Experiments in Hair Care

Hi everyone!

Firstly, let's disregard the fact that it's been a really long time since I last blogged. I'm sorry, okay!! Anyways, now that that's over...

What I'm about to tell you may seem shocking. Not shocking in an "oh a surprise party!" way, more like shocking in an "eww stinky" kind of way.

So here it is: up until yesterday, I had gone 2 months without washing my hair.

...

Before you freak out, that statement is more shocking than it really needs to be because I'm being fussy with my definition of "washing."

Have I treated my hair in a way that removes dirt? Yes.

Have I treated my hair in a way that removes oils? Yes.

Have I treated my hair in a way that makes it softer and easier to brush, etc.? Yes.

Have I put chemical-based shampoo and/or conditioner on my hair? NO.

So now that I've clarified how I actually was not completely disgusting throughout this hair care routine, let me tell you all about it. And just for the record, when I say "wash" the implication is that it involves shampoo, unless I specify otherwise.

A number of things led me to decide to (temporarily) join the No-Shampoo movement. First and foremost was the fact that, before I did this, I used to have to wash my hair all the damn time! Usually I washed my hair every second day, or every third day if I was being lazy, or occasionally every day if that's what it took to keep it looking nice. The second reason is that I used to use a lot of shampoo and so I went through it really quickly, and it doesn't exactly grow on trees. The third reason is that the shampoo I use, Herbal Essences, contains sodium laureth sulfates (as do most shampoos) which are really bad for the environment. The last reason definitely impacted me less than the other reason but I guess it contributed: I started thinking about how people treated their hair before all these chemical products were around to strip them of oils.

Anyway, I did a whole bunch of research before I started. I read lots of websites about the No-Shampoo movement, I read a lot about natural hair care and hair care on a budget. I read testimonials from people who had tried it. And then I jumped right in.

How do you take care of your hair without chemicals? Well, I "washed" my hair once a week using these household products:

* bicarbonate of soda

* apple cider vinegar

I used about a tablespoon of each.

The bicarb functions as a shampoo replacement and if you remember your high school chemistry then I'm sure you can work out why - it's a mildly alkaline substance and alkaline substances are cool because they help to break down lipids (that's fats and oils). So when it comes to oily hair, bicarb is actually pretty good at "washing" it. I tried two different methods. The first was to make up a paste of bicarb and water and gloop it all over my hair and then rub it all in. Bicarb isn't sudsy so you can't really work it in a lather the way you do with shampoo. That way probably the weirdest part for me - the lack of bubbles. The other way I tried was just to dampen my hair and then rub dry bicarb into it in the same way. This was the method that I stuck to, just because it was quicker and going for an easier hair care routine was half the point of doing this crazy hair care experiment!

I thought of the apple cider vinegar as a conditioner replacement but really what it did was more like clarifying than conditioning, I think. It's a subtle difference. It's also mildly acidic so I figure it probably balanced out the alkaline bicarb, which was probably good for my skin or something. Using apple cider vinegar on my hair was actually pretty easy - I had it in a bowl and I just dipped my hair into it. It didn't need to go on the top of my head, just like the bicarb didn't need to go down the lengths of my hair. In case you're wondering: no, I didn't smell like vinegar all the time. I was really careful about rinsing my hair and when it was dry it didn't smell at all.

Even if you accept that baking soda and vinegar did a good job of "washing" my hair (which, to be honest, they actually did) there's still the problem that I only did this once a week. Through the rest of the week, I did two things to take care of my hair and keep it looking nice:

1. rinsing my hair with warm water - sure, it doesn't make it oil-free or give it that just-washed look, but it gets any dirt out and it spreads out the oils so that my hair didn't look disgusting at the roots. I did this nearly every day and it actually worked pretty well.

2. brushing my hair with a natural bristle brush - these brushes are made specifically to redistribute whatever dirt and oils might be in the hair. I brushed my hair from roots to tips with a bristle brush and it kept it looking nicer a bit longer.

So what were the results of this crazy regime?

Well, for the first couple of weeks, my hair was pretty gross. I kept it tied back all the time and really tried my best not to just give in and shampoo it. But over that first week I noticed my first hair change: I was losing less hair!! This point will become more important a little later. At the time, it was just enough to inspire me to keep going - at least until I hit the 6 week mark, which the internet told me was the maximum time it would take for my hair to adjust.

