Zatera Ul

One of the things that the hippies/natural livers have been learning to live without is shampoo. A year ago, I gave the no ‘poo method a try. I didn’t want to blog about it, though, until I had tried it through the summer.

There is a good summary of the method here, except that I don’t think the baking soda paste is a good idea; dissolve the baking soda in water, so it won’t have an abrasive effect on your hair. The basic idea is to wash hair weekly with a weak baking soda solution, followed by a weak apple cider vinegar solution. For the rest, do some brushing to distribute the natural oils, and some scalp massage. The goal is to reduce the scalp’s oil output, so that just enough is produced, rather than being stuck in an over-produce/over-strip cycle as tends to happen with regular shampoo. I used to wash my hair (in the winter), have a day or so of fly-away hair, one day of okay hair, and then oily hair until I washed it again.

Starting the no ‘poo method, was quite miserable. There’s an adjustment period that spans several weeks, and until my head adjusted, my hair was terribly oily and greasy. Ugh, awful. Some people recommend washing it with a tiny bit of shampoo, or with just conditioner, during this period. But it passes, and then everything reaches a new, steadier state, which is very nice. Now I can actually go a couple of weeks between baking soda/vinegar rinses, no problem. In the summer, my hair was less frizzy than usual, because it had a coating of natural oils (more waxy than greasy), which seemed to provide a barrier against the worst of the humidity.

Another thing I did was to change from apple cider vinegar to plain white vinegar, because I really don’t like the cider vinegar smell.

Overall, I like the no ‘poo results, and I’m not planning to go back to shampoo any time soon. You couldn’t tell by looking at my hair that I have used almost no shampoo in the last year. It just doesn’t get super-oily anymore. I still have some hair days better than others, but the extremes are much less extreme.