No Shampoo?!

I heard about this "no shampoo" movement at this really awesome blog [Bonzai Aphrodite] and was very interested.

See, most of the cosmetic and toiletry products I use are natural, but the one thing I have had a major problem with is shampoo. I have tried paraben-free and organic shampoos, but they just dry out my hair like crazy [and they are usually uber-expensive]. I had submitted to the fact that I would just have to use "normal" shampoo if I wanted my hair to be moisturized. Then I stumbled upon the aforementioned blog.

The idea of No-Shampoo is that eventually you will use no shampoo [hence the name, it's super scientific]. Our hair was not intended to be stripped daily of it's natural oils [surprise]. It actually wasn't until the 1970's that shampoo became widely used on a daily basis, possibly when the shampoo manufacturers saw big profits to be made. Shampoo is entirely unnecessary, but because we use it so often our bodies have come to expect it. Here is what happens: our hair produces natural oils to condition, we wash those oils away with harsh soaps, our bodies learn to compensate by producing even more oil, so we end up washing our hair every day. You see the cycle. So, you cannot very well just stop using shampoo right away. Well, you can [and I tried], but this is what will happen: your hair will get unmanageably oily until you breakdown and are willing to use the harshest chemical possible to cut through the oil [gross]. Trust me, you don't want to go that route. The other option is to wean your hair off of shampoo. A good way to accomplish this is to use a baking soda/water mixture as shampoo and an apple cider vinegar/water mixture as conditioner. I know what you may be thinking "Ew. I don't want my freshly washed hair to smell like vinegar." And I am here to tell you that after you wash the mixture out you can't smell it. The idea is to start using these solutions as often as you would normally use shampoo, and then begin to wean. If you start using the solutions every day, slowly cut back to every other day, then once every three days [you get the idea]. Eventually you will be using these solutions on a very rare basis. And that is the goal. To eventually use it maybe only once a month or so. The idea is that your hair will revert back to it's natural state of self-regulating the oil that it produces, so just rinsing with water should be sufficient.

You may be thinking, "Can't I just cut back on my shampoo rather than switch to these weird baking soda and vinegar things?" Well, you could, possibly. I am not sure that it would work the same way, though, because the soap is still harsh and not really letting your body start to regulate the oil it produces. Baking soda and apple cider vinegar are very gentle on your hair, especially when diluted with water. And the baking soda does not strip your hair of oils the way most shampoos do, it just absorbs any excess oil. And the apple cider vinegar just conditions your hair without leaving a waxy film behind.

So here are the directions for the solutions:

1 tbsp baking soda to one cup water

[and]

1 tbsp apple cider vinegar to one cup water

Pretty simple!

Well, I hope this was helpful [or at least interesting]. If you are interested in trying this out and have any questions, let me know. I haven't shampooed my hair for over two months now. Yay for healthy hair!