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To shampoo or not to shampoo?

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  • TomsMomTomsMom Raw Newbie

    Okay, queenfluff. Thank you:-)

  • troublesjustabubbletroublesjustabubble Raw Newbie

    when I rinsed my hair with lemon juice today I still had alot of oil around the scalp and the rest of my hair felt very stiff like I had just gotten out of the pool. Should I not do it two days in a row? Should I alternate?

  • Hey Queenfluff.

    I noticed that on the first page of this forum you said that your hair was shedding a lot after no shampoo, I am noticing the same thing. I’m actually a little worried; it’s getting thinner! I’ve been doing it for about 6 weeks now and it looks great otherwise. Should I maybe just try water instead, how did you solve the problem?

  • southernloversouthernlover Raw Newbie

    I gave it a go for 5 months, but I was losing way too much hair, so I cracked yesterday. I used some organic peppermint shampoo, which has a lot less chemicals than the conventional shampoos. Anyway, it felt foreign for sure, but my hair feels better now. I just found out I’m pregnant, and I want my hair to be beautiful and long, not really thin. Anyway, I’ll go back eventually, once I am 100% raw for sure.

  • queenfluffqueenfluff Raw Newbie

    Sweta – My hair is fine now. Hair sheds in cycles. You might have more hair shed one month and the next month hardly any. For me, when I seem to be seeing more hair shed – I don’t worry about the hair that comes out in the comb, brush or shower but whether or not hair comes out when I touch or run my fingers through it – I know, by experience, that it is time for a trim. It is always true that I have some pretty dry ends when I notice more hair shed. I cut the dry ends off and problem solved.

    Take a very close look at the condition of your hair – practicularly the end. If they are very dry and damaged with lots of splits, cut them off! Fragile hair can easily be pulled out and when you comb or brush your hair it can be tough to get through those ends resulting in more hair pullout.

    Yes, I water rise. I tried Baking soda a few times and hated it. It left my hair too dry and my scalp feeling tight. If yours feels that way, it means your hair oils are being stripped and you dont want that. It totally defeats the whole purpose of no poo. The point is to leave your wonderful natural oils in your hair.

  • I only use soap I make. I make a soap with castor oil, shea butter, evoo, vco, pure water and sodium hydroxide(no lye no soap people) I use it on my hair and body. Make a different recipe for dishes, laundry and general cleaning. Haven’t used shampoo in years.

    funny/scary story, there is a shampoo called biolage. It has a DISTINCT smell. Suave makes the same, same crazy smell. Well some six weeks after going no poo and using this stuff. One day as I was using baking soda/honey on my hair all the sudden I smelled the biolage smell. After six weeks it came out, where the bleep was it. It scared me enough to never ever ever go back to any of that crap again.

  • Oh don’t worry babycat, I’m never going back to shampooing again; I’m sure my body knows what it’s doing with the shedding; it’s just a lot of hair so I’m worried.

    Queenfluff: I understand that I may just be shedding more right now, but do you know when it may slow down? I just gently run my fingers through my hair and large amounts come out (20-30 strands), My hair has gotten much thinner and I’m just a little worried. I’ve switched to water because as you said my scalp felt tight with the baking soda. I’ve been doing no poo for 7 weeks at this point.

  • I’ve gone about 1 week without shampoo /conditioner, and I think my hair is finally getting past the oily yucky stage. I woke up this morning, after getting my hair trimmed yesterday, and it looks great!

    I might try the sea salt/water rinse when it looks like it needs it though.

    This is so liberating. :)

  • troublesjustabubbletroublesjustabubble Raw Newbie

    argh! I want to do this! I just have to take the plunge I guess. I’m jealous of you littlegems. Someday when I dont work a job where I have to look professional I’ll do it. I just can’t do the detox right now.

  • troublejustabubble – I hope you find the a good time to do the detox… perhaps the Christmas Holiday season you might have enough days off from work to try?

    I’m looking for a new job right now, so I thought now is the time to do it. But who knows, it has only been 1 week, and I used to wash my hair about once/3 days… so I might have more yuckies coming up soon.

  • troublesjustabubbletroublesjustabubble Raw Newbie

    Yeah, I may try the holidays. only problem is that there are a lot of family pics going on and I’m not sure I want to look gross! haha. We’ll see.

  • heyenglishheyenglish Raw Newbie

    I’m almost at the 2-week mark, and definitely having a bad case of the oilies. I think I’m going to try salt water tomorrow, because apple cider vinegar really isn’t doing anything to help. Fortunately my hair is really short (I chopped most of it off), so I can get away with it looking a little lank. I just have to remind myself not to run my fingers through my hair a lot like I used to, or the oil goes crazy!

