female, longish [bra strap length] hair, and I wash everything top to toes with dr bronners tea tree oil liquid castile soap. In the dope’s soap thread I am considered a horrid heretic as women would never use a harsh soap on face and hair. i get split ends trimmed about once a year or so.
My skin and hair are just fine. I get dandruffy flakes if I use regular shampoo when traveling [hotel freebies] so we just tend to bring a small bottle of bronners along.
This is me. I started using medicated shampoo at the first sign of dandruff, when I was about 30. The dandruff was very mild. Three years later I tried to go without, wondering if the dandruff has cleared up on its own. Two weeks later my scalp was suddenly covered in itchy fire. I guess it had been getting worse under the treatment all that time. Never again.
Even before then, I can’t imagine I could have gone without some sort of hair-cleaning product. I have the most over active sebaceous glands on earth.
If you go no-poo, does that mean you just don’t shampoo the hair? It seems that some of you still use conditioner, soap, or vinegar to wash your hair once in a while. So this is just giving up shampoo and nothing else?
Female, About chin length, curly and thick.
I gave up using shampoo as a way to work with my very thick, wild, and curly hair. My “washing” is done with a cheap conditioner with no silicones in it. (This is important- the silicone builds up without shampoo. Luckily, a bunch of Suave and VO5 conditioners are perfect for this. In addition, I only finger comb it while dripping wet.
In the two years since I started this, my hair has gone from frizz to defined, soft curls. It’s just easier to manage that way.
*Every day? * :eek:I shampoo once a week, maybe twice if I am extra dirty or sweaty. And, having gone for a month without shampoo, I can tell you that with shampoo it’s better.
Perhaps the “no-poo” idea works as people are over shampooing, and getting back to just enough to clean the dirt and sweat off is fine.
Sydney radio talkback guy Richard Glover started an experiment with no shampoo after hearing about it from someone else a couple of years ago. Here he tells the story and here are the results for the 500 odd listeners who tried the challenge.
I havn’t been using shampoo for quite some time (several years), I wash my head maybe once a week, every two weeks, with simply water and a symbolic touch of soap (we use pure olive oil based soap). Two or three times a year, say, when I’m at my parents’ house or something, I’ll use shampoo but I havn’t seen a drastic difference in my hair/scalp quality after.
I used to have a hell lot of dendruffs when I was a teen, young adult, along with “peeling” in the eyebrows area, and going shampoo free didn’t make this reappears.
My hair is really short though, max length is an inch, shortest can be 3mm.
I stopped shampooing my hair years ago, during a particularly poor period when I ran out of shampoo. I’d never heard of anyone else doing it.
My hair, which is fine and somewhat frizzy, seemed to improve, so I stopped wasting my money on shampoo. I generally don’t use anything on it, I just rinse it thoroughly in the shower and that’s it. I might use shampoo/conditioner every once in a while, maybe 3 or 4 times a year.
I’m male, and my hair is quite long at this point, it’s about 16 months since my last haircut. No problems. Shampoo, in my opinion, is a complete rip-off. Most people don’t need to use it regularly, and using it every day is just nuts.
As at least one other person mentioned, during periods of depression I’ve gone shampoo-free since just doing the daily shower was more than enough effort without adding hair product into the mix.
My hair became vile, absolutely vile, within four days. I couldn’t bear it and had to wash it. My hair felt like it was trying to crawl off my head.
I have a naturally very oily scalp. I’ve discovered that if I get my hair dyed (dries out the hair) I can get by with washing every 2nd day (just) but if I get to lunchtime on the third day, my hair looks like someone doused me in oil. It’s totally foul.
I have an ex-boyfriend who only washes his hair maybe once a week, at best, and his hair always looks fantastic. I think it’s down to scalp oiliness as to whether the technique will work or not, and my hair most definitely isn’t liveable when it’s not washed.
Ugh, tell me about it. I’ve also found that using a mousse or gel on it after showering usually soaks up a lot of the oil. (My hair is stick-straight and baby-fine, so that gives it more body too) I get out of the shower, use the product and scrunch it, then comb it out when it dries. (So it’s not all “crunchy”) It usually works quite well, and then it holds better when I curl it.
Besides, I like my shampoo – it smells like mint.
You look cute, Shirley!!!
Before chemo, my hair was extremely heavy and oily. After the baldness, my hair came in with “the chemo curl” and now since I’m on heavy prednisone dosages, my hair is fairly dry, and I’m going days between shampooing. But I think that has more to do with my menopause and medication. There have been weeks that I’ve been bedridden in hospital before, and I got to the point that I couldn’t stand my greasy hair. I’m trying to find something extremely gentle, so maybe I need to look into those shampoo bars.
A bit late to the party, but just wanted to chime in with the results of a spontaneous “no-poo” experiment…
This is actually what convinced me to give it a shot. I have knee-length hair. I had heard of “no-poo” folks in the past, but I guess I just assumed this would work for folks with short-to-average-length hair, but that the really long stuff would get dry or break over time with no conditioning agent.
Plus…
Four to five days was about my limit. I have mild dandruff (itchy, flaky stuff) and after about that time frame though my hair didn’t necessarily need a wash, my scalp felt just about like you described.
