Poo bars are hurting my scalp

[lora410]

Started using chargin valley bars again and noticed i was shedding more.. Like ALOT everytime i run my fingers through atleast 10 hairs come out even if i just brushed it . Anyway its been a month or so now and i noticed now my scalp has been burning, irritated, itchy feel for a week or so now. Im not sure if they are upping the lye content as i noticed it foams ALOT more like shampoo foaming then when i used them yrs ago. Now I have like 6 shampoo bars i cant even use. Any suggestions to ease the scalp? Have oil in it now.

[Simsy]

For the immediate problem, a good soaking with conditioner and cool water might ease things. Diluting the bars a little might help, maybe stretch the washes a bit more. Otherwise I personally, would be ditching this batch of bars.

Sounds almost like an allergic reaction to something in the bar, but having never used them myself, honestly couldn't say for sure.

[lora410]

Honestly i just realized its an older bar from few yrs ago and i prob shouldnt be scrubbing it into scalp and scrubbed w fingertips so that could also be a factor. Im gonna toss it let my scalp heal for a few weeks and use regular shampoo and then open a fresh one and just glide it over my hair. I did email them asking if they upped the lye content and if bars can expire. So maybe this is a good warning to be cautious even using natural items.

[lapushka]

If a product did that to me (the itching, the *burning*), then I would immediately stop using it. There is no way to still make this a good product if you have that sort of a reaction to it.

And about natural products, yes be careful. I had a few Lavera shampoos (the rose one) expire on me before the expiry date (turned into a snot-like consistency). When the consistency is off, no way I am putting that on my scalp anymore!

[Silverbrumby]

If a product did that to me (the itching, the *burning*), then I would immediately stop using it. There is no way to still make this a good product if you have that sort of a reaction to it.

And about natural products, yes be careful. I had a few Lavera shampoos (the rose one) expire on me before the expiry date (turned into a snot-like consistency). When the consistency is off, no way I am putting that on my scalp anymore!

I second this. I lost, shed so much from Condition only washes, putting oil on scalp etc I'd now stop anything that did that immediately. Hot, itchy scalp is not a happy scalp.

Switch to a gentle poo and maybe a cooling tea rinse? Catnip? I don't know, I'm not up on rinses.

[Robi-Bird]

Lye heavy soaps don't general suds well. If a soap is lye heavy it is pretty unmistakable. Touch the tip of your tongue to the bar, if it gives you a jolt like licking a battery you have a lye heavy bar. Traditional soap is both quite high cleansing and high pH. Skin often does well for it. It's all I use for that purpose but hair and scalp often do badly because of the pH and the build up it can create. Try washing your hair with traditional shampoo and see if it doesn't help.

[Anje]

Lye heavy soaps don't general suds well. If a soap is lye heavy it is pretty unmistakable. Touch the tip of your tongue to the bar, if it gives you a jolt like licking a battery you have a lye heavy bar. Traditional soap is both quite high cleansing and high pH. Skin often does well for it. It's all I use for that purpose but hair and scalp often do badly because of the pH and the build up it can create. Try washing your hair with traditional shampoo and see if it doesn't help.

This is what I'm thinking. It's probably not too much lye, but just that your scalp is objecting to the formulation. Did you rinse with dilute vinegar or other acid? Not rinsing might make sensitive scalps protest.

ETA: if it's foaming more, it might be that your water changed? I know I could tell when I changed apartments and got a different well in the same town supplying my water.

[Obsidian]

Soap bars can go bad but if that happened, you would know it. They turn orangy and smell really, really bad but are still safe to use. Its not uncommon for the lather to improve with age, I have some bars that are over 2 years old and they lather much more than when I first made them.

I used shampoo bars for 2 years, in the end they destroyed my hair. Natural isn't always better and now I happily use regular poo. My SD loved shampoo bars, I just wish my hair liked them too.

[meteor]

Ouch! I'd definitely stop using the product immediately and go back to whatever shampoo worked without fail previously, preferably the one with a very simple formula with a short list of ingredients and not much (if any) fragrance, as fragrance can be irritating, too. Avoid very hot and cold water and don't scrub, just let your skin heal. I'd leave it alone as much as possible - it takes time to restore skin's barrier function.
I like aloe vera for soothing, but not everybody will respond well to it. YMMV. :flower:

Unopened soap takes quite a while to expire, though it depends on the formulation and the way it was stored, of course. Soaps tend to be alkaline and that might have disturbed your skin's natural (more acidic) pH?

