Water-only hair washing, one year on

It's been over a year since I last used shampoo on my hair. I won't say since I stopped washing it, because I still do wash it, but with plain water only. I did try not washing at all (sebum only) but didn't get on well with it. On the other hand, I'm very happy with water-only washing; it's not just stubbornness that's made me stick with it for over a year.

I was a bit puzzled in early October to see a tuft of short hair growing from the crown of my head.

Tufty

I hadn't cut it, I didn't think I'd lost any hair there, so why the tuft? I didn't worry about it too much until a couple of weeks later, when Ian said, Why have you got a bald patch on top of your head? A bald patch?! He was right, too...

Baldy

Although this was quite alarming, I wasn't overly worried as the hair was obviously growing back - the skin wasn't smooth - and it was only a small patch. On the other hand, if that spread all over my head...

I monitored the situation for a week or so, as growth shows up quickly in very short hair. It shouldn't be many days before the bald patch was hidden again, and indeed that's what happened... but then it was back. At this point I started to worry. If the hair keeps falling out then I have a problem. I did a bit of online research, and learnt that patchy hair loss is not that uncommon in women, and has all sorts of causes. It can just happen and then get better again. That was reassuring, but not entirely helpful.

After a bit more reading and thinking, I came to the conclusion that the most likely cause was a bad habit I'd developed - scratching. From reading the Long Hair Community forum (whose abbreviation I can't see without thinking Large Hadron Collider) I'd got it into my head that scritching is good for hair, and this developed into a bad habit. With willpower backed by the fear of going bald, I managed to stop... well, mostly stop, and I'm glad to say my hair is growing back happily now. I may be tufty for a while yet, though.

My current routine is to wash my hair in hot water about twice a week. This shifts some of the sebum, which I find is now a waxy substance, rather than oily, and softens what it doesn't shift. Once the hair is dry (to avoid breaking wet, fragile hair), ideally within a few hours of washing, I brush thoroughly with a natural bristle brush. Because the brush is dense and my hair is at this point covered in a soft wax, this is very hard work and can make my neck muscles ache. As well as spreading the sebum along the length of the hair, brushing removes quite a lot of it, which then needs combing out of the brush afterwards. Apart from that, I just use my old plastic brush every morning, as I used to. Sometimes I don't get round to using the natural brush after showering, sometimes I use it more often.

So how is my hair? Apart from the slight stickiness after showering (which isn't evident just by looking at it), it looks pretty good. It's at its best the next day, looking good and feeling soft and silky. It also has a lot more life than it ever used to. About eighteen months ago, when a hairdresser offered to put a bit of body into my hair by blowdrying, my response was, Good luck with that. Now I have that naturally. I love the way it bounces back when I run the brush through it. I think it's still improving, too, very gradually.

Oh, you want a photo? Oh, OK then!

Hair that hasn't seen shampoo for over a year

Hair update: Water only washing

After giving up on not washing my hair at all, I felt the first step to washing had to be water only, even though I really didn't think it would make any difference. To give it a fair chance, I spent a long time in the shower massaging warm water through my hair. It felt horrible - really sticky, especially as it was drying. BUT...

Hair after washing with only water (three times so far)

It worked! I've now washed my hair in plain warm water three times, spending less time over it each time and washing every other day, as I used to. It got less horrible each time, as the build-up of hair serum was washed out. Now I'm really happy with it!

As an added bonus, my eternally flat, lifeless, dead-straight hair has bounce and volume, and even a bit of wave. Oh, and it doesn't tangle. I can leave it to dry without brushing, then it brushes out fine when it's dry.

One caveat is that ends seem a bit dry. I may be willing to concede at this stage that a comb is not the best tool for spreading serum along the length of the hair, especially now there's so much less of it to spread. Perhaps it would be a good idea to buy myself a natural bristle brush after all. Now my hair's nice enough to stick with the no 'poo regime, it seems worth the investment in a new brush.