  • I’d totally LOVE to try this…but I have one other thing. Vanity! I dye my hair. I used to use henna but went to chemicals years ago and I always remember being told, never put henna on top of chemically treated hair…so I got stuck. There’s just so much gray in my hair I’m afraid of looking old (well, actually looking my age since with dyed hair most folks think I’m late 20s to early 30s).

  • TzefiraTzefira Raw Newbie

    whats the recipe for the baking soad and honey….. and does anyone here have really curly hair? My hair gets reallly frizzed out after 1 wk of no poo…. so i’ll use a lilt coconut oil after shower but then it just looks greasy any suggestions?

  • WinonaWinona Raw Newbie

    you wouldn’t necessarily look gross, troublesjustabubble. if you use basking soda followed by ACvinegar mixed with water, you will get the grease right out. Try it!! What do you have to lose? You can do the B.soda vinegar thing every few days, in the beginning, then move down to once a week.

  • heyenglishheyenglish Raw Newbie

    Winona – do you just put the baking soda neat on your hair and then rinse it out with the acv/water mixture? I tried putting neat ACV on my hair, letting it sit for 10 mins, and then rinsing, and it doesn’t seem to do much for my greasiness. Plus the smell is really strong, and my skin turns red where the vinegar touches it!

  • troublesjustabubbletroublesjustabubble Raw Newbie

    Winona, I wash my hair everyday and if I go one day without it it gets really greasy. I tried lemon juice but on day three my hair started detoxing and was incredibly waxy. Would the baking soda take that out? Do you put water with the baking soda before you put it on?

  • queenfluffqueenfluff Raw Newbie

    Sweta – I can’t really tell you when the shedding will stop because it is different for everyone. Without knowing what else is going on in your life, your diet, hair condition etc it is difficult to say. In normal hair cycles when you have periods of more shedding it depends on how many hairs your scalp is shedding – once it is done shedding all the old hairs it will stop. This article below it gives the weeks of all three hair cycles (anagen, catgen, telogen) but like I said it can vary by individual.The telogen phase is the shedding phase.

    This is a good article to learn about the hair cycles: http://www.hairlosslibrary.com/hair_growth_cycl…

    troublesjustabubble – The reason your hair is so greasey is because of the shampoo (it doens’t matter if it is natural or not -they all strip). Unfortunatley, you HAVE to go through the detox – there is no way around it. Your scalp needs time to normalize the oil production after the shampoo is not used anymore. This is normal and there is no way around it unfortunatley. My advice would be just to do it and get it over with. Wear a hand band, barette or a scarf on your head. When you do your “washes” just remember you need to rinse alot longer and better than you would if you were doing shampoo to get the hair really clean. I rinse with water for at least 10 minutes on a massage spray setting. This isn’t the sort of thing you can get done in one minute in the shower.

    Another thing you can do if you concerned with oily appearance is to use a bit of cornstarch in your hair when it is dry. Brush it in. This will soak up some oils. My advice is to do the detox when you are on vacation or something. The first week is the worst. If you give it more effort in your rinses and brushing and combing (at the beginning, I recommend more brushing and combing to get the oil and buildup out) you should have presentable hair within time to go back to work.

    heyenglish – ACV doesn’t get rid of the greasies, It is used by some people in place of conditioner NOT shampoo! So you were doing it backwards. The baking soda is the shampoo replacement. I don’t use either. Personally I think the Baking soda pretty much strips the hair like shampoo does so in my mind it defeats the purpose of the whole no poo thing. I think it should just be used to remove build up at the beginning of the process. If you use it all the time, you will sort of get into the same cycle you did when you were using shampoo. You get dependant on it. If you elect to use the baking soda on a regular basis, use VERY little.You don’t want to strip the oils from your hair. And don’t leave the baking soda in rinse out right away (oh, in case you didn’t know, you need to add a bit of water to mix in the baking soda to form a very watery paste than you distribute in your hair). I would avoid the scalp – it can really dry out the scalp!

    I might be putting all of my no poo tips etc on a web page. I know the thread here has gotten sort of long and newbies don’t have time to read it but I don’t like to have to repeat the answers all the time (my fingers get tried plus it takes up room on the GoneRaw database to have all these repeated responses). So when I have that up I will put the link in my profile to the page.

  • troublesjustabubbletroublesjustabubble Raw Newbie

    Thank you queenfluff! I’ll take this into consideration. I know I have to go through the detox and that’s why I’m putting it off. But I’m considering it more now. It might be worth it. We’ll see.

