixes your hair, but doesn't protect it forever from damage.  So if I were to use it tomorrow, say, and then never touch chemicals again, would my hair be as if it were virgin? 

Sigh.  I'm still curious about this stuff but I don't know what I'd need to actually get or where I can get it. 

Daily wear and tear can break the bonds, and that happens with hair anyway. So wind, cold weather, hot weather, water, pillows, pretty much just living, breaks bonds in your hair. But yeah, in theory it should stay a lot better. Part of what I wonder is if these bonds break more easily than Virgin hair bonds.

Just doing a treatment, you mix the part one with water and carefully pour it over your hair (freshly clarified hair, or at least, that's what I did) and then massage it in for 10 mins. Wash. Out and apply part two and leave for at least 10 mins. I left it longer, but not sure how long. Then wash out. I then used purple shampoo as I have this not so great gold tone at the moment and conditioned.

I did the stand alone treatment, and saw no difference in my hair at all.
I am quite disappointed, maybe my hair is too damaged or not damaged enough, I have no idea. i will try again in a few days.

Did you do it the same way as me?

Yes, except I left it in longer and didn't use shampoo to rinse, just conditioner (same as when I normally wash my hair, using shampoo makes it frizzy/puffy and takes a few days to calm down)
I also didn't comb the number one through as directed. It is not possible to get a comb through my hair when it is wet.

I personally find using just No1 and water really hard to apply and I feel like I waste it sometimes, mix No1 in with No2, like 1oz 2 to 1/4 oz No1 and use that as your treatment, you can even mix a little bit of water in to make it go farther. Be sure you're really saturating the hair well with it, using the creme form of No2 really helps make it "stick" for lack of a better term. Make sure your hair is clarified beforehand, don't condition, towel dry it so it's damp, then apply, and I always leave it on until it dries. A minimum of an hour with your hair I'd say to leave it on.

Sometimes with the first treatment you don't get that huge wow factor, it all depends on the hair. With some hair the first treatment, sometimes even the 2nd doesn't make a dramatic difference that you can feel, it's working internally, starting the repairing process. With every application you still have the repairs from the previous applications (obviously except for any damage you may have gotten since then), so you're getting more and more repairs every time, until at a point there's really not anything left to repair  (which every time we touch our hair we are breaking bonds pretty much, but for the MOST part it's pretty much all repaired) and it's just maintaining that health from then on.
Like, my first treatment, i have fine, think hair, I did notice a big difference, but after the next few I noticed even more, and my hair felt virgin after that. From then on it's just been maintenance to repair any little damage I accumulate from everyday things.

My neighbor though on the other hand has very thick, coarse, dense hair, her first treatment didn't do much that we could see or feel. It's definitely working though, it's impossible for it not to cross link broken disulfide bonds. We did another the next day, saw more of a difference but still not dramatic, but the next and the next? Holy cow, HUGE difference!

It all really has to do with the "size" of the hair. Thin, fine hair typically is going to have a smaller amount of disulfide bonds to it, whereas thicker, denser hair you're going to have more. Like if you were to take every strand on your head vs mine, lay each one out next to each other and weigh it, yours would take up more space than mine and weigh more. Trying to think of another analogy...Like a house built with a bunch of 2x4s vs wood that's 4x4, the 4x4 has more matter to it, there's more atoms/molecules in the larger vs the smaller. Does that make sense?

Just keep using it, try mixing 1 and 2 together so you have s creme consistency to work with, i promise you you will see a difference and you'll be inlove There's quite a few people out there that haven't seen that dramatic change in the first go so they give up on it and think it's not working. Just because we can't feel it yet doesn't mean it's not working though, remember it's working throughout the entirety of the hair, and the amount of broken disulfide bonds you have all comes into play with it. And more broken disulfide bonds doesn't always mean you have a greater amount of damage, the two aren't synonymous. Say your hair, say 25% of it is broken disulfide bonds  for the sake of an example. Say my hair is 25% broken disulfide bonds too. If your hair strands are thicker, longer, and your hair is denser than mine, yours is going to have a larger quantity of broken disulfide bonds than mine, purely because your hair is made up of way more disulfide bonds than mine is. There I hope that makes more sense than my 2x4 analogy lol

