How A Woman's Hair Treatment Turned Into A Kidney Injury Nightmare

Forget split ends, the latest beauty nightmare is a doozy! A quest for silky smooth tresses took a turn for the toxic health complications for a 26-year-old who just wanted straight hair but went through some severe health complications. And all because of just the hair straightening treatments she underwent! This might sound like the moms who are against high-fashion cosmetics and products, but now these straightening products are something we all need to be cautious about as medical studies and this case have proven them to be hazardous to health. Let's dig in to learn more!

Straightening Woes: Hair Treatment Leaves Woman with Bent Kidneys!

A 26-year-old woman with no previous health complications developed kidney damage after undergoing hair straightening treatment at a salon in 2020. The case reported by my medical researchers in the journal The New England Journal of Medicine, states that a woman who went thrice to get her hair straightened at a salon in June 2020, April 2021, and July 2022, a seemingly healthy young woman with no prior medical woes, experienced a cascade of unpleasantries after each salon visit.

She experienced nausea-inducing backflips (vomiting), a bad case of the runs (diarrhoea), a feverish tango (fever), and a pain party in her lower back. But who wouldn't endure a little discomfort for the sake of man's perfection, right? Wrong!

Finally, after the third round of follicular torture, she had had enough when she started having ulcers on her head and experienced blood in her urine when she had no signs of infections in her urinary tract, kidneys, bladder, uterus, or urethra. 

This intrigued doctors, and upon investigating the source of her suffering doctors in the case study conducted in a lab experiment discovered that the lurking villain here was the hair straightening product itself! 

Apparently, the culprit was a high concentration of a not-so-friendly acid (glyoxylic acid, to be precise) that, according to some theories, managed to infiltrate the woman's system through her scalp. Once inside, this acidic invader played havoc with her kidneys, leaving them damaged and the woman experiencing different kinds of side effects. 

To better understand the reaction of glyoxylic acid to kidney damage, researchers conducted a test on a group of mice (because, well, science!) where they slathered the straightening solution on a group of mice and compared them to a control group pampered with petroleum jelly. 

The results were... well, let's just say the product applied to the mice produced crystals in their urine eerily similar to those found in people who've ingested a rather nasty chemical called ethylene glycol found in many everyday home products like antifreeze. The mice exposed to the hair treatment product had high levels of creatinine found in their blood, similar to those of the woman. 

However, each time the woman in the case visited a salon to get her hair straightened, her damaged kidney recovered soon, and the effects of glyoxylic acid on the hair treatment product seemed to be short-lasting on her. 

The glyoxylic acid used in hair treatment products is a safer alternative to formaldehyde. However, another study conducted on 26 people from Israel with kidney injuries stated that most subjects of the study have used different products with derivatives of glycolic acid, a chemical found in many beauty products broken down into glyoxylic acid by the liver.