Everything You Need to Know About Drugstore Bond Builders (in less than 30 mins)

[00:00:00]By the end of this video, you will know everything that there is to know about drugstore bond builders. You'll know exactly whether you need one, if you do, which one to buy, and whether professional ones are better than drugstore ones. Not only have I read the literature, I have tested over 15 different ones of them on my own natural hair to see whether or not they improve the condition of my hair. And I was very surprised to find out that some of the ones that were the cheapest outperformed the luxury ones I have tried. If you want the answers to questions I just outlined, you can skip here. But I think you'll be doing yourself a disservice because I'm about to explain exactly how and whether each product on this list works. First, I need to redefine what bond building is because I believe that the way I did in my previous videos is not the best way to do so. In the past, the bar for me as to whether something counted as a bond builder was dependent on whether or not it was able to repair the dulad bonds in your hair. If you don't know what the selfhat bonds in the hair are, you can pause the video right now for some in-depth information. But they're essentially the strongest bonds in your hair. They are the bonds that give your hair its structure and its shape and most of its strength. They are also the most difficult to break. The reason why your curl pattern changes and why your hair breaks so much more after you get it bleached or after you suffer from heat damage is because the desire bonds in your hair have been broken. The reason why that fasma metric for whether or not something could be considered a bomb builder is because when all blacks changed the entire industry by introducing this category, this was something that they heavily marketed that they could reverse damage caused by bleaching for example by rebuilding those bonds. After that, a bunch of brands followed suits and most of them started claiming to be able to do the same thing on top of being able to repair the weaker bonds, the ionic and hydrogen bonds. So, it turns out that most of these brands probably cannot do that. There isn't much evidence showing that these products can actually do that, that they can actually repair datadic in other ways. If these products have active ingredients that can penetrate into your hair and alter its properties and therefore make it stronger, they can be very beneficial to your hairare routine. The penetration part here is very important. If these products are simply film formers and the benefits you get from them comes from them forming a film around your hair, they are not any different from conditioners. This definition change of mine doesn't come from nowhere. And the credit isn't mine.

[00:02:21]It comes from this article and in it they define bomb builders as a formulation component that is able to penetrate into the hair to improve or restore the internal structure of hair giving rise to an improvement in hair mechanical properties. The article is written partly by Jennifer Marsh and her name will come up again later on in the video because she conducted research on Pentine's bond repair line specifically.

[00:02:42]The smartest way for me to do this video is talk about these products in terms of classes because most of these rely on the same kinds of bond building activives so you can get the benefits from an active while choosing the formulation that best aligns with your hair. You're going to see there is a massive difference in the way that each of these brands incorporated these activives into their product. And it's not because your hair does not agree with one of them that you have to swear off the active altogether. It does not necessarily mean that the main ingredient is not for you. It might just mean that the way that the brand formulated into the product does not agree with your hair. By the way, Europe is going through a heat wave right now.

[00:03:19]So, if I'm sweating on camera, please disregard. There is no other way to do this video. The three classes of bone building are organic acids and related activives, proteins and peptides and lipids. I want to start with the third category because it features the product that impressed me the most and that is Bentin Miracle Rescue. By the way, if you're not American, don't worry. I will mention alternatives that are available on different markets later on. Bentin's bond repair line is probably one of, if not the best punare line I've ever tried. even comparing it to luxury alternatives. It's very very different from its competitors for numerous reasons. Number one, Pentine has their very own technology. You will see later on that a lot of his brands rely on the same activives they borrowed from another manufacturer. This is not the case with Pentine. This technology is very much theirs. Number two, they have done a ton of research. The difficulty for me in making these videos often is the fact that there are very little studies out there. This was very much not the case with Bentine. They have a lot of research, a lot of studies that are very easy to find. Some of these studies go all the way back to the '90s.

[00:04:25]Also interesting about Pentine is that they never try to claim that they can repair dula bonds. This is actually what they said. Penting presents the miracle rescue with melting provy pearls collection. Powered by Pentin's exclusive melting provology. These conditioning treatments work as bond builders to transform damaged hair, restoring strength and shine. The groundbreaking technology behind these melting py pearls stems from an unexpected discovery while pentine scientists work to create conditioner concentrates. Studies have shown that as you use a deep conditioner or the mask, the concentrated pearls melt, releasing millions of replenishing nutrients that can penetrate deep into the hair and build new bonds within damaged hair.

