Pick up the average bottle of shampoo at your local drug store and you will be hard pressed to pronounce, let alone identify, the plethora of chemicals and compounds that compose its ingredient list. Add that to the fact that a great deal of hair cleaning products may or may not be tested on animals before they are washed down the drain by showering citizens each and every morning, and you have got a recipe for a hair care revolution.
The anti-shampoo faction has dubbed themselves the no ‘poo movement, and their message is slowly picking up steam. Converts to the cause do not eschew all hair cleaning materials—instead, a variety of natural and commercially derived products are used in replacement to the salon samples.
Going to Wash The Man Right Out of My Hair
The no ‘poo movement has strong political and environmental elements—but its personal aspects are a driving force as well. Chemical laden shampoos and conditioners support a commercial economy where products are expected to have immediate results—regardless of their possibly harmful effects on people’s skin and bodies. According to Jacqueline Krohn, M.D., in The Whole Way to Natural Detoxification: The Complete Guide to Clearing Your Body of Toxins by Jacqueline Krohn, MD, “caustic chemicals, such as alkaline solutions, can also penetrate the skin. Once a chemical has penetrated the stratum corneum (the most superficial layer of skin), it moves through the epidermis and into the dermis. Then the rich blood supply of the dermis readily transports the chemical into the bloodstream.”
Alcohol and isopropyl—which are included in nearly every commercial product on the market—strip hair of its natural oils. Unfortunately, they have the same effect on the scalp, and can eliminate healthy bacteria and needed moisture from the body. Many colour pigments in shampoos have been shown to act as carcinogens in small animals. Mineral oil—another main ingredient—is a petroleum based by-product that can block the skin’s pores and increase acne. Sodium lauryl sulfate (SLS) and sodium laureth sulfate (SLES) are detergents and surfactants have been linked with serious health threats, but are often added to shampoo to pump up the foam.
If eliminating these nasty chemicals from your bathroom are not reason enough to join the no ‘poo movement, there’s also the vanity aspect. Testimonies abound from those with curly, uncontrollable hair, made all the more coarse by oil-stripping components of regular shampoo or lanky-locked individuals being weighed down by residue from standard conditioners.
Many people turned to a more sensible—and natural—routine involved the two base components of alkaline and acid. Baking soda works as the former, apple cider vinegar as the latter. The routine has been lauded as promoting healthy, shiny, chemical free hair.
Interesting! Baking soda and apple cider vinegar….I may try. I’ll try anything once…though I noticed there is a 1 week to 2 week adjustment period. My hair isn’t in the best shape anyhow so I guess I have nothing to loose.
Of course, you could just shave your head!!
i am going to try the baking soda/apple cider vinegar—wonder if it suds up like regular shampoo…this should be interesting
I haven’t used shampoo in over a month now. There is an adjustment period, but past that, my hair is now softer and shinier than it has ever been. I will probably never buy shampoo again.
A great “how-to” blog can be found at http://babyslime.livejournal.com/174054.html
krawlsdrawls, no suds. It’s just a scalp massage and two rinses.
I haven’t shampooed my hair for two years-I rinse it with warm or cold water. I think the colder water works better by shrinking the pores, and I just notice subtle differences. My hair is definately easier to manage, looks good, smells like not like perfume, and it doesn’t get greasy like it used to, reason being I think the body was overcompensating for the loss of natural balance in the hair. I am also looking into other methods of teeth hygiene because I think these chemicals in toothpaste are bad for us too. What were humans using thousands of years ago or a few decades ago? They’d dive in a river or lake and get clean. Their skin probably wasn’t stripped of the natural oils too that might protect us against the harmful rays of the sun. Now we just dump chemicals on us to protect us from the sun. I think humans need to wake up and not be manipulated by this huge industry of body care products. Really, I don’t use deodorant either. My body somehow has come into balance and I’m not fighting the nature. Look at nature, other animals don’t use these products daily. What is wrong?
Responses to Michael
About deodorant, I’ve been using a rock salt stone and it’s pretty mild. I test products by tasting them, if they are good for my taste buds they are good for my skin. That rock should taste vaguely citric.
