Shampooing/conditioning your hair is a vicious cycle. As one blogger wrote:
You wash your hair with shampoo.
It strips out the natural oils and creates a barrier.
Your hair over reacts and produces more oils to compensate for what is lost and hair becomes greasy.
You are frustrated with your oily hair so you wash it almost daily.
You keep stripping your hair of the oil it needs and the ends become frizzy, brittle and damaged.
Now you have to use a conditioner.
The top of your head is oily again. The bottom is dry and frizzy.
And to top it off, you now need a full arsenal of hair care products just to get it to keep a style.
So I though, what the hell, we'll give it a try! The blogger I linked to above has hair very similar to mine, longish and curlyish. My hair is frizzy, dry at the ends and oily at the scalp. I also have a dandruff problem that peaks in the winter.
Yet my hair is STILL frizzy. Curls are still undefined. Scalp is still full of dandruff. My hair looks good for about 4 hours after my shower. Then it starts looking crappy.
The general mixture is 1 tsp baking soda with a cup of warm/hot water (I just use the temperature water that I'm showering in). That's your "shampoo". It doesn't lather of course, but massage it into your scalp and rinse. Then, your "conditioner" is 1 tsp of ACV and a cup of warm/hot water. Again, massage it in, then rinse. Some people choose to leave it in as a leave-in treatment but right now I'm still rinsing it out. These are just starting measurements. Use more or less of either depending on your hair.
Day 1: The first day I just rinsed with water. I wanted to get the excess crap out. Now, I don't know why I did that lol My hair was nasty gross and greasy (to me at least)!
Day 2: First day washing with baking soda and ACV. When I rinsed out the baking soda my hair felt gross still. But I plugged along and rinsed with the ACV. While it wasn't the silky (slimyish) feel of conditioner, it was certainly better! Below are pics after my hair dried on day 2.
Day 3: After my shower today my hair felt even less greasy, even though by now (5 days with out shampoo) I'd assume it would be super greasy. I think I may need more baking soda since I have normally pretty greasy hair.
Day 4: Normally I wouldn't wash my hair so many days in a row... I used to only wash it every 2-3 days. But we've been putting the garden in this weekend so I'm a dirt monster by the end of the day lol However, I made the fatal mistake of not putting in any anti-frizz creme and then brushing my hair once it was almost completely dry. OMG! FLUFFBALL! LOL!
Day 5: I didn't wash my hair today and it feels surprisingly fine.
Day 6: Washed my hair today but brushed it before it dried lol. MUCH less fluffy and really soft! I would still like to use the anti-frizz creme, but wasn't going anywhere so didn't bother. I know this no-poo thing really works since so many people have started doing it, but I'm still so amazed at how nice my hair feels! And it looks healthy and clean! Below is a pic after my hair dried on day 6.
Day 7: Tried my old routine of not washing my hair more than every 2nd day... again, my hair is still "fine". Looks like this will be a success! I'll post an update and a picture each Thursday and let you know if I've spazzed out due to "dirtiness"!
I'm linking up with Frugally Sustainable
Hi Sam,
ReplyDeleteGlad to hear another person trying the no-poo method!
I've been 'no poo' (or very minimal poo) for about 2 years now using mainly baking soda and lemon juice and I love how simple it is.
Not tried the ACV yet but so many people have recommended it that I'll be trying that next.
As a bloke I mainly tried no poo because I didn't like shampoo companies telling me I HAD to use their product (full of ingredients I can't pronounce!) or I'd get dandruff and become a greasy lonely mess.
I've recently been experimenting with some more outlandish formulas for achieving clean hair using easy to find ingredients. (Some have been more successful than others...)
Best of luck and I hope you continue to have success with your no poo experiments!
Rob
http://www.naturalshampookits.org.