No poo for my hair, thanks

An Alternative to Sham-poo

by Carla Ludington

What shampoo do you use to wash your hair?

I don't use poo.

Sounds deceptive, and a little frightening, don't you think?

Apple Cider Vinegar

Baking Soda

That's what I thought too, when I first heard of no poo shampoo.  It sounded like someone had fallen off the crazy wagon - why wouldn't you use shampoo???  That's a little too crunchy for me, thank you very much. However, after hearing the details,

I confess I have been converted.

Shampoos are (typically) detergents with chemicals such as mineral oil, sodium lauryl sulfate, and sodium laureth sulfate, just to name a few.  Sulfate detergents act as foaming agents and degreasers, and were originally designed to clean machinery.  When shampooing in a warm shower, the hot steam opens the pores on your scalp, allowing your body to absorb even more of the chemicals than they would otherwise.  This can be especially harmful for younger children, as the sulfates can affect their eye development.  (See here, here, and here).

My previous shampoo was "Sulfate-free", but still contained disodium laureth sulfuconate.
While is only half as toxic and irritating and irritating to the skin as SLS, that is only one ingredient in a list of many...

In the process of cleaning your hair, shampoo strips your hair of its natural oil, which is why most people add conditioner (to re-oil your hair).  With all the sebum (the natural oils from your hair) being stripped away, your hair produces even more oil, which ends up sort of over producing, leaving your hair even greasier.  Which is why it feels like you need to wash it every day (and with that routine, you do).  Hhhmmmmmm.......

Besides avoiding all the unfamiliar and unpronounceable chemicals in shampoo, here are a few other reasons someone might choose to try the no poo method:
      - very inexpensive (the ingredients are water, baking soda, and apple cider vinegar)
      - simple / easy to use
      - healthier hair (it will revert to a more natural state)
      - can save time and water (only need to shampoo every few days)
      - (usually) eliminates the need for additional hair products



Here's the skinny:

For washing your hair, use 1 Tbsp baking soda per cup of water.   This usually lasts me a couple of days.  If you have longer hair, just double or triple the recipe, but keep the proportions the same.  Too much baking soda will dry out your hair and leave residue. The theory on this is the baking soda mixture is a base and cleans your hair and scalp. You can recycle almost anything to store this in (I use a picnic style ketchup or mustard type bottle from the kitchen section at the grocers since it has a pointed tip with a lid that just slips on and off).  Apply to your scalp, let it sit for a minute, then scrub into your scalp with a circular motion, just like you would shampoo.  Rinse with warm water. (For those who prefer a visual run-through, Stephanie at Keeper of the Home shared a video blog.)

To detangle and clarify your hair, rinse your hair with a mixture of 1-2 Tbsp apple cider vinegar (ACV) per cup of water. I use another picnic type bottle, but some people use a spray bottle.  Ideally you would rinse your scalp in cold water for this one, but I admit I'm a bit of a wimp when it comes to cold water in the shower (or anywhere else, for that matter!).  The ACV rinse helps neutralize the pH of your hair after the baking soda mixture.

Can you say detox?

So here's the catch - remember when I said your hair will produce oil to counteract the oils being stripped by the shampoo?  Well, when you switch over to no poo, it may take your hair awhile to realize it is not being stripped anymore.  In the meantime, expect anywhere from 2 weeks to 8 weeks for your hair to adjust and revert to a healthier version of itself.  Emily at Live Renewed suggested a shampoo bar or decreasing your shampoo routine to every few days to try to decrease the amount of oil produced from shampoo stripping your scalp.  (She also mentioned that since the ACV rinse is not so much for your scalp as it is for the ends of your hair, it can actually encourage the natural oil production of your scalp, so when first starting out you may want to limit the ACV to just the ends of your hair.)  Katie at Kitchen Stewardship found that if things weren't going so well with her hair, sometimes the recipe just needed a little tweak.

I wasn't ready to go crunchy cold turkey, so I initially tried a shampoo bar (which lathers like shampoo).   It left my hair feeling a little weird, dried out and frizzy, but I think it was just going through the de-tox.  Once I ran out of the shampoo bar I switched to no poo, which was about the same initially, but got better fairly quickly, but again, I think that a lot of that was the detox for my hair. Whatever the reasons, my hair was pretty gross for what felt like forever.  I was ready to give up on several occasions.  Living with hair that felt thick, greasy, and dirty was not so pleasant.  Thank goodness it didn't last forever!  Now I am so happy with it.  It feels softer and has better body to it, and it just feels good to know I am taking care of it in a way that is easy, inexpensive, and earth friendly. My husband misses the flower-y smells of my previous shampoo, but ironically his favorite ones were advertised as having herbal types of smells like 'rosemary-mint'.  I am thinking I will try adding some essential oil to my ACV.

A few tips:

After the de-tox phase, if your hair is still too oily, try decreasing the amount of vinegar in the rinse, or switch to using lemon juice instead of ACV.

For hair that is too dry (i.e. from winter weather), add 2-3 drop vitamin e oil to the ACV rinse.

For hair that is too dry (not from winter weather), try using less baking soda or using honey in the clarifying rinse instead of ACV.

For an extensive list of suggestions on how to tweak the recipe for your hair type (i.e. greasy, frizzy, dry, itchy scalp, dandruff, etc.) and a list of herbs you can add to improve the health of your hair, see here.

Have you tried no poo before? How did it work for you? What factors make it more or less likely for you to try it out now or in the future, or to stick with it? If you aren't quite ready to leave the poo, how about trying a shampoo bar , using a greener option, or maybe just using your traditional shampoo 1 day less a week?