Shampoo

[helwen]

Did you know that modern shampoo has only been around since the 1930s?

Ditching Shampoo...

Couple of excerpts:

But some wonder if we were sold a bill of goods. That trend toward everyday cleansing might have triggered a vicious cycle, some experts say — shampoo cleanses by stripping the hair of its natural, necessary oils, causing the scalp to produce more oil in response, making it impossible for some to skip shampoo for even one day without sprouting a gigantic greaseball.

“When you over-shampoo your hair, your hair is over-secreting oil in order to survive,” says Lorraine Massey, co-owner of Devachan Salon in New York and creator of the No Poo conditioning cleanser. (It's been more than 20 years since Massey's last shampoo.)

Dr. Paradi Mirmirani, a dermatologist in Vallejo, Calif., says it's a matter of preference. Shampoos are fine to use every day, but "there's nothing gross" or unsafe about ditching shampoo.

....

But step out of that shower, and the no-poo learning curve just gets steeper. In the beginning stages of a no-poo experiment, most people seem to go through a two- to six-week period when their hair looks like, well, poo.

“It took a few days to get used to. The first time I used it, I didn’t feel like my hair was clean,” Lynch says. “It was grimy.”

Some stylists say that's because once the shampoo is no longer stripping the hair of its natural oils every day, the scalp must learn to scale back production of those oils. Mirmirani says that although measuring scalp oil is not an easy thing to do — she's in the middle of a project that is seeking to do just that — the theory does make sense.

The article talks about baking soda, cider vinegar (conditioning), and other methods. Bar shampoos work for some folks. L can use them, but they don't seem to work as well for me, at least so far.

I stopped using baking soda over the later part of winter because I was starting to have a flaking problem, which one of the people in the article had, but I wasn't being very good about the cider vinegar followup, so I'm going to try again now that the ambient humidity is up in our area again. I definitely think that was part of my personal challenge, since my skin is sensitive to low humidity anyway. Hope I can get it to work this time -- definitely liked not having to buy things in plastic bottles, plus it was a _lot_ cheaper.

Comments

[the1butterfly.livejournal.com]

I've heard a tiny bit about the no shampoo stuff, but I haven't researched it. I did try giving it an olive oil soak once, which did nice things to my hair but took I think six washings to get out. I do use shampoo (primarily on my scalp) and conditioner (just on the long part), and I can definitely say that hair adjusts to how often you use it. When I washed my hair twice a week in college, my hair would be oily every third day. Now that I wash my hair once a week, it's good for the first five, meh on the sixth, and oily on the seventh. The best days are days two and three. I think I will look into this though.

[helwen.livejournal.com]

Good luck with the research!

Some people do something with (I think) combing or brushing, of corn meal or saw dust through their hair, to remove excess oils. And someone above posted something about a dry oatmeal scrub, which sounds similar.