Dry shampoo question

[hikarilu]

I've been using quite a lot of dry shampoo to be able to stretch washes.
Now with it I can S&C every 3 days, but without any dry shampoo i'm not even able to last 2 days...

So I've been wondering if dry shampoo can have the same effect as shampoo.
I mean i've always been told "the more you use shampoo, the faster you'll get the greasies". Does this apply to dry shampoo too ?

Thanks :-)

[meteor]

First of all, liquid shampoos and dry shampoos work differently. Think of dry shampoo as a powder, it works by absorbing oils, not breaking them down and washing them away like liquid shampoos, laden with surfactants. In principle, it's similar to the way as you can powder your nose in the middle of the day instead of washing your face. It's not bad, it's just a low-manipulation way of creating an aesthetically pleasing look of non-oily skin - but fundamentally, it is not really cleansing, unless you manage to brush all of that dry powder out.
By the way, you can make your own dry "shampoo", by using some starches, cocoa powder, clay, dry plant-based powders... Just make sure you find something absolutely inert that your skin won't react to and can tolerate sitting on skin for a long time. I recommend avoiding aerosols since they contain propellants. Avoid alcohol, as it's very irritating and drying to skin.


Secondly, let's address "the more you use shampoo, the faster you'll get the greasies" theory. We sort of know it's not exactly true from records of people who didn't wash hair. It's not like they stopped producing sebum, they still needed to preen, scritch, comb, brush that sebum away... They also learned to accept a more "sebumy", less fluffy look.
However, it appears that there may be some truth to the idea that it’s the presence of sebum on the surface of skin that controls sebum production. I recommend checking out this German Study on the Regulation of Sebum Excretion in Man: http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007%2FBF00560397
"The refatting curve of 21 test persons shows that the sebum excretion is highest during the first hour and decreases continously with every following refatting interval. Refatting after regular defatting every hour reveals a constant excretion rate over 7 hrs. Thus the conclusion can be drawn that sebum excretion is regulated by the excreted sebum itself."
From experience, we kind of already know it's true: for example, right after shower, your skin may feel stripped, and 5 min vs. 1 hour post-shower make a huge difference in how balanced and comfortable your skin feels, but by the end of the day, it doesn't matter much if it's been 12 or 13 hours since the shower - the skin kind of feels the same. Among other things, it's the presence of that lipid barrier that makes skin feel comfortable.

Basically, what I'm saying is that if you wash your hair many times a day, then yes, you'll be telling your sebaceous glands to work all the time to restore that lipid barrier as soon as you are done washing. But since that's not what you do anyway, I'd recommend just washing hair when it needs to be washed, i.e. when it gets dirty. There isn't a safe number to hit.

Also, remember that hair is fiber and doesn't like being stretched out, wetted and rewetted a lot, so you may want to minimize how often you wet your ends, since they have the most wear and tear.
You may want to consider scalp-only washes if you want to comfortably stretch full washes.
I like these two methods below, but there are more :)
by the lovely HaarTraum (from 1:30):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VwREj8Kadlo
and by the lovely LauraLongLocks:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7VBOVM-dHlc