[00:05:03]There are three ingredients working together to make this happen. Penthanol, hedin and the proip pearls. Penthanol is the foundation of pentene is why the brand is called pentene. Pentanol was a complete accidental scientific discovery. While trying to heal skin wounds, scientists found out that the vitamin concoction that they were using had the hair grow in healthier in the area they were treating. And they ultimately discovered that the pentanol in the vitamin concoction was what would make this phenomenon happen. As a result, pentanol is now present in every pentine product. And pentine has conducted multiple studies showing pentanol's abilities to penetrate into proteins regions of the hair. Bert's 2025 study that they have conducted.

[00:05:44]Pentanol makes your hair stronger.

[00:05:46]Pentanol gets deep into the hair shaft and once it's there, it forms hydrogen bonds with the existing protein structure which measurably increases dental strength. There is also histadin in the formulation which has a completely different purpose. Histadin is a copper calor. The goal of histadin is to protect your hair from damage caused by hot water. Hot water contains mineral that can build on top of your hair and when the sun interacts with those mineral over time it can degrade the protein structure of your hair.

[00:06:15]Hedin can penetrate into your hair and interact with the copper in a way that makes it easy to be removed. So bentin has done three studies on this and what they found is that low levels of copper accelerate UV induced hair protein damage. What this means is that over time those metals that have deposited onto your hair will interact with the sun and that this will destroy the protein structure of your hair over time. They also found that when combining conditioners with hiden with shampoos containing EDDDS that metal keation was removed by 50%. A lot of pentine shampoos have that EDDDS ingredient. In case this is too much information for you, I have created a guide that is completely free that you can get by going to the description that outlines all of this. What product you can get, what they do, and what product goes along with it. Hisin itself is also not only in this particular Bentine line. It is pretty much in every conditioner and shampoo of Bentine. The last active ingredient in this line are the provid pearls and these are also the main bond building ingredient. There are these small beads in the mask that melt when they come into contact with your palm or your hand and they deliver fatty alcohol directly onto your hair. These were also shown to improve strength in the hair. This is the most conditioning of everything that I have tested.

[00:07:28]Although it's not surprising giving that this is a twoin- one. It's not just a bond repair treatment. It's also a conditioning mask. The texture of this is almost conditioner like. It's more liquidy than a typical mask while still being rich. My hair really, really love this. But if you're looking for something more lightweight that will only serve as a bond pillow treatment, then you might want to look into the OGX bond protein line or the Garnier or L'Oreal bond repair pre-treatment, which I will talk about in a bit. Marketing claims are typically exaggerated, but this mask really does feel as if it's repairing months of damage. You feel an immediate difference after using this mask. It's just a very pleasant mask.

[00:08:08]The conditioner is just as good, although it's a bit less conditioning.

[00:08:12]So, it might be a better option for you if you have finer hair strands. But if the conditioner is too thick for you, but you still want to get the benefits of this technology, you might want to look at the Prov Daily Repair Mask. It is extremely lightweight that you can barely feel anything on your hair while being lightly but very lightly conditioning and providing the same benefits of the technology of the Bentine Bone Builder line. The next class of bond builders that I want to discuss are organic acids and related activives. Specifically, I want to talk about fiber hands. Fiber hands is featured in a ton of bond builders on the market, be they drugstore or luxury, namely Sy Beauty, Morgan Oil, Eva NYC, Avida, Bumble and Bumble, Carmith, Coco and Eve, Nacho Motorc Complex and Ox Bond Protein Repair and She Moisture Amla Oil Bond Repair lines. Fiber hands was created by completely separate manufacturer which now lends it technology to brands trying to create a bond bill line. Anytime you see hydroxypropyl gluconomide and hydroxypropyl ammonium gluconate in close proximity on the ingredient list of a product that is marketed as being a bond builder that product contains fiberhens. Looking at the definition of bond builder, fiberhens has been proven to be able to penetrate the hair due to its lum molecular size and increase tensor strength. And it does this by creating new hydrogen and ionic bonds in the hair. So it qualifies as a bond builder. But fiber hands can do something extra that is very very interesting. It can interact with your hair in a way that makes it behave similarly to the way it would have been if the isopad bonds had not been broken before. It can also prevent cry propagation into the hair and increase the resistance of hair to cyclic fatigue. This just means that it slows down damage and makes your hair more resistant to wear and tear over time. It also reduces the damage inflicted on dulfide bonds when added to bleaching products prior to bleaching the hair.

[00:10:06]And this is my favorite thing about Fiberhands. Fiber hands has been tested on multiple ethnicities and on different hair types. So its technology works regardless of what kind of hair you have, which means that it also works on curly hair, which is something that I cannot say about every single bond builder on this list. So it works and they have clinical data to back it up.

