The Archives: The Merged NW/SO/WO Thread

[trolleypup]

Going from S/C to WO, my hair got wavier! But by no stretch am I a fine-y!

It doesn't make sense, but WO does seem to change wavy/curliness for some people.

[piratejenny]

On the curls...I'm with trolleypup, my hair has definitely gotten wavier since WO. I had quite a few people independently comment on that. I used to think of my hair as straight with a slight wave. Now I have pretty pronounced waves and even a few odd spiral curls behind my ears.

I do mine alot different. I s/m/p and detangle, then measure 1/4 cup of vinegar into an empty 2L (2 quart?) ice-cream container and put this within reach of the shower. Then I jump straight in and comb under running water (thoroughly, but fairly quickly). Then I add shower water to the 2 litre ice-cream container with the vinegar. I had been "dipping" my parted hair into the container, but now I just try and "dip" my scalp in as much as I can (my ends are damaged and the vinegar was a bit drying...). Then I pour about half over my head, comb again (but preening would probably work) and pour the rest over. I let it sit on my hair while I do the rest of my shower stuff. Then I rinse and comb my hair under running tap water. The vinegar makes my hair feel really smooth- but also clean. I don't think I could "clean" my hair with only one cup of diluted vinegar- I use 2L (about half a gallon I think?) and this running through my hair, as well as combing (preening) and leaving it on for a while seems to work really well.
Good luck!

So I followed your recipe in detail last night and the result is not noticeably better unfortunately. I think I will stick with it for a week or so, though. Maybe the poor state of my hair also has something to do with the fact that I haven't been well the last week. Always on the brink of a flu, just never sick enough to actually stay in bed... For the first time in months I find myself toying with the idea of shampoo

[bouclée]

I've searched the web about WO for curly hair and I have found a few interesting posts about curlies who remained curly or became curlier (see Teri's comment) with WO (I hope it is ok to add external links?). But they don't seem to have fine hair...

[Moor_tu_lyfe]

PirateJenny- Sorry to hear that your health hasn't been the best. I hope you feel much better soon .

I have found that with the vinegar rinses, if I let my hair get build up (sebum, hardwater? I don't know...) on it, it takes a stronger dilution to "clean" hair. I've been doing daily vinegar rinses, and am very happy, but when I go 2 or even 3 days, it takes awhile to get back to what I'm happy with. I hope you find something that works for you.

P.S. I just looked it up. If you were doing 1 tablespoon to a cup of water, that's about 1:16. To keep this dilution ratio, you could use about 1/2 cup of vinegar in about 1/2 gallon of water (roughly, I'm trying to convert from metric etc.) I've never used it this strong, but if that is the dilution that worked for you previously... might be worth a try.
HTH

P.P.S.- I hope I'm not imposing with vinegar rinse details in the WO thread, I don't know if there is a thread just for "cleansing" hair with vinegar... (off to search LHC...)

[piratejenny]

PirateJenny- Sorry to hear that your health hasn't been the best. I hope you feel much better soon .

I have found that with the vinegar rinses, if I let my hair get build up (sebum, hardwater? I don't know...) on it, it takes a stronger dilution to "clean" hair. I've been doing daily vinegar rinses, and am very happy, but when I go 2 or even 3 days, it takes awhile to get back to what I'm happy with. I hope you find something that works for you.

P.S. I just looked it up. If you were doing 1 tablespoon to a cup of water, that's about 1:16. To keep this dilution ratio, you could use about 1/2 cup of vinegar in about 1/2 gallon of water (roughly, I'm trying to convert from metric etc.) I've never used it this strong, but if that is the dilution that worked for you previously... might be worth a try.
HTH

P.P.S.- I hope I'm not imposing with vinegar rinse details in the WO thread, I don't know if there is a thread just for "cleansing" hair with vinegar... (off to search LHC...)

Oh Moor_tu_lyfe, thanks for the moral support. If I remember correctly you went through a bit of a "rut" as well a few weeks ago. I've washed again last night and I think my hair might be slightly better today. I'll try a stronger dilution tomorrow (too late to wash my hair now) and see what happens then. I'm also not sure my scalp likes the vinegar a whole lot. I have all these weird pimple-like sores all of a sudden. Where does this come from???

I agree with your experience that letting anything build up is a bad idea. If it wasn't for that I think I'd just ignore my hair for a few days (it looks bad anyway). My health issue is nothing serious, just the week of flu we always seem to get when the weather finally turns to fall and we spend so much more time inside. I never seemed to affect me until I had kids who go to daycare. They seriously bring back every bug there is. Good opportunity to take a break from obsessing about hair I guess

[Moor_tu_lyfe]

Gotta love those kidlets!! (lack of sleep, consistent colds and flus- worry until they grow up and leave... and then some more worry...) My girls are adorable but driving me nuts as I type...

I'm hoping that these vinegar rinses aren't going to set me back with my WO goal... I'd hate for them to be too cleansing and my scalp ramp up oil production. So far I think they are OK, (I didn't wash my hair this morning and I'd so only slight oils around my face area...) but my ends are a bit dry. My hair is a bit past BSL, but layered, and the longer layers are dry and damaged from stupid bleach and box colours... I think they're getting the snip as soon as my hair is long enough that my virgin hair will reach a bun!! I did a bit of coconut oil on the ends today, since I'm slouching around the house and didn't care if it did get oily. The ends just sucked it all up, with no trace of oil!