I have very thick, wavy, long hair. I have tried repeatedly to go “no poo” & stuck with it over 8 months but my hair never regained the “balance” many speak of. I have tried water only, baking soda & vinegar, conditioner only. Nothing seems to work really. Any recommendations? I would love to go w/o deodorant or tooth paste or any of that…
I rinse my hair, that’s all. I used to get really oily hair when I used shampoo. Stop driving yourself mad with this baking soda stuff. I bet the baking soda doesn’t wash out of the hair very well. I just rinse and massage my scalp, but not crazy massage. good rinse and let natur take care of itself. teeth, i was using baking soda, and I liked it. My mouth felt really clean. i have this japanese tooth powder made from burned eggplant, but it’s sort of hard to clean up. it’s black ashes. so it sort of leaves your sink black and you it doesn’t clean off very well. so good luck. btw, your hair will look different by not using shampoo it will be clean, and look soft, and it will be manageable. I think everyone has their own natural hair look and it shouldn’t be stripped by these overpowering shampoos.
I haven’t washed my hair with shampoo in over a month. I have very thick, wavy blond hair. I use baking soda(app. 4 tbsp./a palmful) mixed with just enough water to create a paste. I massage this mixture into my scalp and roots for about five minutes. Then I create a mixture of about 1/8 cup apple cider vinegar to about two cups of water, which I mix in a spray bottle. Sometimes I add lemon juice to this mixture, with phenomenal, smell-good, super-soft results. I massage my scalp in the shower, rinsing out all the baking soda. I then turn the shower off while I spray my hair down with the vinegar/lemon juice mixture until it’s all gone. Then I rinse this out using lukewarm water. After that I add about 1/2 a tsp. of honey to my empty spray bottle and fill it up 1/3 of the way with water. I turn off my shower again and spray down my hair. Then I rinse it with lukewarm water followed by a cold blast. My scalp used to itch all the time and I had a slight case of dandruff. Also, my hair was very dry at the ends and oily at the roots. I always wore it up b/c it looked so bad and I washed it everyday. Now my hair is soft, silky, and shiny. I wear it down all the time. And, best of all, NO SCALP ITCH OR DANDRUFF. If you decide to do this you will go through an adjustment phase, when your hair will be oilier than you like. I am going through this phase right now. There are several ways to deal with it. The first way is to use baking soda as much as you used shampoo at first. When you start to cut back on the baking soda use, you’ll notice a spike in your hair’s oil production. To remedy this, I have started mixing baking soda and water in my trusty spray bottle and spraying it from my roots to my tips before turning on the shower. It soaks up some of the oil without stripping the hair. I encourage you to try this if you’re interested. It’s a fun, affordable, and unpredictable process. And for me it’s been rewarding. Google it. There are a lot of helpful sites. Oh,yeah, I’ve also stopped using soap on my body and face. Everything I use on my hair, I use on my face, with the addition of aloe vera gel. For my body I add epsom salt, which draws out toxins, about once a week, as a salt scrub, or to a hot bath.
Responses to Megan
Yeah, thanks. But I don’t use anything on my hair. I rinse it and massage my scalp. No dandruff, no greasy hair. My hair is soft, clean and wavy and very easy to manage. When I shampooed my hair I it would get greasy because of the sebum that was be produced in over abundance. Now, I feel my hair has a natural balance. Sometimes I wonder why shampoo was invented. Maybe it was in the days where men worked in factories and got grease in their hair and needed degreasers like Sodium Laurel Sulfate. All I have to do is rinse my hair. I bought this product called clay powder by Logona and it’s a great product. But I use it once every two months at the most because I feel I don’t need it. The hair conditions and cleans itself. The clay is neutral and doesn’t effect the PH of your skin or strip oil from it. So I am fine without any hair products. The clay is expensive, but I still find it not necessary unless I got something in my hair that water alone couldn’t get out. Try it! I mean, try nothing . Your hair has probably reached it’s natural balance by now and that was the reason for using the baking soda- I think. Well, if works great wonders for me- doing nothing that is and I have no dread locks and my hair looks good. I do however make my own toothpaste with baking soda, green tea, and peppermint oil. My mouth and teeth feel cleaner than before and I hear that BS is better than the stuff in normal toothpaste because it doesn’t have that SLS in it to screw up your ph balance in your mouth. I can’t believe how much garbage is in body care products in general. Why would you need an engine degreaser to clean your teeth? It can’t be good for us.