[00:10:26]Like I said, the two lines I have tried are OGX's and sheer moistures. Looking at OGX bond protein repair line, these are the claims that OGX makes. We build bonds in the inner hair cortex and binds to diamond sites on hair cuticle to keep hair strong, smooth and resilient. We already know that the first promise is kept true due to the fiber hands in the product even though that the bonds being improved are not as off bonds. To achieve the second promise, OJX uses other ingredients in the formula. lip shield and wheat protein. The wheat protein in here is not hydrayzeed wheat protein which is commonly found in hair care products. This was created by OGX and it acts as a foam former as its molecular size is too big to be able to penetrate into the hair. Lip shield was also created by OGX. It's present in the shampoos and conditioner and is a trademarked technology. OTX claims that it prevents and repairs damaged hair by delivering two times more lipid and protein protection, closing hair cuticles and shielding them from external aggressors, but they compared it to non-conditioning shampoos, which I find to be a bit of a red flag. I will let it slide for the sake of this video because a lot of the testing is about to come was done similarly. What it's supposed to do from the little bit of information that I could find is stop surfactants from getting into the hair during the washing process because those surfactants getting into the hair would lead to protein loss. I tried two products from this line, the pre-treatment and the heat protectant.

[00:11:51]The pre-treatment is not conditioning at all. It leaves almost nothing on your hair. And while this is not a negative considering that this is supposed to be a pre-treatment, this means that after using this, you most likely will need to condition anyway. But this can also be a plus because if you have very fine hair that is easily tracked down, you won't have to be careful of this leaving too much of a film on your hair. On the other hand, the heat protectant spray is too conditioning for my liking. It is very, very, very conditioning. It's similar to me to the Redken One United heat protectant spray except like twice as conditioning in my opinion. It just weighs my hair down a lot while not being good at fighting frizz. So, in comparison, after using this, I use Secrets Heat Protectant Spray after and there was a massive difference. And the secret spray managed to keep my hair freeze-free despite extremely hot weather. Well, this did not in mild weather conditions. I really struggled to find information about Sheer Moisture Bond Repair line, but I wanted to include it anyway because it's the only bond repair line that I've tried so far that was specifically designed for type three and type four hair. Like I said earlier, this also contains fiber hands.

[00:13:00]Fiber handhand has obviously a lot of evidence going for it. This compared to the OGX line has fiber hands much further down in its ingredient list.

[00:13:08]It's also not present in their shampoos.

[00:13:10]They say on the website, stronger, healthier hair is just four simple steps away with a four-step bond repair system infused with restorative hydroplex infusion for 84% less breakage and six times stronger hair. Amla oil fair trade shea butter and a unique amino blend to help repair signs of damage specifically in curly coily hair. Typically with all brands incorporate fiber hands, they will give it some sort of new name. So I'm assuming that this hydroplex thing which I could not find much information about is pretty much just fiber hands mixed into their own formulation. I couldn't find any paper or patent specifically about the amino. The best information that I can give you is that this seems to be about glutamic acid, histadin, arganine and seririn because these are amino acids present in the formulation. I already talked about histadin and its caling abilities, but I don't believe that this is why it's in this particular product. So, I am not a cosmetic chemist. So, take what I'm about to say with a grain of salt. But I found this study in which they tested an amino blend involving this specific quartet and there was an increased fiber diameter on wet hair. This study was not done specifically on the blend that Shan Monster used. It was just a blend involving these acids. So do that information what you wish. And then you have the amna oil. And to be honest, I think that this was just added for the natural vibes because she moisture marketing often revolves around a natural ingredient. The only thing that I found about amla oil that could be compelling is that it could increase the energy phase of your hair, the growth phase of your hair. But the study in question tested this on all conception.

[00:14:47]I feel like she moisture themselves don't really care about this line anymore. I don't see it mentioned anywhere. No one ever talks about it, which is kind of a pity because I do think this is great if you like sheer moisture manuka or honey line. I think that you might actually really like this. It is the heaviest of everything that I have tested. This is too heavy for someone who wants to wear their hair straight. I definitely would have loved this a lot more if I wore my hair natural more often because it's it's pretty great. Another active that's very popular for bum building is citric acid.

[00:15:19]The most popular citric acid line is probably Watkins's acidic bonding concentrate line, but it's present in a multitude of drugstore bond repair lines such as Gi Fris or L'Oreal Essence. If you've watched any of my other content, you know that I'm a big big fan of the Redken ABC line. So, I was very excited about trying out these products. Citric acid is capable of reinforcing hair through multiple mechanisms. Number one, citric acid lowers the pH of hair. hair naturally likes to sit at a lower pH.

