The Archives: The Merged NW/SO/WO Thread

[Hairytale]

NW/SO means: no water/sebum only.
So it's basically a method of not washing your hair in any way and just letting the sebum do its things. Of course, this may seem a method with little effort, but in fact it needs quite some practice do get the right routine: massaging and scritching help to remove gunk from the scalp, preening makes sure the entire hair shaft is covered in sebum instead of just the roots.
The first few weeks can be (and are for most of the people) hard because you are producing too much sebum. But after a time, the sebum production slows down (it will not stop entirely) and your hair begins to look good or at least better. Some of us are able to wear their hair down, but some of us like wear it up and forget about it, may it be due to the existence of greasies or due to the fact we are an updo addict (like me ).

(That's all I remember, if you still have questions, please feel free to ask, there will be someone who knows the answer. )

[Rosa.Damascena]

Hello NW-Ladys,

as for the article-question I will write one, but I could take a bit time to gather all the important informations together in a summary.

[MerryKat]

Hi all
I can't remember when I last posted before the collapse, so I will just start from my restart.

I started back to NW with a final WO (after a December 07 of products! and terribly fuzzy and fly away hair!) on 1st Jan 08. Thanks to being WO in some form (with the odd deviation back to products) since mid 2006 my hair adapted very quickly.

I had given up my brush and comb (which my hair loved and it looked great), but found that after nearly 2 months my scalp was not coping. It was very dry and scaly and the scritching and massage did not seem to be enough to lift all the gunk. Two weeks ago I went back to my Denman brush and that has definitely made a difference. I still have some flaking, but not a huge amount. Even with massaging I do not seem to produce that much sebum and my scalp seems to be very dry.

To add to the misery my canopy started feeling really dry over the last few weeks.

I tied my hair up in a high bun and spritzed my scalp hair with a vinegar/water mix and slept like that and then the following morning I massaged coconut oil into my scalp and coated the length with it. My hair was a bit clumpy and over oiled for a couple of days, but the scalp is feeling better and the length is not so dry.

I am now 69 days NW and despite my unhappy couple of weeks I am still happily a NW follower.

[AuNaturel]

Five months of NW here!

I last rinsed my hair on October 5, 2007. I was attracted to NW because the concept made sense to me -- that the hair's natural oils are there for a reason, and that in theory, that should be all we need to maintain healthy, conditioned hair. I have experimented with various other aspects of "simple living" and have found to my surprise, over the years, that giving up chemical products like aluminum-based deodorants and shampoos and soaps works really well! My skin is soft and clear with just OCM. My hair was thriving on WO. My body self-regulated and has no odor or sweat issues when I use just a dusting of cornstarch or baking powder under my arms. So experimenting with NW was a logical extension of that. I have found that the less I mess with my body's natural design, the better I feel and look.

I have very curly, dry, thick, 3c spiral hair. Somewhere between waist and hip length. During the first two months of NW, I experienced some frizz and fuzz around my hairline (normal for my hair, usually smoothed down with leave-in products). I eventually added aloe vera gel to my routine, to smooth down the top canopy, and I found that it didn't build up or affect the clean feeling of my NW hair; it just seemed to "disappear." I also used monoi coconut oil weekly on my ends and length. I combed daily to mechanically clean the scalp and hair, and to distribute the natural oils down my hair.

Five months and I'm still going strong. The biggest advantage is that my hair is very strong, very healthy, and I have virtually stopped shedding. Before NW I was WO, and on rinsing days I would lose a mess of hair down the drain. I have very thick hair and this has always been normal for me. Since moving to NW, I lose maybe 10 hairs a day. It's amazing.

The biggest disadvantage for me is that my hair is no longer in curls. It's straight, a particular kind of long, straightish fluff (all you super-curly girls who have brushed out your curls will know what I'm talking about). This is fine with me during the winter, since I wear my hair up or in braids exclusively. And, in fact, the extra shine and straightness imparted by NW is an advantage for the updos. But eventually I would like to wear my hair in all its spirally curly glory again, so I will probably transition back to WO during the summer, and then back to NW next winter.

[ruthietoothie]

Wow, AuNaturel, thanks for posting! I think alot of curlies have wondered if this could work for them, so having your experience here is very helpful! I have had wavy hair my whole life (2b/2c), but also don't like that my hair is much straighter since being NW. Glad to see that I am not alone though! My hair is not very long yet (a bit below the shoulders), so oiling is NOT something I need for my hair at the moment. I would LOVE to see pics of your hair, AuNaturel, if you are willing to post some pics (you don't have to show your face, if you don't want to).

Rosa, I think you are the perfect person to write the article on NW/SO! Thanks so much for volunteering! Of course, if you need any help w/ it, just ask us here!

Merrykat, It's always nice to see your posts here...I enjoy seeing what you are doing w/ your hair, since you are not afraid to experiment and do new things! I like that !!! I also have similar hair to yours, so I enjoy seeing how it looks!

