Real Poo and Green Hair

It's Tax Day, so "poo" seems like an appropriate subject.

A while back I blogged about not putting poo in your hair. There I covered shampoo and no poo, but not real poo. Today I want to talk about all three, with some experience under my bandana on two out of three.

But first, a note about "real poo". I figure if the totally synthesized stuff made from all sorts of scary chemical names is shampoo, then there ought to be real poo, made from natural, scalp friendly ingredients. I wondered why nobody was marketing real poo. Then I thought about the name. I'm a little slow at times.

We'll come back to this and green hair later.

The Experiment

I've stuck as much as possible to the No Poo treatment for almost a year. I cut waaaay back on shampoo, but I work in IT. I can't run around with greasy hair, and left to its own devices, my hair definitely heads that way. Most days I use the baking soda solution on my scalp, as little shampoo as I can get away with on most of the hair, and vinegar solution on the ends. For a while I was pushing my luck, trying to skip shampoo every other day. That seemed to be iffy, but was all over when we went on vacation.

I didn't think ahead of time to plan for hair cleaning while traveling. I make up large containers (old shampoo & conditioner bottles) of the two solutions. These would not travel well without leaking (or bursting open and emptying). So I punted and used shampoo and conditioner for 10 days, losing serious ground.

Results and Thoughts on No Poo

• My scalp doesn't itch! Most shampoos make my scalp itch to some extent. The baking soda doesn't. Even two days of full bore shampoo usage irritates my scalp.
• I can get by with very little shampoo. A normal bottle will last at least a year now. (My wife uses it as her main hair product, so I have no idea how long the bottle would last if only I used it, but certainly over a year.)
• When I don't underdo the shampoo, my hair looks great, and is very controllable. It's super fine and most conditioners leave it either waving in the breeze, or looking plastered down. Vinegar is Da Bomb.
• I still haven't figured out why my hair gets greasy. I am guessing it rubs the scalp, and if the scalp thinks it's too dry, it cranks up the pump on the oil pipeline. Any hair scientists out there?
• The three stage process, and being careful where each part goes, takes a little longer, but not much.
• Keeping the baking soda only on and near the scalp, and vinegar only at the hair ends, is a lot easier if you have very long hair that's pretty much the same length. It's almost impossible with medium length or short hair, especially if the hairs aren't all similar in length.
• My hair dries much faster with vinegar than with conditioner.

Real Poo, Marketing Poop

I tried one brand of shampoo and conditioner a friend recommended. It was supposed to be "organic". And a couple of ingredients were. But others came from the same list of chemicals I find on most hair product labels. Ultimately the one I tried didn't work; it made my hair sticky and clumpy. Not quite oily, more like I had been in a food fight,. And it smelled weird-- "pork chops cooked in industrial chemicals" or something like that.

I may have tried the wrong flavor. There were several types, each for a different type of hair. Unfortunately, none of them were aimed at guys, much less geeks. I wanted one for "oily hair". Apparently I wanted a "full bodied" effect, but that sounded like Farrah Fawcett, so I got the only one that didn't sound like that. I tried it twice and gave up. IT guys are not supposed to come to work straight from a food fight. Especially when they work for the VP of Finance.

Toward Greener Hair

Green isn't really my color. If I dye my hair, purple is far more likely. But I try to be reasonably green ecologically. To this end I prefer not to use a hair dryer unless I have to (very cold weather, have to go straight to somewhere I need to have dry hair, etc.) With medium length hair (about collar length) my hair dries in a half hour most days (just right for my drive to work). With conditioner it used to take twice that. Also, with most conditioners, I had to blow dry my hair or it did Very Strange Things.

Between the chemical changes and the hair dryer, I'm not saving the planet, but it's a part of my part in hurting it less. And it's less expensive. That's the best of both worlds.

A Final Note-- It's Alive! (Not.)

Hair is dead protein. You aren't actually damaging a part of you if you lighten, dye, straighten, or perm it. Unless you do something to destroy the follicles, you'll grow more, and you can cut the old off. In fact, I bet you do already.

It does no good to put nutrients and vitamins on your hair. It's dead stuff, remember? And vitamins don't absorb through the scalp; you have to ingest them. So don't obsess over "hurting your hair" or "keeping it healthy". If it looks good and does what you want (or as close as it ever does) you're golden.

 

So... Can anyone recommend a good, natural shampoo?