[00:15:49]That is when the cuticle lays the flattest and the tightest. The higher the pH, the more negatively charged your hair is, the more the cuticle is lifted and the more friction and tangling you will experience. So by lowering the pH of hair. Citric acid will lower the amount of tangling that you get and therefore the amount of breakage. Citric acid is also a killing agent meaning that it can remove mineral buildup from hot water deposited onto your hair.

[00:16:14]Mineral buildup on your hair will cause damage when your hair is exposed to the sun. So removing all those minerals can be extremely beneficial to the overall strength of your hair. It can also reinforced non-covalent protein networks in damaged hair shafts. This means that by lowering the pH and by removing all that mineral buildup from your hair, it allows ionic bonds to reform which will contribute to increase stencil strength.

[00:16:37]This was studied by L'Oreal and they found that citric acid can indeed make hair up to 24% more resistant to stress.

[00:16:45]However, and this is new information that I learned recently, this amount in the study was 3%. Which is significantly higher than the percentage of citric acid that L'Oreal uses across the different brands. And I hear you coming, you're going to ask me how that's possible given that it is clearly written on these bottles that there is 15 12% stick acid in them. Well, that's because the amount of citric acid advertised in these bottles is quite deceptive. Someone on the hair care science subreddit found that the actual amount of citric acid in the Redken ABC intense treatment, which is advertised as having 14% citric acid bonding care complex is only 1.6%. And interestingly, the ingredient list between Redken and L'Oreal are pretty much identical.

[00:17:32]Citric acid is the main bond building ingredient used by L'Oreal in pretty much all the hair care lines and this includes Gerastas and Matrix. Something particular about L'Oreal bond building lines is that they specifically only market them. This is across every single one of their brands. They always explicitly state that these products are made for people with damaged hair. And there is a reason for this. The aforementioned study that L'Oreal did found that this increase in tensil strength was only noticeable within damaged hair. I'm underlining this because this is not the case at all for every bond repair line out there. For example, I know that Kin and Ollex specifically say that you can still use their products even if you have quote unquote virgin hair. So, be aware that if your hair is not damaged, but you still want to introduce bond repair into your hair routine, this might not be the best line for you. I could not for the life of me get my hands on the gyr pre- treatment. I could only try to shampoo which I really really love. It's a fantastic non-clarifying shampoo. The pre-treatments that I did manage to test are the L'Oreal Paris ever pure bond repair concentrate and the L'Oreal Parsh shampoo treatment. I don't feel strongly about the L7 one, but the Ever Pure is a near identical dupe in my opinion of the Redken ABC. And again, if you've ever been on my channel before, you know that's very high praised because I love the Redken ABC line and I've always been convinced that I could pick it out of lineup. This could fool me. The smell is a little bit different, but it's still quite similar. So, I do think that this is very, very good drugstore dupe. In terms of conditioning and feel and how much this will drag your hair down potentially, this is right between the OG X1 protein and the Dove mask in my opinion. Okay, so there are two products left for me to discuss. So let's move on to the last class proteins and peptides.

[00:19:25]Dove bond strength is probably the most popular hair care line within this category. But Dove Bond strength is not the only bond repair line that Dove has put out. They also have amino bond repair and amino curl repair as well as intensive repair. Amino curl repair specifically is designed for coily and curly hair. For this entire part, I will refer to at the skincare bookshelf on Instagram. This is where I got my information from and his post is much more in-depth than what I'm about to say. Dove bond strength is a pretty new line. It was launched in 2024. While they've had intensive repair for quite a while, while both lines are marketed towards people with damaged hair, Dove claims that Dove Strength is the most advanced hairline so far and it is specifically designed for people with chemically damaged hair. Alfrey lines feature Dove's propriatory bioprotein care. What bioprotein care does is increase the temperature at which hair denaturates. Hair denaturates at 302° when wet and 460° when dry. With continuous use of this technology, the damaged hair becomes more resistant to protein denaturation when high heat is applied and becomes as resilient if not more than virgin hair. This sounds very exciting and they do have some data to back it up. But just so you know, the increase is quite marginal. You can see in this table that after 20 washes the mean naturation temperature had increased by a bit more than 1° C and according to the patent the goal is to protect hair from UV light not from high heat when your hair is ironed. Either way it's rather promising and there is data to back it up. There are other ingredients in these lines that I don't think of much importance but they do center in the marketing so I will mention them anyway. There are different peptides in the bun strength and intensive repair. SH playeptite 121 and SH playeptite 50. There are no studies done on the efficacy of either on the hair, but the former is labeled as a film former on the website of the manufacturer and it's supposed to be able to reduce frizz. I'm also going to talk about the amino curl repair line because although it is much less popular than any of the ones I mentioned here, it is also marketed towards people with type three or type four hair.

