In our opinion a product line must follow three criteria, in order to be deemed "Professional" hair care products (outside of being environmentally responsible):

Hair care does not need to be complicated! In this day and age of fancy new ads and ambiguous label claims promising to extend colour life, fix hair with chemicals using, elaborate names and patented protein complexes, it's hard to understand what's really going on. Let's start with some actual truths.

What is Hair?

Your hair is Keratin Protein. The best way to repair and protect your hair is to put Keratin Protein back into it. This is called permanent conditioning. At Soma we use an Organic-derived chain of quaternized Keratin Protein.

For the Techies: The best way to treat damaged hair is with its natural healing agents. Keratin Protein holds moisture in the hair. When hair is damaged, Keratin is lacking. The only way to fix it is by replacing the Keratin with another Keratin protein. During any "chemical" treatment, such as colouring, perming, or relaxing, cystein bonds will break and/or reform, causing the hair to become brittle. To replace moisture, chemically treated hair needs permanent conditioning. Soma products covalently bind Keratin protein and amino acids to form between the unreacted sulfhydryl (SH) groups in the hair and the disulfide bonds to make permanent conditioning possible.

Tests show that after five successive shampoos with a quaternized Keratin protein, up to 45% of the protein deposited on freshly permed or colour-treated hair bonded to the hair's cuticle and cortex, successfully providing permanent conditioning.

How do I keep colour in my Hair?

(pH range of 4.5 to 5.5) Your hair naturally has a pH range of between 4.5 to 5.5 (pH scale goes from 0-14 - with 0-7 being Acidic and 7-14 being Alkaline). When you maintain your hair with products in this pH range, you keep the hair cuticle closed - locking in your colour, maintaining moisture in your hair, and reducing frizz. This specific pH range is what started the whole professional hair care industry. If you are using hair care products other than Soma, and the bottle reads that it is pH "Balanced" - this is nothing more than a marketing term and means absolutely nothing. The pH range must be specified to be at least 5.5 or less to keep your hair cuticle closed!

For the Techies: During chemical treatment, the hair structure physically changes; its natural pH is raised above 5.5 in order to break bonds and/or give "lift" (open the cuticle). To colour hair, the cuticle must be lifted and the pH higher than 5.5. To maintain hair colour, pH must return to normal (4.4-5.5). External factors such as air and water (which may have a neutral pH of approximately 7), impede on the ability of coloured hair to maintain its sheen and normal pH over time. To counterbalance these effects, coloured hair should be cared for with low pH products.

Can Alcohol effect my hair colour?

YES! Hairsprays can contain anywhere between 70-90% alcohol (denatured SD). What does alcohol do? It's a drying agent. That means it attacks moisture in your hair. Alcohol will attack the hair structure itself and destroy it, causing hair to become dry and brittle by extracting the Keratin protein you have been trying to replace. Hairsprays can actually remove ink from clothing! If it can remove ink imagine what it does to your hair colour.