









this brilliant turquoise Aphogee's 'Two Step Protein Treatment'. In my previous post I talked about how I managed to colour my hair, I also talked about a mystery product that was essential to salvage my hair from the destruction that is bleaching. Without further ado, I present to you





Just so you can understand how highly I rate this stuff, let me tell you a little about the condition of my hair prior to using this. After bleaching my hair I found it to be quite stringy looking and elasticy whilst wet. It looked quite mushy and gummy. It got to the point where if I tugged on my wet hair, it would just dissolve into my finger. Describing the condition it was in is tough, I hope that made at least some sort of sense! When my hair did eventually dry out though, it was extremely brittle.





But this is exactly what bleach does, particularly if you've bleached your hair several times in quick succession. Your poor hair can only take so much punishment, and mine had really had enough. Then a friend who gets her Afro Caribbean hair relaxed told me about Aphogee. The symptoms she talked about pretty matched what was happening to my hair, so she suggested I give it a try. I'm glad I did!





It's exactly what the name suggests, a two-step protein treatment for the hair. It isn't for those with dry hair, but it's catered perfectly for those with overprocessed, severely damaged hair. You simply apply it to towel-dried hair, use heat until it's dried and hardened on the hair, give it a good rinse then get on with your conditioning business. The bottle says to use it every 6 weeks where required but I got a little greedy and used it twice in a week (don't try this at home folks!)





I got mine for a snip at £18 for 16oz, I say a snip - fully realising the hair-based pun! - because this stuff has been a life saver! You might be thinking: 'You only described one step!' and you'd be quite right. It's called 'Two-step' because Aphogee have a matching conditioner to go with it, however my friend tells me it isn't all it's cracked up to be, so I just used my own.





FIRST THOUGHTS?





This stuff is SO weird! I had the obligatory sniff in the store (it's the done thing right?) and it smells like nothing I've come across before. It's a strong herbally scent but think more 'Overgrown, unkempt garden' than 'Herbal Essences'! On top of that, the formula is a sort of runny egg-yolk colour. I knew this could get messy!





USAGE





Aphogee recommend shampooing first, detangling the hair and then applying however I didn't bother detangling. It's just impossible for me to detangle without conditioner and Johnson's 'No More Tears Detangling Spray'. So I just applied straight after shampooing and towel drying.





It really did get messy! I saturated my hair with the runny, yellow goo then used my hooded dryer to completely dry it all out. As the drying process tales place you can feel the hair getting stickier, you need to go through that phase and wait until the hair is bone dry and that stickiness is gone. If you get impatient you'll find you've just wasted a lot of product for nothing!





And patience is key with this stuff, as I used as hooded dryer it took just over an hour for my hair to completely dry out - you can use a standard hair dryer too but it will take significantly longer. You can tell it's dry as your hair becomes really hard and stiff, if you were to bend the hair slightly it'd just snap off (please don't test this out!) For this reason I would recommend you DO NOT put your hair into a bun or a pony whilst you've got this on. Also make sure you limit how much you touch your hair, it is so vulnerable at this point that you could easily lose chunks of hair if not careful.





After it's completely dried and past the sticky stage, I jumped into the shower and gave it a good rinse without touching the hair. Once I felt it was all washed out, I applied my Organix Macadamia Oil Conditioner and did my conditioning thang.





RESULTS





The results are amazing, I whole heartedly believe that the only reason my hair hasn't upped sticks and left already is down to this stuff. It's been bleached so many times of late that each strand must be suffering a severe identity crisis!





Now my hair feels stronger and easier to comb than it was before I bleached it. I couldn't have imagined my hair would be in a better condition after bleaching! It definitely isn't in perfect condition just yet, it looks healthy all over but with a few brittle areas dotted around. I think with the next application the brittleness will be sorted, but I'll report back!





I think it's also important to mention that Aphogee doesn't soften the hair, rather it makes it stronger by putting back all the protein that's been lost through bleaching. I was lost for words (rarer than a solar eclipse!) after rinsing it out, my hair had lost the mushyness and the horrible stringy, elasticy feeling I had before and whilst combing the breakage was severely reduced. All this from just one usage means I couldn't care less about the smell, the formula or the general messyness in application - it's a small price to pay!





My recommendation? If your hair is really damaged to the point where you're thinking of just giving up on it, get out there and buy this! It may well be your last throw of the dice, but as far as I'm concerned £18 is dirt cheap for the hair equivalent of a defibrillator! It'll bring your hair back to life, and shock you in the process!



