Sunday, March 18, 2012

Musings from the Junque Pile - The Great "No-'Poo" Experiment

Wikipedia says: No poo (no shampoo) is a collective term for methods of washing hair with no commercial shampoo.[1][2]
The notion of non-shampooed hair being unhealthy is reinforced by the greasy feeling of the scalp after a day or two of not shampooing. However, using shampoo every day removes sebum, the oil produced by the scalp. This causes the sebaceous glands to produce oil at a higher rate to compensate for what is lost during shampooing. According to some dermatologists, a gradual reduction in shampoo use will cause the sebaceous glands to produce at a slower rate, resulting in less oil on the scalp.[3]
Shampoo typically contains chemical additives such as sulfates such as sodium lauryl sulfate and sodium laureth sulfate. There are health concerns about these chemicals, which can irritate the skin of sensitive persons (or of anyone if not promptly rinsed).[4][5] They are also believed by some to dry out the hair. Some shampoos also include silicone derivatives (such as dimethicone), which coats the hair. While silicone derivatives protect the hair and make it more manageable (dimethicone is a common ingredient in smoothing serums and detangling conditioners), the film that coats the hair also prevent moisture from entering the hair, eventually drying it out.

Meet the participants:

Vino: The instigator. Vino's wish to use only natural products in her home and on her body comes after a successful treatment for early stage breast cancer. Her vigorous online research into the chemicals in cleaning and beauty products, and their possible cancer causing factors lead her to want to try this. She shared a couple of websites with her friends on Face Book, and me and another person decided to try it with her and chronicle our journey.  Vino is in her early 50's, has very thick, curly, and soft hair that is to her shoulders.






Jay Bee:  New Mom. As such, she has a need to tighten her budget. She has long, thick straight hair that she loves to pamper.  She wants to try No Poo as a way to cut out the expensive hair care products, and she also hopes that by going natural, her semi-oily scalp and dandruff will even out and go away. She is also detailing her journey through No-poo at her own blog The Geeky Momma. She is in her late 20's (I think). (editing to change to early 30's)







Me (Mrs. Junque, Thewildbunny, Pipercatt - whatever). I also have an ongoing need to tighten my budget, and am always willing to try a natural way of doing something over buying processed, commercial items.  I  have a very oily scalp with a little bit of dandruff. Mostly the oil on my scalp makes me itchy, and I HATE being itchy. I'm in my 40's with mid length, over processed, fine yet wavy hair.

And as bonus, my man, DaHubster, is taking this journey with me.  He's in his 40's too, has short, thick hair, no problem with oils, but he complains of dandruff occasionally. He's also a mechanic, who gets VERRRRA dirty every day.

Ok, this is a long a**ed post, so I'm going to close it out with the original blog, read by Vino and shared with us, from SimpleMom.net .

In the next post, we all share details about the first week of going No-poo

4 comments:

  1. So exciting!!!
    I'm in my early/mid 30's. Am I? Crap how old am I?!? Ok just figured it out. Early 30's. Thanks for thinking I was in my 20's!

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  2. I didn't want to insult you by going older. LOL

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  3. I've already lost track of what day I'm on.... LOL
    But the frizz is starting to calm down.

    Wooooooot!

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  4. My mother used egg yolk when she was willing to cure bad hair. It's working

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