[lora410]

Yeah i just realized today the bar is prob the issue or maybe the unfiltered acv?it is STRONG even for a capful diluted in huge cup of water, maybe to strong :( we have a good outside filtration in out home a 5 stage halo so the water hasn't changed. Gonna give. My scalp some relaxation and try just try to wash scalp oil out with a CO wash

[Wusel]

I had the same issue with poo bars after a month or so. Stop it immediately. And wash the oil out. It made me shed even more.
Cool your scalp with cold water or Avene Thermal Water in the spray bottle. This helped me a lot.
You can use the poo bars for your body. I did so. So they didn't go to waste. :)

[yahirwaO.o]

Oh gosh this remind me of Loepsie's hair loss experience with a bar! Please stop this immediately and find something your scalp agrees to!

I made a lot of experiments just to go back to regular shampoo and my shedding rates are barely noticeable now. Its not fun losing so much strands and thickness overall!!!

..... and yes it should be save and good for the rest of your body!

[Wusel]

Oh gosh this remind me of Loepsie's hair loss experience with a bar! Please stop this immediately and find something your scalp agrees to!

I made a lot of experiments just to go back to regular shampoo and my shedding rates are barely noticeable now. Its not fun losing so much strands and thickness overall!!!

..... and yes it should be save and good for the rest of your body!

Exactly... When we first arrive at LHC we read and read are ready to try everything out until we realize that it might be good for others but not for our scalp. But, it's a new experience and we need those experiences to find out what's good for us and what's not. :)

[sumidha]

You don't have to throw them away, you can still use them like regular bars of soap to wash your hands. :flower:

[spidermom]

Scalp prefers an acid pH. I would bet that it is not reacting well to the alkaline pH of a soap bar. I would recommend switching to a gentle shampoo that you can make even more gentle by diluting in warm water.

I hope the problem resolves completely very soon!

[yahirwaO.o]

Exactly... When we first arrive at LHC we read and read are ready to try everything out until we realize that it might be good for others but not for our scalp. But, it's a new experience and we need those experiences to find out what's good for us and what's not. :)

Sure but its a very tough way to learn for some tho! Still I know now what works great, perfect, ok for me and more to my queen scalp! :p

[Silverbrumby]

Here is a rinse you might try.

.... LIQUORICE

Glycosides, triterpene saponins, and flavonoids naturally occurring in licorice root work to nourish the scalp and heal damage caused by fungal infection, eczema, environmental allergens, and chemical exposure.

To make a licorice root cleanser, add one tablespoon of dried licorice root to three cups of boiling water. Allow the roots to steep for an hour or more on low heat (simmer.) Strain and cool the infused liquid to room temperature before applying to hair and scalp.

[lapushka]

Yeah i just realized today the bar is prob the issue or maybe the unfiltered acv?it is STRONG even for a capful diluted in huge cup of water, maybe to strong :( we have a good outside filtration in out home a 5 stage halo so the water hasn't changed. Gonna give. My scalp some relaxation and try just try to wash scalp oil out with a CO wash

Wow. Hold on. Back up. Did you say... unfiltered ACV? You didn't dilute it... might not be the bar then. But I'd not take too many chances with it.

[Chromis]

Yeah i just realized today the bar is prob the issue or maybe the unfiltered acv?it is STRONG even for a capful diluted in huge cup of water, maybe to strong :( we have a good outside filtration in out home a 5 stage halo so the water hasn't changed. Gonna give. My scalp some relaxation and try just try to wash scalp oil out with a CO wash

I have used shampoo bars for many years now with excellent success. The only times I have had burning sensations were both my own doing:
1. Waaaaaay too strong an acidic rinse - too strong an acid rinse also leaves me hair bit lank and it feels greasy super fast. I do like a pretty heavy mix, but even I have limits!
2. Over enthusiastic scritching. If I scratch at my scalp too much, it really burns when I use the rinse!

I too use unfiltered ACV and quite like it.

Also, I don't think I have ever shed less than ten hairs in my life no matter what washing method I had tried or how how often!

[Chromis]

Wow. Hold on. Back up. Did you say... unfiltered ACV? You didn't dilute it... might not be the bar then. But I'd not take too many chances with it.

She said she diluted it and how much in the part you quoted :flower:

Unfiltered ACV just means that it still has the vinegar "mother" inside. It is usually cloudy in appearance, just like getting a unfiltered apple cider versus the filtered almost clear apple juice. I find it smells a lot better than the industrial ACV and I like that I can buy it from local farmers.

[meteor]

Yeah i just realized today the bar is prob the issue or maybe the unfiltered acv?it is STRONG even for a capful diluted in huge cup of water, maybe to strong :( we have a good outside filtration in out home a 5 stage halo so the water hasn't changed. Gonna give. My scalp some relaxation and try just try to wash scalp oil out with a CO wash
Wow. Hold on. Back up. Did you say... unfiltered ACV? You didn't dilute it... might not be the bar then. But I'd not take too many chances with it.

