When thinking of hair, the easiest comparison would be to many different ladders that have been twisted to create the keratin chain. These ladders stay in place as a result of disulfide bonds. They are held together and present in the cortex, medulla, and cuticle. When these ladders are damaged, it’s not just the singular rungs of the ladder that break, it’s the entire ladder including the runners and any connections between these multiple ladders held together by electrostatic attraction. Most products only focus on creating a temporary bridge between the rungs of a ladder (the ionic crosslink across the broken disulfide bonds). This washes away with any alkaline agent like water or shampoo without any mechanism to support the sides of the ladder (broken keratin chains). The hair then continues to stay weak and limp. Through a period of 10 years of research (3 years in scanning and in silico design), the keratin proteome covering 1,242 decapeptides, we at K18 patented the first peptide that is most effective at connecting the broken keratin chains. This means that K18 is able to provide permanent results that repair and heal hair in four minutes.

Any chemical process that involves an alkaline environment breaks the keratin chains that keep hair together and strong. K18 is the first product in history to reconnect the broken keratin chains. It does so by penetrating the cortex and re-conforming the disulfide bonds across the sides of the ladder and so reconnecting the broken keratin chains. Hair is now repaired and restored to a near undamaged state of strength and elasticity.