[00:21:39]Unfortunately though, I don't think there is much to it. It has koba oil and an amino blend. This is not the first body repair line we have seen with an amino blend. Sheer moisture line, which is also specifically marketed towards type three and type four hair, also has an amino since she moisture was under up until 2024, which Dove is also under.

[00:22:00]And since both of these lines are marketed towards people with curly and curly hair and both have an amino blend, I think it's likely that both of them contain the same amino blend, especially given that all four amino acids that I have highlighted before are present in both products. And the same thing that I said about the amnoblend here also does applies here. It is possible that it's able to increase the hair fiber diameter when the hair is wet, but that is that is speculation on my part.

[00:22:30]Unfortunately, I don't have the amino curl with me, but I also tried that one.

[00:22:34]I'm going to be honest. I wasn't impressed with either lines. I do get why people like the Dove Bond strength.

[00:22:41]I really do. It's conditioning enough so that your hair will feel softer after, but it's not so conditioning that it would not work well on people with finer hair. However, I thought with this product, like after you rinse it out, that a lot of the conditioning is gone.

[00:22:55]I kind of think that the reason why it's so popular is because it smells so good.

[00:22:58]like this smells really really good. All right, the final brand that I will be talking about is Not Your Mothers and this one actually does not fit in any of the other categories. Nacho Mothers actually has two bond building lines.

[00:23:12]One for curly hair that also features fiber hands. I have not tried that one, so I won't go into the details, but in their patterns, they claim that it's supposed to work better than Ollex and should be able to repair this off at bonds. The line that I have tried is the tough love line. The main ingredient in this line does not belong in any of the other glasses and it's created by a different manufacturer. The name of the technology is pore bond by Grand Industries. The main ingredient in power bond is a silicone called BPCA Dimetagon which according to the manufacturer should be able to create hydrogen bonds when interacting with water and reconstruct ionic bonds. This would prevent hair damage while improving conditioning and supporting the protein structure of your hair. This PCA dimeicone is also a popular bond repair ingredient. It's also present in coco and eaves in amikadur and in whey bond repair lines. Grand industry does have bleach damage test in which they bleach hairdresses three to four cycles and compare treated versus untreated hair.

[00:24:15]They ran a grooming breakage test, a tensor strength test and looked at the hair under a microscope. The header treated with PCA dimeticone showed roughly half the breakage of the bleach control and lost less tensor strength over repeated bleaching cycles and the cuticle stayed more intact. So the results do look promising although it's worth noting that the assessment was done visually and was just not some sort of objective metric for pre-treatment.

[00:24:42]This is surprisingly conditioning. It is right around where the dove mask is. The formulation is quite nice. I don't have anything negative to say about this product. I wasn't particularly wowed, but it's probably sits somewhere in my upper half of rankings as far as bond builder goes. The big question that I always get in my comment section with all these videos is, do I need bond repair? And the answer depends on whatever you have going on with your hair. Hair health is a spectrum. No one has perfectly healthy hair because it gets damaged from the moment it grows out of your scalp. If you have what most people would call virgin hair, meaning that you have not extensively damaged your hair through heat or chemical treatments or environmental factors such as going swimming to the sea every single day and then exposing your hair to the sun all the time, you most likely do not need bond repair. But if you have very frail hair that is prone to breakage, the bone repair products I have outlined might be able to help you with that. If you do have some sort of damage, you will most likely benefit from these products. It is important that you know that these products most likely will not help you get your hair back to its virgin state. That is not possible. However, a lot of these are going to be able to help with a multitude of things such as increase densal strength or increase the temperature at which the protein in your hair denaturates amongst other things.

[00:26:06]This means that they will help prevent damage and by virtue of doing that, they will help you core your hair even longer. But these products will not give you back your curl pattern if it got damaged through heat. Also, if your hair has been so damaged that it's breaking off all the time, it is likely that these are not going to help you much.

[00:26:23]What would probably help is a trim. Even though these increase the strength of your hair by a certain percentage, if your baseline is very low, 20% is not going to do much for you. I know this is a lot of information. If you want it condensed, I have created a guide that you can get in the description completely free. And all the products that I have mentioned here will also be linked in there as well. I hope this was helpful and that you now have a better idea what to buy, what bond builders are, and which ones are most suited for you. If you want to learn more about bond repair or interested in a product that I did not talk about here, you can check out my other videos on bond builders. Though, I will say that the information in this video is more current. So, if anything I say in the other ones contradicts this one, you should trust this one. Thank you so much for watching. I see you next time. Bye.