Have a great day! Michael
I’m getting kind of discouraged, it has been almost 2 months and I’m still going through the detox stage. I have experimented with using several amounts of BS and rarely ACV. I only wash about once a week because I was hoping it would make the detox period go by quicker. Now I’m not sure. I have also tried the Mexican method of using a wash cloth to distribute the oils.
Well anyways, I’m hanging in there. I just can’t wait till it’s over. At the very least I have seen a lot of noticeable differences between now and when I used to use shampoo everyday, sometimes even twice. My hair used to get oily by night time, now it takes a couple days.
Can any ordinary clay be used? Im new to WO – Im on day 8 and though my hair has been VERY gumphy, I used corn flour last night and it seems to have made a big diffrence. My biggest concern is I dont want to change the PH of my hair. I did the BC and ACV and my face and neck went bright red and hot. Any advise will be really helpful.
Thanks
Responses to Carle
try looking around for shikakai powder (it’s an indian herb). mix up a paste and scrub your scalp with that.
also, try to determine if it was the baking soda or the vinegar that affected you. if the vinegar doesn’t affect you, definitely keep using it, particularly for rinsing out the shikakai. (without an acidic rinse, it’ll start to leave a buildup in your hair)
also, don’t use heinz. it leaves an incredible stench, and isn’t very natural. look for an organic brand. i really like wholefoods’ brand.
[...] To back this up, I offer you two articles. The first is provided by Jennifer about the Shampoo Scam. The second is in regards to “no-poo” provided via AboutMyPlanet.com. [...]
I am wanting to try this but am afraid because i have color treated hair(which i am trying to grow out its just taking a long time to not look like a moron)
any ideas?
I can completely relate to the curly girl problem. Almost all commercial shampoos and most conditioners leave my hair dry and frizzy due to all the alcohol and other chemicals. It’s quite the predicament and always nice to find ways around.
I haven’t used shampoo in two months. It is working great for me! I went poo-less not because I was concerned about chemicals but because my hair was always dry after shampooing and I had to use a lot of products to manage it. Now I use baking soda once or twice a week, apple cider vinegar every morning, and occasionally some olive oil to style. I have had constant oily dandruff since I was a child, and it hasn’t gotten rid of that yet, but I’ve given up on a cure.
Now here is the interesting part:
I started using my shampoo as a body wash because it was just sitting there. One day I noticed terrible irritation on my girly parts. I googled it, and sure enough – sulfate shampoo causes big painful bumps down there! I threw away all my shampoo after that! If it does that down there after just a couple uses, no wonder I had problems using it on my head!
[...] vinegar Earlier this week, I started an experiment. I’d been reading snippets / across / the net about people who forgo store-bought shampoo and conditioner, and decided to try it [...]
I tried this a couple of years ago, before this “no ‘poo” thing. Straight no-shampoo. The gunky phase lasted a couple of weeks, and I did not notice any startling improvements.
But that’s more likely to be my hair type, I think, than anything against the method. I have long (waist-length) hair, heavy but not particularly thick, and no curl. Per what I’ve read, back then and now, this seems to work best for those with VERY thin and/or fine hair, or with VERY thick and/or curly hair.
Since I didn’t notice startling changes, I eventually fell back into a weekly shampoo-and-conditioner, with a very mild generic brand. It’s mild alright, my husband uses the same stuff and he’s extremely sensitive — right now, there’s exactly 2 commercial formulas on the market that he can tolerate!
I’m tempted to try this BS method, but the vinegar rinse is a big problem — the DH comes out in hives from vinegar!!! Maybe I could try just the lemon juice part, or nothing at all. I also note with interest whoever above implied they used the method to get through the gunky/re-balancing phase, and now simply rinse with warm water. 8-9-08
hay, ive been using baking soda and vinegar for a while, just wondered how i can make this a bit more easy to use?
normally i bring a glass of water and vinegar, and then another glass of a cup of water with a tbs of baking soda.
I would sorta like to make a paste to be able to rub it in more easily, any ideas?
With my long hair, I find it helps to put the BC water onto dry hair. And then rinse it all out. I still cant use the vinegar as I come out in welts.