Hair experiment: Eight weeks

After six weeks I decided to give it another two, and now I have. I can't say my hair's changed very much in the last two weeks, so I'm not going to bother with photos again - just look back at the pics in the previous post.

This is disappointing. I had thought it was still improving, and hoped it might have got to a nice, silky soft state by now, but it hasn't. This is very frustrating, because it's fine really - it's not smelly or itchy, I'm quite comfortable with going out in public without it attracting attention (Actually, there's one person who may be able to tell me whether it's noticeably bad. I met up with her a week ago and I don't think she knew at the time that I was doing the experiment. Are you reading? Did my hair look awful?) The trouble is, it looks a lot nicer when it's just been washed, and I miss that. Not all the time, but at least some of the time I would like it to look that nice.

This means I'm going to have to give in and wash it. I'm not going to abandon two months of adjustment to a shampoo-free world and go straight back to the old shampoo-and-conditioner routine. I'll take baby steps from here, all the way to there if need be, but stopping short of the old routine if I can.

The first baby step is to rinse thoroughly with warm water. I'm very doubtful that this will have any impact on my hair, but I feel I have to try it first. After that I'll try very dilute bicarb in water accompanied by a nettle and vinegar rinse. I'm wary of bicarb because it did nasty things to my hair last time I tried it, but maybe if I use little enough of it I won't have those problems. Also, the vinegar should balance out the alkalinity - hopefully quickly enough to prevent the damage.

I should add that I've already experimented with the nettle and cider vinegar mix as conditioner, and had been using it for some time (after shampoo) before starting the no-wash experiment. I tried just nettles, that is, nettle tea made by boiling nettles for a while. The nettles themselves go on the compost heap, not on my hair.

My first attempt was nettle tea (with a bit of rosemary, to improve the smell, which didn't really work) without vinegar. This worked, but didn't keep - by the end of a week it was fermenting. I then tried adding cider vinegar at a strength of about one part vinegar to two parts tea. It stank. The third attempt was about one part vinegar to eight parts tea, and that seems pretty good. The smell is OK (I'm not particularly keen on the smell of nettle tea, but the vinegar isn't overpowering in this one. I've given up on the rosemary as it doesn't make much difference, so it's just a waste of rosemary) and it lasts well - I still have a little left from two months ago, and it hasn't gone off yet.

I'll keep you posted on the minimal washing experiments and in the meantime, I'm looking out for new season nettles.

Hair experiment: The Conclusion

... is inconclusive. It's six weeks today since I last washed my hair and I can't say for sure whether the experiment has worked or not. Here are some pictures - see what you think:

Picture on the left is of combed hair, on the right was before combing.

And now for my close-up...

A lovely view of my my ear and a closer view than you really want of my hair.

After two weeks it was really horrible, then it improved a bit. From the third to the fourth week I was convinced it had settled down to a natural state that was more sheep's wool than cat's fur. Then... it started to improve again, ever so slightly. It's been gradually improving ever since.

At the moment I'd say it's acceptable, but not nice. I can walk down the street with it loose and not attract attention, but it doesn't have the light, silky, shininess that it used to have straight after washing. It still feels a little oily, but nowhere near as bad as it did at its worst. Oily makes it sound worse than it is, but I can't think of the right word.

I did say that after six weeks, if I wasn't happy with my hair, I'd go back to washing it. Well, I'm not entirely happy with it, but I'm not ready to give up on the experiment just yet. I think it's probably still improving, so I'm going to give it another two weeks and reassess it then.

Hair update

I don't want to tempt fate (wot me? Superstitious? Never!) but I think my hair is less oily than yesterday. It still looks like it needs a wash, but... just maybe... it might have turned the corner.

Not washing hair

I'd heard a long time ago that if you leave your hair alone for long enough it will revert to a natural state of looking after itself with no need for shampoo. The theory is that shampoo strips the natural oils from hair, so the scalp compensates by producing more oils than it would otherwise, so you have to shampoo them out, and so on... This makes sense to me - after all, my cat has a lovely soft coat without using any shampoo and I'm sure all that 'washing' she does is really just combing.