At about the 2.5 week mark, Pencampwr happened. In case you don't know, Pencampwr is a really big camping weekend with the SCA. I "washed" (with baking soda & vinegar) my hair on the Friday morning and then went camping. My hair looked pretty good after the "wash" but I knew that by Monday when we went home it would be really oily and gross. But, in the end, I was wrong! I kept it tied up in a plait and during the day I wore a hat - this helped to keep the dirt off so that was pretty good. On Saturday afternoon, Aimee and Alana sewing my hair to my head in braids, which might sound insane but it actually looks really cool and it made my hat stay on, so that was awesome. Now I don't really know if my hairstyle and keeping my hat on all weekend made a difference to how my hair looked later, but I figure it's worth mentioning anyway. It might have been the hairstyle. It might have been the hat. It might have been that my hair was actually adjusting to not having the oils brutally stripped from it every two days...

Whatever the reason, when I got home on Monday, my hair still looked pretty good. Ideally I would have given it a water-only wash on Monday, but I decided that was too much effort. I didn't even untape my braids from my head! And because I didn't have to go out anywhere on Tuesday, I didn't touch them then, either! Admittedly, by the time Wednesday came around my hair was looking pretty oily. It didn't look dirty - there is a difference between dirt and oil, that's something I learned through this experiment - but it was way shinier than I usually like my hair. So I bicarb-and-vinegar washed it, and it was fine again.

But can you believe that? I went all through Friday, Saturday, Sunday and Monday with my hair looking great and Tuesday with it looking pretty okay before I had to "wash" it on Wednesday. That's at least 4 whole days. I could never have gone 4 days without shampoo before! My hair had started to adjust.

After that the whole routine got easier. That is, until I got lazy. I decided that putting vinegar on my hair was just too much trouble so I stopped using it. BAD IDEA. I can't tell you for sure what the vinegar actually did to my hair, but the result of leaving it out was that my hair got really really dry. Sure, it looked neat and clean and non-oily on top. But the lengths of my hair (which are usually very soft and conditioned) were all gross and stringy and dry.

Before I went back to using the vinegar like I should have been, I decided to try a different hair treatment. After all, if this had happened during my previous hair care routine, I would have done a deep-conditioning treatment (I have a good one from Dove that I highly recommend). In keeping to my all-natural hair care thing, I bought a jar of coconut oil from the health food store. Coconut oil is pretty cool in that it's a solid in the jar, but the heat of your hands is enough to melt it. What that means is that I just had to scoop out a chunk of oil and then I could smooth it all through the lengths of my hair. I tried to use just a little bit, so that my hair wouldn't look too oily or smell too coconutty. And then I braided up my hair and went about my day.

Firstly, coconut oil does work well as a deep conditioning treatment. My hair was immediately softer and smoother and easier to brush - just as if I had used a chemical-filled conditioner like I used to. I spent that day obsessed with touching the ends of my plait because it was just so damn soft!! But coconut oil as a hair care product does have it's obvious downside: it's an oil. So yes, it made my hair look oily, which is gross.

Because coconut oil is so soft and melty, I had hoped I'd be able to rinse it straight out with just water. It mostly worked, but my hair really didn't look as good as it should have so the next day I bicarb-and-vinegar washed it. That worked perfectly! My hair was all conditioned from the oil, it was de-oiled by the bicarb and the vinegar had done it's thing so that it wasn't all dry and stringy or whatever.

For the remainder of my hair care experiment, I stuck to bicarb-and-vinegar washing my hair once a week and only-water washing it every day or second day. And you know what? It worked pretty well.

Here's the main downside: in a No-Shampoo regime you're only meant to treat your hair with chemicals once a week. More than that, and your scalp gets dry and irritated which leads to excess oil production (No-Shampoo fans will tell you that that's why you have to shampoo your hair so often, and in general I guess they're right about that). But for my hair, which seems to LOVE producing oil, bicarb-and-vinegar once a week just isn't enough. Bicarb-and-vinegar every 5 days might have been okay, but then it's harder to get into a routine and washing my hair more often would have defeated the goal of the experiment, which was to find a hair care routine that was easy and less work.