Melly, I don’t do a paste, but I’ll tell you what I’ve worked out for convenience: I have a two-gallon, spouted container in my pantry. I mix up a full container’s worth of the water-apple cider vinegar at a time. Then I keep two repurposed bottles in the shower (one’s an old Dove dish soap container, the other is a large lemon juice container). I just pull off the tap to refill the ACV rinse as needed since I use that cold. I keep a box of ACV in the bathroom and a spoon and I try to remember when I’m done to preload the bottle with my two TBSP for next time, that way all I have to do is fill it halfway with warm water and go. I think the squirting action of the bottles is preferable to a glass or a paste, after trying several ways to do it. ~Vanessa
I use travel squeeze bottles that I got at target.
It’s woking pretty well. 9 days since I started. Have “BS”d twice, with lemon rinse. Am mostly getting in the 100 strokes/day. No gunkies yet; maybe because I was already only shampooing about once a week anyway. I do notice that my hair has TONS more volume. MAYBE a bit more shine?? Feels a LITTLE bit coarse when starting to brush, but I have a lot of length to develop tangles in.
As for application… I’m just using a plastic food storage box, 3″ square, about 2 inches deep. Dump a Tablespoon of BS in, add water when in the shower. Wet hair, dump BS water on, do the massage. Use the same plastic box for water, add a good squirt of lemon juice concentrate (also a plastic bottle). Let’s see, I rinse BS out by tipping my head back and working from crown to nape down the back of my head. Then flip around, bend over, gather hair ENDS for the first slosh of lemon rinse; put the ends up on the back of my head, add the rest of the rinse so you get a little on the sides and top as you rinse.
The massage is a big step. I grew up (50 yrs ago!) getting haircuts and (shudder) perms at the local beauty college, and boy did those girls give GOOD scalp massage when washing hair before cutting.
Another long-hair trick that I picked up accidentally years and years ago, from Jose Eber, probably his “Shake your hair, darling” book, was about handling wet hair GENTLY, no harsh rubbing or smooshing around so tangles are created. So I’ve always concentrated on scalp massage and only as much movement of hair as it takes to spread the suds, or rinse water, through. 8-17-08
So I’ve been trying to work up the nerve to try no poo–and ten minutes ago I just stepped out of the shower. I’m in. It’s REDICULOUS that I’ve been avoiding this out of fear. I mean, if I totally hate the results, I can go back to chemical laden lather–if I like.
But to be honest, I don’t like. In fact, for the past year, I’ve been trying to cut back majorly on shampooing and changing soap to more natural, vegetable based types. I ”secretly” switched to natural deodorant for awhile, then gave up because I was moving to Asia, and it was winter–and I was afraid sweaters and wool coats and a lack of antipersperant would be a bad idea.
This past year, though, I’ve been working my way out of what has been a long bout with depression. And I really think the things I’ve been eating (and putting on my body) haven’t been helping. And when I’ve started cutting back on these things, I’ve noticed a real difference.
So anyway…This post got longer than I intended, but I hope to see great results. For now, just telling myself I can quit if I absolutely need to. But it would be great if this does work for me.
One of the areas that is vastly overlooked in no ’poo discussions is the environmental impact. I’m not talking about the effect on local water sources but rather the effect on more distant locales. The bulk of commercial shampoos and conditioners contain either Sodium lauryl sulfate or Sodium laureth sulfate – a compound thats only real purpose is to create lather. This compound uses either coconut oil or palm kernal oil in its synthesis. These oils are farmed in many third world countries where it makes more fiscal sense to level huge jungle tracts in order to make room for additional farming. This destruction of jungles displaces and threatens huge amounts of wild life – most notably the already endangered orangutan among others. All this having been said, I’m not really an earth cookie or a vegan or anything like that, but I feel that if I can do without something and its better for the planet and maybe my health then why not do it? I’ve gone almost three months without using any shampoo and I have had no ill effects. If you try it and your body chemistry doesn’t allow for it, then go back to shampoo – at least you tried. And for the record I have stopped using commercial toothpaste for the same reasons and now use baking soda with a long disinfectant follow up rinse. Deodorant is next on the hit list!
My hair is thin and past my bum, it is very oily as well. I went through detox for nearly 2 weeks and now my oil production has begun to level out nicely. By 3 weeks I expect my hair to have the perfect balance of oil.
I use only vinegar and water to bathe and wash my hair in. On those very oily days I dusted my hair with baking powder and brushed it out very, very well. Any left over residue I wiped with a damp wash cloth. This worked very well.
-08-26-09