I put the water in a bowl, dipped my head in it. Then I let it drain back into the bowl. I tipped what was left into another bowl and slowly poured it over the back while my head was still over the large bowl. I just repeated this a few times. Then massaged it for a while and periodically tipped the remains over my hair. I wasn't about to waste a single drop lol

For the stand alone treatment, you are not supposed to wash out the #1 before applying the #2.  Mix #1 with water, saturate your hair.  Let sit for 5-10 minutes, then apply #2, fully saturating the hair again.  Leave that on for at least 10 minutes.  I do 30-60 minutes.  With the amount of hair I have I find the water mix too hard to get in my hair, so I do what Katie does and mix a tiny bit of #1 into my #2.  I have the half gallon size of #2.

The water mix is impossible to apply, it was just running straight off my hair. i had to pour it into a spray bottle, which worked better, but a lot still went down the sink lol.
I am going to try just mixing #1 and #2 next time

What about just using number 3?

That's why I did it over a bowl! As its pouring, it's still getting over and into the hair. But yeah, I didn't want it going down the sink either, that's pointless.

I watched a couple of videos and both washed out the hair quickly after doing no. 1. That's why I did it.

Weirdly, this morning it feels almost back to how it was before. The more it dried yesterday, the more the shine went away. However, it's not in a triangle on top of my head though, so there must still be an improvement, but it doesn't feel any better.

But even weirder now the parts that felt fine before, the roots and mid lengths, feel dry when they didn't before. The ends that were very damaged due to a bleach mess up a few months a go feel marginally better than before.

I had a go tonight at a standalone. I used a small spray bottle too ( tiny tbh so I hope this minimised spray waste) I must have left it for 49 mins and then added number 2 to top for twenty.

I feel my hair is soft. That's not how I would generally describe my hair and I specifically didn't overdo it with conditioner.  I am hopeful that further applications with have that wow factor - I get the feeling it will somehow.

I like this so far, I'm not blown away yet though. I've been much better taking care of my hair in the past few weeks and broke my addiction to hair straighteners, so I hope to see more improvement.

I did a second stand alone treatment today and it has had more of an effect. I left it on for several hours.
The main difference i have noticed is my hair dried much quicker. The broken bits in the nape of my neck where it gets all tangled feel much smoother, and it seems less frizzy overall than when i usually wash it with shampoo. I have deliberately not added my usual oils so i can see how it really looks. My hair was soft/silky already as that is its natural texture, but i think the ends are smoother and it might be slightly shinier.

Wow, this all sounds really interesting. I'd not heard of this before so am interested to know if it works quite well!

The main difference i have noticed is my hair dried much quicker.

This is something that puzzles me.

When I was doing hairdressing, in our science classes we were told healthy hair dries slower than damaged. In my experience, which is obviously anecdotal, the healthier my hair is the longer it takes.

But since being on this board and reading a couple of others, I see people saying the opposite. Many other places still say healthy hair dries slower.

Confused? Yes I am! I suspect the truth is that the truth is both. Different for different people.

Anyway, I decided to try it again. I don't have a time in the next week when I can leave it on for several hours. So, as I only sleep about 6-6.30 hours I decided to put it on overnight. Wet now, obviously, I washed it out about 2 hours ago and it's drying really slowly. For me that's a good sign lol I'll see how it goes.

Edit to add...

Ok, definitely a better result this time. It is soft and shiny. I'm not complaining, but it is funny now that I'm probably going to have the old problem I had that I could never do anything with my hair the same day it's washed lol

I still have a lot of the reservations about it that I mentioned before. I still don't fully trust what's being said. There's been so many products that have been declared miracles before (by reviewers etc, not always the company) that turn out to be bad/wrong/totally overblown that I just can't at this point.

I told you I wouldn't even trust my own experience fully 😉