Please correct me if I'm wrong, but I believe, unfiltered just means that it's with the bacteria culture ("with the Mother" (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mother_of_vinegar)). :flower: lora410's dilution (a capful diluted in a big cup of water) sounds quite acidic, but probably OK if not used too often. (ACV - with pH on average between 2.8 and 3 - is a bit less acidic than white vinegar and definitely less acidic than lemon juice, just to give a small example.)


ETA: Oops, sorry, Chromis beat me to it! :)

[lapushka]

Oooh, OK, in that case, my apologies, you guys, and OP, I misunderstood! :o

[Daydreamer.]

You could try using aloe vera juice (or gel) to help ease your scalp pain.

[Carolyn]

Why are you still trying to make poo bars work for you? Yikes! Not every method works for every person. I would have thrown them out and gone back to something that worked in the past. There are plenty of gentle S& Cs out there. The so called natural ingredients can be just as vicious to skin as the ones with the long, unpronounceable chemical names.

[MartinYYw95]

I use shampoo bars from ETSY. Also at one point I did have a lot of itching, but I occasionally use tea tree oil when shampooing my head. It has definitely reduced my itching!

[lapushka]

Why are you still trying to make poo bars work for you? Yikes! Not every method works for every person. I would have thrown them out and gone back to something that worked in the past. There are plenty of gentle S& Cs out there. The so called natural ingredients can be just as vicious to skin as the ones with the long, unpronounceable chemical names.

Exactly my reasoning. If your hair / scalp spits it out, no use trying to mend stuff that won't be mended.

It's about what your hair (scalp) wants, not about what *you* want for your hair!

[meteor]

Why are you still trying to make poo bars work for you? Yikes! Not every method works for every person. I would have thrown them out and gone back to something that worked in the past. There are plenty of gentle S& Cs out there. The so called natural ingredients can be just as vicious to skin as the ones with the long, unpronounceable chemical names.

Oh yes! :agree:

To give a small example, it's surprising to me when some people happily accept something like "lemon extract" (which could be anything from a lemon, with quite varied chemical composition) but don't feel as safe with something more isolated and specific on the ingredients list, like "citric acid" (which, obviously, has much, much simpler composition than lemon juice).
It's actually really hard to break down things like essential oils or botanical extracts into specific compounds. Back to the example of lemon juice, "acetate, glycolate, butyrate, oxalate, malonate, succinate, fumarate, glyoxylate, malate, tartarate, cis-aconitate and citrate were detected in the juice....with compositions and contents varied according to sampling years and species." (http://catalog.lib.kyushu-u.ac.jp/handle/2324/24090/p029.pdf) And there are tons of other compounds, organic molecules that make 100% detection of all traces kind of impossible/impractical.

If anything, natural products and their chemistry can often be more complex than "lab-made" stuff... And it's more common to have allergic reactions to some natural ingredients: e.g. to many natural plant oils rather than to mineral oil or silicone oil.

[Kimberly]

Oh yes! :agree:

To give a small example, it's surprising to me when some people happily accept something like "lemon extract" (which could be anything from a lemon, with quite varied chemical composition) but don't feel as safe with something more isolated and specific on the ingredients list, like "citric acid" (which, obviously, has much, much simpler composition than lemon juice).
It's actually really hard to break down things like essential oils or botanical extracts into specific compounds. Back to the example of lemon juice, "acetate, glycolate, butyrate, oxalate, malonate, succinate, fumarate, glyoxylate, malate, tartarate, cis-aconitate and citrate were detected in the juice....with compositions and contents varied according to sampling years and species." (http://catalog.lib.kyushu-u.ac.jp/handle/2324/24090/p029.pdf) And there are tons of other compounds, organic molecules that make 100% detection of all traces kind of impossible/impractical.

If anything, natural products and their chemistry can often be more complex than "lab-made" stuff... And it's more common to have allergic reactions to some natural ingredients: e.g. to many natural plant oils rather than to mineral oil or silicone oil.

I happily use both lab-made and natural ingredients, but I try my best to avoid citric acid as an ingredient when I don't know its source, due to allergies. While I can eat citrus fruit all day long without issue, some citric acid is manufactured not from fruit, but is instead excreted by black mold. I've been doctor-tested as allergic to both mold and citric acid, but only react with symptoms to citric acid when it's the kind that was manufactured using mold. So, if the ingredient list says lemon juice or peel or something like that, that's all good, but citric acid listed by itself can be a problem for me (maybe trivial, or maybe pretty nasty, depending on the amount). For someone without specific allergies, though, I think it isn't anything to worry about. :-)