Does The Kanekalon Pre-Treatment With ACV Work?
Kanekalon is a popular synthetic hair used for hair braiding. It is composed of chemicals that causes mild to severe scalp irritation, which is experienced mainly by women with natural hair. After sleepless nights and patting my scalp due to severe irritation, I decided to research the cause of it. Turns out Kanekalon is composed of Alkaline Lye, the chemical responsible for the painful irritation.
Alkaline Lye is necessary because it produces a heat resistant and anti-wearing (aging) effect. To prevent irritation caused by lye, ladies have resorted to pre-treating Kanekalon with apple cider vinegar. Vinegar is said to remove the alkaline lye from Kanekalon hair. However, after learning from personal experiences this is not 100% true.
I first pre treated my hair with vinegar in 2014. The experiment was not successful but I noticed the irritation was less severe. For my next installation of braids, I decided to give the pre-treatment a second chance. This time I soaked the hair in apple cider vinegar for an additional 10 minutes, and received the same results from the first trial. After 5 trials of doing the pre-treatment, I gave up. Answering the big question, no! Pre-treating your hair with apple cider vinegar will not remove all of the alkaline lye. However, enough lye will be detoxed from the hair, which is why I will not knock down the pre-treatment process.
As stated the pre-treatment somewhat works. If you still want to pre-treat your hair to lessen the severity of irritation, below are the instructions. A video tutorial is also posted for your convenience.
Materials needed:
- One bucket of water.
- One bottle of distilled or apple cider vinegar.
- Shampoo
- A hair brush Hair sheen and or hair creme.
- Step One: Fill a bucket with water and vinegar.
- Step Two: Place the hair in the bucket and let it sit for 15 minutes. Within a minute you should see white residue surface from the hair. This white junk is the alkaline lye.
- Step Three: After 15 minutes shampoo the hair to remove the vinegar.
- Step Four: AIR DRY the hair for one day. Once the hair is dry gently comb and brush the hair with proper grooming tools for synthetic hair. Advice: One full day is needed for drying. Pre-treat the hair at least two days before your hair appointment.