I am still NW, but am thinking of rinsing at the end of the month. We will see.

[Hairytale]

Rosa, I think you are the perfect person to write the article on NW/SO! Thanks so much for volunteering! Of course, if you need any help w/ it, just ask us here!

I can only second that.

MerryKat, nice to hear from you again! It's good to hear your hair is nice behaving.

AuNaturel: that's nice to read! Welcome to the NW/SO fellowship! About your curls being gone - that's sad, of course, but your plan of going NW for the winter and WO for the summer sounds good! At least you're learning something important about your hair which might be useful.

As to me: today I am exactly four months of NW/SO. Hair is behaving nicely. I noticed that sometimes my hair has really good, near to perfect hair days, but sometimes there are still some bad hair days. But - at that's the news - the bad hair days aren't as bad as former bad hair days- And, some time ago, I did not have good hair days, but now I have.
This means there still is some progress, which makes me quite happy and leaves some hope for more perfect hair days to come...

Oh, and - I had a hair nightmare. I dreamt that while taking a shower, I rinsed my hair with water quite abscent-minded. When I realized what I had done, I was freaking out and was totally devastated. I was like "Oh no, after nearly four months of NW you have to start over again and on no, my hair will look terrible etc".
I wonder about the meaning of this dream. Okay, on the obvious level: I am happy being NW and I like the benefits it does to my hair.
But which meaning has hair got in dreams? And which has water?

Well, anyway, I noticed the same as AuNaturel. I had almost no shedding which I liked very much. But somehow shedding increased. It may be due to stress or due to bad nutrition, I don't know. But what improved is the condition of my scalp. I started NW because I had dry scalp issues, they were really horrible. Now they're almost gone!

Greetings from Hairytale!

[freznow]

Hey peoples! Nice to see everyone together again!

I'm about 5.5 months NW now. My hair still hates brushes, so no BBBs are employed here, but I don't think I need them. My scalp produces so little oil that I have to oil the ends at least once a week. I'm trying to work out a good routine because right now it's going in a cycle of dry, then over-oiled after I put the jojoba on it, then almost *perfect*, then dry again because I forget to put oil on it when it's near perfect.

Hairytale, I've had the SAME dream! Multiple times. It freaks me out a lot. I'm always worried about accidentally rinsing and losing months... But I think that if I did rinse once for any reason I'd still count back to the first day if I went back to NW immediately. One miss-rinse shouldn't mess up the whole thing, should it? Another part of me wants to see what it'd be like if I did a WO or CO now - would it be ultra clean or so clean that it's dull or normal or what? I wonder if I'll be encouraged to go swimming this summer... I don't know if I'd put swimming over NW or vice versa.

Rosa, good luck with the article, and be sure to let us know if there's anything we can do to help!

[ruthietoothie]

Just wondering, but would it be possible for NW hair to repel alot of water when swimming, therefore losing very little sebum? Sebum does repel water to a degree, so I think the water should not penetrate as much as it otherwise would...just a thought! Personally, I intend to swim as much as I want this summer (which is not very much seeing as we don't have easy access to a pool/lake/ocean)

[MerryKat]

Hi guys
I had a horrid evening with my hair after taking it out of the updo when I got home from work. It felt heavy and just yucky. I gave it a good massage and heavy preening while watching Prison Break (around an hour) and then put it in a pony and brushed the scalp with my Denman. Took out the pony and massaged upside down before putting in my nighttime scrunchie bun.

I was sooooooooooooooo close to rinsing and only the thought of starting again stoped me.

Today it feels better and we will see once I get home from work and take it down.

Thanks for all your kind words.

[Rosa.Damascena]

It's very tempting to rinse when the hair is just like you described it, MerryKat. But I think the brushing will help you through this. I hope you're feeling well? I had to run nearly a month around with "bad hair" some weeks ago, because I was very much under stress and doesn't felt very well. That things show up instantly in your hair - it's more greasy, limp and just icky, and no brushing, combing or whatever tricks we know here, would help until the health is better again.
So I hope you have had just a bad hair day and it will soon be better again

PS: Another trick I came up with for greasy days: When you want to put you hair halfway-nicely looking up to hide the grease, brush it before that, but directly after brushing leave it ca. 5-10 min hanging around your head without touching it. When the hair is very greasy, one would smear the sebum along the head and it would instantly looking oily again, while, when it has time to hang around for some minutes, a great deal of the sebum could be soaked up from the hair and one has more fluff then. Also - when the hair is very greasy - wash your hands before putting it up, so that no overmuch sebum, which might cling on your hand during the brushing process make your hair stringy looking.
After the 5-10 mins you can put it up, but try to do updos which are easy to do and without long messing. The longer you fumble with your hair it would look stringy looking soon again.

Hope that might help.