  • heyenglishheyenglish Raw Newbie

    Thanks queenfluff! You’re the “no poo” guru around here :) I’m just going to stick with plain old water, and if my hair is super yucky by this weekend, I’ll try a little baking soda.

  • tzefira, my hair is long and really curly too. this is an old picture after i went to the hairdresser and she blew dry my hair straight…

    after rinsing really well and massaging your scalp under running water, don’t really squeeze your hair dry. comb thru with a pick and massage scalp with fingertips. your curls should be ok if you let them air dry from the dripping wet stage. after sleeping on my dry hair, it starts to pull the curls out and seems a bit frizzy, thats when i just massage my scalp, comb thru with wide tooth comb to pull the frizzies out and then my hair is more wavy – not so curly until i wash it again.

  • I have to remember not to run my fingers through my hair either… it is a huge habit of mine.

    so far so good though.

  • I haven’t shampooed for over 2 weeks now, and my hair seems like it has already gotten over the greasy stage. It actually feels and looks really good!! Yay for no ‘poo!

  • I have been using lavendar scented soap made from all natural sources, or at least what I believe to be natural. And yesterday, for the first time after I rinsed it, misted it with rose water with my spritzer. And my hair was so soft. I had never felt it so soft. And it smells so good too. I think I will do this from now on.

  • JoescJoesc Raw Master

    I haven’t posted to this thread in months and I remember saying that I couldn’t give up the shampoo but I actually did. I still use chemicals but now I use baking soda and vinegar. It cleans well and I have only used shampoo when I tried to learn how to swim some time ago it was castile soap with peppermint. I like it but the peppermint was a bit strong so I felt as if my scalp was going to peel off.

  • I was doing so well for a couple of weeks, and then last week I made the mistake of trying a sea salt wash in my hair… well, actually, I soon discovered that the jar of sea salt scrub my friends had made for me a while ago had essential oils in it! yikes! I was so oily and greasy, it was hilarious. So I had to use Dr. Bronner’s to wash it off.. and I’m still recovering. :)

    But I must say, my hair actually holds it’s style better now than when I used shampoo. I have wavy hair, and it is cut with layers so the curls can curl up if I don’t blow dry it. But when I do use a hair dryer, it never stays straight. I love it now, because I can blow it dry, and it straightens and just has a bit of body to it, and curls out at the ends a bit… exactly how I’d been trying to get it to do for so long.

    I just have to get rid of the oilies now. I guess I’ll try a bit of lemon and see if that works.

  • No poo for over 3 months now! My hair is 80% less oily, softer, shinier, and more manageable. Dry brushing every day definitely helps with getting over the initial oily stage (scalp “detox”) as well as the cornstarch method that was mentioned.

    Rarely (once a month or less) I use a 4:1 water-baking soda rinse followed by washing with a natural shea+rooibos soap bar or vinegar rinse to restore the pH balance of the scalp.

    Quick tip: You can make hair gel out of chia/psyllium/flax etc. I also vaguely remember hearing something about hairspray made out of boiled citrus peels? Search for some recipes on Google! Natural homemade remedies are the way to go!

  • Hi everyone,

    after having read this topic a few days ago i immediately started the no poo. i was already not washing my hair that often (about once a week), but now im on day 11 and it stats to get very oily on the roots but super dry on the lengths. i would like to try the water only method, except that for some reason i couldnt access the web pages that explain how it goes. could somebody describe it for me? im supper happy to have found this thread, thanks to you all !!

  • WinonaWinona Raw Newbie

    galadriel – it’s very easy to do the water only method. spend 10 minutes massaging your scalp under a high powered stream of water (if you have a strong setting on your showerhead, that helps) or just under running water in the shower. massaging helps to get the oils out.

    if your oil is out of control, i recommend using 1 Tbsp baking soda massaged into your scalp then rinse with apple cider vinegar solution (a.c.vinegar mixed with water). Then rinse your head. Only do this for the first month or two, then stop – as some folks feel that baking soda strips the natural oils.

    dry brushing helps remove the sebum (white flakes). meaning, brush your hair/scalp gently for 5 minutes while it’s dry.

  • thanks Winona, thats very helpful. would you advise to wash everyday with water only? or just a couple of times a week? at the mo, im always having them in a pony tail, loose hair is just unmanageable but i know its because its just the beginning… its great to hear from so many people, gives so much motivation and support! may the no poo community get so big it embraces the whole planet!!! °o°

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