After about 9 weeks in total, I decided to go back to a normal hair care routine. My reasons for this are quite diverse. Firstly, you've gotta admit that it's a little weird to wash your hair with food products - normality was calling me back into its fold. Secondly, I keep my shampoo and conditioner in the shower but when I wanted to bicarb-and-vinegar my hair I had to go fetch some from the kitchen, which meant that it wasn't really quicker or easier at all. And thirdly, using bicarb-and-vinegar to wash my hair eliminated all the dirt and thus all the smells, which was a good thing. My hair just smelt like... hair, I guess, which really smells like nothing... for the whole time. But when I wash my hair with shampoo and conditioner, my hair smells all exciting and fruity! :D that's why I use Herbal Essences products, because they smell good.

Before I washed my hair, I decided to do one last natural treatment - I coconut oiled my hair again. This time I used way more because I was just hanging out at home. I oiled my hair and let it sit for an hour while I watched a lecture (productivity, yay!)

Then I washed my hair.

The first thing that was different was something that I did on purpose: I used way less shampoo and conditioner than I used to. Measuring out my bicarb and vinegar has taught me something about portion control. I don't need a million litres of shampoo and bubbles to clean my hair. So I used just a small amount of shampoo, and then just a small amount of conditioner.

There was something really comforting about having bubbly hair again, so that is one thing that I am glad about washing my hair properly again.

This is going to sound crazy, but shampoo is actually not that good at cleaning hair. I shampooed my hair twice, to make sure that I got the coconut oil out. The next day: still looks oily D: seriously, I know for certain that if I'd used bicarb then all the oils would be gone. So that's weird and sucky :/

But I've resolved to keep doing one more thing from my crazy routine: I'm going to wash my hair less. So now, instead of washing my hair 4 times a week, I'm going to wash it twice. I'll keep doing water-only washes because I found that it's actually a good way to refresh my hair without plastering it with chemicals. So my hair will just have to stay tied up now and wait for its next wash lol.

Another difference is the feel of conditioner as compared to vinegar and/or coconut oil. It's a really weird feeling. Conditioning my hair, even after I washed it out, didn't make my hair feel clean, it made it feel slimy. I've heard people talk about Pantene saying that it coats the hair, so I wonder if Herbal Essences does that too. I don't think I want my hair coated :( and the slimy feeling was not sexy at all. :( But something that is a huge improvement using conditioner rather than anything else is that my hair became infinitely easier to brush. So nice!

The other big difference I noticed going back to shampoo is the one that I am the most upset about. I actually mentioned it before - way less of my hair came out while I was washing it with baking soda. But from that very first shampoo wash, I lost SO MUCH hair. D: Seriously there was just an insane amount of hair falling right out of my head. Over the last 2 months, I have washed my hair with much gentler chemicals but the way I've been treating it physically has been a lot rougher - I was rougher when I was bicarb-ing my hair and I was rougher in that I was brushing it extra because I used a normal brush to detangle and a natural bristle brush to make it smooth and shiny. If anything, I should have had more hair coming out of my head. But I swear, I lost more hair in the 2 months of my No-Shampoo routine than in that one first shampoo wash. NOT HAPPY. I really hope that it's just because of the sudden difference in treatment, and not because shampoo is actually that bad for my hair...

Anyway, something that I thought all through this experiment and still believe now is that the best thing you can do for your hair is a) avoid mistreating it and b) be consistent. My experiment focussed on that first point - avoiding mistreating hair. But I don't really think that shampoo and conditioner are bad for your hair, even though they're definitely harsher on the hair and scalp than bicarbonate of soda and apple cider vinegar are. I think that mistreating your hair is a bit more extreme, like always using products in it or straightening and/or blowdrying it too often. I'm not really going to damage my hair by washing it, anyway. And while it might struggle a little as I go back to a Yes-Shampoo regime, I think in a few weeks it will be the better for it.

In the end, this was a really interesting experiment. I tried some new things, I learnt some things and I went back to my old ways making a few informed differences.

Not shampooing your hair isn't as gross as it sounds - it's just different. It definitely works, I can vouch for that, but it's not for everyone.

I'm currently still using my Herbal Essences shampoo & conditioner because I had some left, but when I use it up I'm planning to use a more environment friendly product - hopefully something that doesn't contain sodium laureth sulfates, but still lathers well and smells great. After all, it's always good to help the environment and all that stuff.

I'm also going to go back to my Dove deep conditioning treatment. Coconut oil works pretty well but it's hard to wash out with shampoo :(

And in other news: coconut oil makes a surprisingly good moisturising face mask. (You gotta experiment with the products you have available, right?)

Hope you found this to be an interesting read :) - I welcome any comments or questions.

♥Nancy♬