My hair is pretty low-maintenance as it is, I don’t do anything to style it but your basic country-girl braids, and really don’t do much more than a once or twice a week wash, but being both cheap on money and time, anything I can do to eliminate costs on either of those counts as it relates to my hair is right up my alley.
I was sick with a cold/flu thing, and so didn’t work up the energy to wash my hair for a good ten-day or two-week stretch leading up to this. I was itching for a wash when I came across this thread, and thought I might as well give “no-poo” a try. I was feeling like a total greaseball and my scalp itched like crazy. Today I’m kinda smack in the middle of the prescribed six-week transition period, I think it’s been about three weeks since I last shampooed. The end of week two was really the worst part so far. It seems like it’s gotten better in the last few days (or at the very least the last few days haven’t been *worse *than the few days before that). I am fortunate to work from home, plus I wear a hat. I imagine if I was still working in public I’d have been wearing a lot of bandannas for the last week or two.
I was assuming six weeks of water-rinse-only cold turkey, but this morning I had a really hard workout, and the combination of sweat plus extra grease plus head gunk just finally reached my “ick” limit, so I went ahead and did the baking soda/apple cider vinegar thing. I don’t blow-dry my hair normally, just air dry it, then comb it with a tiny dab of coconut oil.
…its amazing. I mean, really amazing. Like, shampoo commercial amazing. I went out to lunch with my husband earlier and wore it loose, which I never, ever do the same day I wash it. The day I wash my hair is the worst “hair day” of the week. It usually takes 2-3 days for my hair to stop looking and feeling rough and frizzy. I’d keep it in braids for a few days because it would just be out of control, loose. Right now it feels soft and smooth.
I’m still a little itchy and flaky, but I even feel pretty optimistic about that. Three weeks in without using dandruff shampoo, and I’m marginally less itchy and flaky than before. Any improvement thus far might be perception bias, but I am absolutely sure it’s no worse. And my hair and scalp feel great!
I am way convinced.
Oh! And I was so excited I totally forgot to say what it is I mostly came in to say, which is: thanks for the inspiration and the tips, everyone!
After reading this thread, I’ve stopped shampooing, but I’m still conditioning. As far as I can tell, there’s been no change at all. My scalp and roots are still greasy a day after I wash. However, I’m at least saving on the shampoo. If I get the chance, I’ll go whole hog, but currently, I have to be presentable on a daily basis.
Female with shoulder length, thick, curly hair.
This summer I came across somewhere the no poo and laughed it off. Every time I’ve skipped a shampoo I always felt so icky and oily. I shampooed and conditioned every day. I had to condition because I needed to detangle the knots that happen with my hair long and loose.
But I tried it anyway. The first couple days were weird. But my hair looked great. So much less frizzy. I even could get a comb through it out of my now-super-short showers. The time I save in the shower is worth it alone.
So I’ve saved time and money and had my hair be great.
What I read about it this summer is that it’s especially good for curly-haired people like me because our natural oils are better for frizz-busting than commercial products.
There are only two problems I’ve found. One is that sometimes my hair gets a little smelly. I haven’t done too much research into more natural cleaners for those occasions. As to the OP question, a shampoo from time to time does not send me back to square one.
The other problem is that I am a huge shedder and I’d pull a good chunk of loose hairs daily with conditioner. When I condition now less frequently, I pull out a huge amount of hair, the accumulation of all those skipped days. The hairball is pretty gross.
NajaNivea, wow! I’m not sure I’ve ever influenced someone so directly before. How exciting! I used to use baking soda as well, but I started the no-poo thing while I was away from home volunteering at a resident camp (I figured nobody would care if my hair looked gross there). The water at camp was really soft and it worked great. I came back home to the land of hard water and started getting weird build up, so I switched to just the vinegar rinses, using BS once in a blue moon if I’m feeling particularly greasy. I think I’ve used it once in the past two months. If you have hard water, you may end up with similar issues and may need to try cutting out the BS.
Another thing I’ve found useful is “brushing” my hair with a dry towel. About once a week I wrap my hand in a hand towel and use it to distribute oils to the tips of my hair. This feels really relaxing and helps my tips from getting dry. I used to apply conditioner or hair cholesterol straight to my dry hair and rub it in to help with the problem, but I’m kind of excited that my body produces just what I need to keep my hair pretty.
Ruby Sees, my apple cider vinegar rinses keep my scalp from smelling, just make sure to rinse it out completely, otherwise you smell like salad dressing. Finger combing has also done wonders to keep stray hairs from accumulating between rinses.
For those on the regimen, how would you deal with semen? Does it end up looking like Cameron Diaz in There’s Something About Mary?
…wait… what?
I went without shampoo for years… now I use it again. Soap and non-sulfate shampoos mess my hair up, so I washed with conditioners. I’ve always had pretty dry hair.
My hair doesn’t seem to care much either way (I use a lot of moisturizing products in it) but my scalp is happier with sulfate shampoo. I had itching and build-up no matter how much I scrubbed without it.
Do note that I usually use a non SLS (Sodium Lauryl Sulfate) shampoo also. (And I keep it out of my toothpaste also).