Might try some root area only vinegar rinses if needed... Don't know how successful that will be...

[DoubleCrowned]

Just to make sure there is no misunderstanding... That part of my hair that was WO for long enough, sebum-coated, brushed, combed enough is much less curly now. I was not talking about new growth, that wold be too early for me (in April I was WO yet, now it's October, and I didn't get a lot of growth inbetween to talk about.)

There is a thread here for curlies. They talk about plopping hair to dry, and about not using combs and brushes. Maybe you can alter your WO routine so that your curls will be preserved.

My hair is too delicate to withstand all the brushing I thought was needed for WO, so I experimented with fingers-only for preening and arranging my hair. Now I use a brush only as a final touch-up and my wooden comb for scritching.

[ScorpioMouse]

Ok, this will either be very encouraging or you'll want to throw rocks at me. I've been WO, with just a couple of vinegar rinses and one tea rinse (cuz it smelled sooo yummy!) for about a month now, and I no longer have to think about my hair. At all. I s/m/p once before washing, and again before bed, and occasionally throw some coconut oil and rosewater in at bedtime if I'm craving the smell.

The dandruff's gone, the itchies are gone, and it's shiny! I know it's still pixie length (that's why I'm doing this now, so I don't have to worry about length issues), but really it's great. I tried this a few years ago, when I was vegan, and was MISERABLY oily and greasy. I gave up after 3 weeks, I think.

I think one thing that helped was reading a bunch of blog posts by paleo/primal diet folks who went WO. For them it seemed like no big deal, they adjusted in 2 weeks, the end. Granted, many of them are men with even less hair than I have, but several were long-haired. So I decided maybe I was worrying too much about everything, and just accepted my natural oils for a few days. And that worked really well!

*Trundling off to find the Benign Neglect thread.*

[piratejenny]

Alright.... I caved... I did an egg wash today and, gosh, my hair feels GREAT!!!!!


For some reason I feel like I'm cheating, but here's my thought process. I think that week in New York did me in. It showed me that I would probably have fully transitioned would I not live where I am living and would my water be different. One WO wash there and my hair was perfect (and stayed that way). The only reason I did more washes was that I was completely wrecked tired at night after long days at a congress and my hotel room had one of these waterfall showers ...

Anyway, since my return a week ago my hair has been plain horrible and I'm completely sick of that. Except for a few days it seems that for the past 5 months (ever since I started dabbeling with WO) the status of my hair has been slightly varying degrees of "horrible to poor". I really don't care too much what other people think about me and I think I managed to keep a good sense of humor about it for the most part, but there was this day last week when I looked into the mirror AT WORK and I couldn't believe I had left the house like that.

And then I remembered the original reasons why I wanted to switch to WO: a) I had to wash (S/C) at the very least every other day and b) my hair would go straight from unmanageably frizzy to greasy and simply never looked good. Now when I look at what I've been dealing with over the past months these two points have not really improved at all. a) I still wash at least every other day and b) with few exceptions my hair hasn't looked much better. Poor in a different way maybe, but poor nevertheless...

So, I guess I just needed a break . I mixed one egg yolk with one tablespoon of white vinegar, put it on, let it sit for half an hour, rinsed and I swear my hair has not looked as good in a VERY long time. I don't want to say Panthene hair, but close. No frizz, very bouncy, every wave springy and light. I couldn't stop touching it and running into the bathroom to make sure I wasn't dreaming (serious obsession - hehe)...

Quite honestly I don't know yet where I'll be going from here. First I want to see how long this will last. If I'm back to stringy and greasy tomorrow, well, I might keep at WO until the end of the year after all. On the other hand, my goal isn't hard-core-WO but an easy routine that gives me healthy and nice looking hair...

I also know close to nothing about egg washing and if that's something that can be done on a regular basis. I just did that because the mother of a good friend of mine from Poland used to do it during the Communist time when sometimes there was no shampoo... So I think finding an "egg wash thread" will be by next step.

In the meantime I'll definitely keep following this thread, it feels kind of like this is my "home thread" on the LHC

Ok, this will either be very encouraging or you'll want to throw rocks at me. I've been WO, with just a couple of vinegar rinses and one tea rinse (cuz it smelled sooo yummy!) for about a month now, and I no longer have to think about my hair. At all. I s/m/p once before washing, and again before bed, and occasionally throw some coconut oil and rosewater in at bedtime if I'm craving the smell.

Haha, I'm glad you wrote this as it balances my post a bit. I really don't want to discourage anybody as I saw myself that it works

[McFearless]

Fairy knots? Is that when you get a single hair that is knotted? Sorry, haven't noticed that at all with my hair WO...

Yes single strand knots... I've been getting a crazy amount of them and my hair is so short. I can't do much about them right now.

Polar Cathy, could it be the henna and indigo that is removing your curls? Many people on here have said henna does that to them, and it is permanent until you get new virgin growth. WO makes my hair heavier and my curls less bouncy, but an sls shampoo brings it right back to how it was.