No shampoo here, and just look at how fluffy that tummy is!

The idea of not having to wash my hair has always appealed to me and if I don't use shampoo that's one more thing (two counting the conditioner) that I don't need to buy. A little research revealed that yes, people do this - it's not just an urban myth. A Daily Mail article was particularly interesting (yes, really!) They asked five women to stop washing their hair for six weeks. Three of them found the experience a revelation - their hair looked and felt much better and they saved a lot of time and money. The other two were utterly miserable - their hair just got greasy and horrible. So, it doesn't work for everyone, which was news to me, but I noticed that the three who got on well with it were brunettes whilst the two who didn't were blonde. It's far too small a sample to generalise, but I found this encouraging nonetheless.

I found a blog entry that gave guidelines on how to manage the transition from daily washing to not washing. Step one: reduce washing frequency - well I washed every other day to start with, so that didn't really apply to me. Step two: switch from normal detergent-based shampoo to soap-based shampoo. Now, my friend Amanda at Realize Beauty has explained at great length why soap is not good for washing hair, but I tried it anyway. Amanda was right: Soap left icky gunk in my hair. Step three: switch to baking soda in water followed by a vinegar rinse. Well, I'd tried baking soda once before and found it really harsh on my hair, so I wasn't too keen to try that again. Step four: finally, stop washing hair altogether. Hmm, I seem to have rejected all the interim steps, so I'll just have to go straight to not washing and put up with the yucky transition period.

I wasn't sure whether not washing meant not even wetting the hair or continuing to rinse regularly with water. I did once try water-only washing, or at least just a herbal rinse, and that was horrid. It left my hair wet AND greasy. Also, I can't really see how water alone's going to tackle oily hair - washing oil off hands with just water doesn't work, so why would I expect it to for hair? Therefore, my no-washing experiment will involve going straight from washing with ordinary shampoo (and quite harsh shampoo at that, because we bought a cheap brand) to not washing, or even wetting, at all. This is not going to be pretty.

Following the Daily Mail article, as well as what I heard years ago, I'm going to give it six weeks. If I'm not happy with my hair at the end of that I'll go back to washing it, as infrequently as I can get away with. I'm almost two weeks into the experiment now, and no, it isn't pretty. Having said that, it seemed to stabilise after about five days and hasn't been getting any greasier since then, so I think my scalp must have already reduced its oil production. The trouble is, my hair is still full of oil.

I know that lots of brushing is an important part of this not-washing business (just look at the cat) and natural bristle brushes are recommended. I'm not sure how seriously to take this recommendation, as it tends to be wrapped up in a "Natural = good, Synthetic = bad" philosophy, which I find rather simplistic. Some people say natural bristles are less likely to break the hair than plastic ones, which I can't believe because you only have to look at the brushes to see that the bristles are similar hardness. I also find natural bristles rather scratchy on my scalp whereas the bobbles on the end of the plastic bristles massage quite pleasantly. On the other hand, natural bristles are more tightly packed in the brush, so I can see they're probably better at carrying the oils down the length of the hair, but then a comb has the same feature. What it really comes down to is the fact that I already own a plastic brush and I don't have a natural one. I'll stick with what I've got, but use a comb as well.

At this stage, Ian and I are both getting pretty fed up with my unwashed hair (though he's being supportive - he might even try it himself if it works for me). It doesn't look too bad, it just doesn't look particularly nice either. This morning I started wondering about the dry shampoos I've heard about - essentially they just absorb the oil and you brush them out. I tried brushing through a little bicarb - only about a teaspoonful - and I think it reduced the oiliness a little, but I'm not entirely convinced. My hair still feels sticky and I'm getting obsessed with brushing and combing it. Sitting here writing a blog entry isn't helping the obsession, either! I've also found that some people take this very seriously indeed. I do not intend to care that much about my hair!

I'll stick with it for six weeks because really, it's not all that long. At two weeks, though, I'm not enjoying this very much.