'No poo method' - anyone tried it?

[poorincashrichinlove]

I'm on a bit of a hippy drive to eliminate unecessary chemicals from my life as much as is reasonably practical. In my research I've come across the 'no poo (i.e. shampoo) method of hair washing. The basic premise of which is that shampoo strips the scalp of natural oils, whch we attempt to replace by using further chemicals to condition. The scalp over compensates for the loss of natural conditioning oils by over producing more, thus continuing the cycle of needing to wash in order to rid the hair of grease.

Alternatives to shampoo and conditioner are suggested (e.g. using baking powder and appke cider vinegar) but before I embark on what will be a greasy and unattractive transition period, I'd be interested to know if anyone else has experience of going shampoo and conditioner free?

I have fine, blonde shoulder length hair that gets very greasy roots within a day of washing, and dry ends.

*apple

Watching with interest

Hmmm, not sure. I went to college with someone who did this. Her hair always looked vaguely greasy. As it turned out she hadn't washed it using shampoo for a year. It didn't look like she hadn't washed it for that long, so I was impressed, but.....it still looked like her hair needed a good scrub. Definitely not a good look imo.

I tried it for 6 months. Using only conditioner to "wash" my hair followed by a good leave-in conditioner to style it. I abandoned all sulphate-containing shampoos and silcones. Like I say I did this 6 months and my hair became really dry, frizzy and unmanageable. Went back to sulphate shampoo followed by conditioner and the "evil" silcones and my god the difference! Nice hair again. Maybe I got the wrong end of the stick but my thick curly hair is just better with a proper clean and taming chemicals. Try the no poo method. Maybe using those eye-wateringly expensive cleansing conditioners instead ordinary conditioner would have worked (although I did give Wen a go and that wasn't particularly good - expensive and time consuming too).

I've found that it works better if you have soft water and are prepared to cut off any damaged hair that shows up after you stop using -cones.

That said a natural shampoo and -cone free conditioner works for me in the hard water area i live in. I have super thick hair and that makes gentle drying methods useless as it'll take 2+ days for my hair to dry.

Yes, I 'no-poo' and have spoken about at great length on all the other 'no-poo' threads in this folder!

I tried co washing for a month. Using a very cheap conditioner to wash my hair and then a better one afterwards. I have highlighted hair and at the time it was extremely damaged and I think it helped . Build up was a problem though and would turn my highlights very brassy.

But would conditioner clean your scalp properly? I don't think I could do this.

Thanks for sharing your thoughts and experiences. I was hoping to avoid expensive commercial no poo alternatives by making my own shampoo and conditioner type substitutes. I've read mixed reports about baking powder being used to clean the scalp. Some speak highly of lustrous, healthy hair, while others say that the ph is too alkaline and completely dried the hair out. Has anyone on here tried eashing with baking powder, or any other natural homemade concoction?

I do no-poo! I'm glad I'm not the only one! It does seem to be drying my hair out a bit though. I'm in a hard water area & have read that boiling the water first can help or using less bicarb or more vinegar. I made my own vinegar hair-rinse by heating the vinegar, adding lots of herbs appropriate for hair & leaving it to soak for a few days before straining. It was lovely initially but I've just reached the end of the batch & it's a bit old & just smells of vinegar now. I'm making more in the next few days but using red wine vinegar (good for reddish hair) instead of ACV & will do a smaller batch & actually remember to put it back in the fridge every time!

Other than being a bit drier & feeling funny when wet, I've not noticed my hair being any different. Certainly no greasier than it was before, but then I've never washed it more than twice a week unless it had baby sick in it!

I tried it for a week or so - it still felt clean (and, importantly, smelled clean as well) but I didn't like the way it looked. I have very thick curly hair and it always looked shiny at the scalp, like I had wet-look gel on it.

I have gone back to using an extremely small amount of mild shampoo.