What are the benefits of washing your hair without shampoo?

[Loveletters]

Hey there! I often read about regular shampooing being bad for your hair because of the chemicals. But natural shampoos are much too expensive. I was wondering, is it okay to wash your hair with water only and maybe only wash it with shampoo once a month or something? And what would be the benefits of that? Right now, I wash my hair once a week with l'oreal shampoo and conditioner. :)

[spidermom]

Be careful where you get your information. For example, if a website is selling something (like natural shampoo), everything negative thing they say about another product can be ignored. They have an agenda - sales.

[Joules]

I agree with spidermom. Some websites are just selling their stuff. And other are...well, others ride the "natural is good chemicals are bad" bandwagon.

Washing my hair without shampoo/with very very mild sulfate-free shampoo damaged my scalp. Many other people report the same.

Just look at all the longhairs here who use Pantene and save yourself a lot of trouble by not experimenting.

[Loveletters]

Thanks Spidermom and Joules! It's indeed hard to find out what to believe and what not to believe. One site tells you not to eat a certain kind of food or use a certain product for a healthier look, others say it makes your hair look gorgeous. *Sigh*

[spidermom]

Thanks Spidermom and Joules! It's indeed hard to find out what to believe and what not to believe. One site tells you not to eat a certain kind of food or use a certain product for a healthier look, others say it makes your hair look gorgeous. *Sigh*

And complicating that is the fact that we're all individuals. What is great for one person can be terrible for another person.

[MusicalSpoons]

Just to clarify something: literally everything is composed of chemicals. Your entire body is made up of ~60 different chemical elements arranged in some pretty nifty ways.

Also, 'natural' shampoos are a bit of a misnomer; the chemicals may be derived or synthesised from natural sources, but in a bottle of shampoo they're certainly not used in their natural form! Only something like soapnuts, soapwort, or clay mixed with water are truly natural methods.

I'm not against milder shampoos that claim to be 'natural' - I have to use them because sulphates and some non-sulphate surfactants irritate my scalp - but just trying to add some perspective to the marketing claims :) without chemicals we literally would not exist ...

[Kalamazoo]

And complicating that is the fact that we're all individuals. What is great for one person can be terrible for another person.

Take Pantene, for example. I tried it once. It made me itch so much!

[cjk]

Hey there! I often read about regular shampooing being bad for your hair because of the chemicals. But natural shampoos are much too expensive. I was wondering, is it okay to wash your hair with water only and maybe only wash it with shampoo once a month or something? And what would be the benefits of that? Right now, I wash my hair once a week with l'oreal shampoo and conditioner. :)

Stop. Take a step back. Take a deep breath. And ask yourself one question.

What are you trying to accomplish when you wash with shampoo?

For most of us it comes down to two things.

1) Removal of contaminants, usually dust or dirt that we've encountered over time. Well, dust and dirt will dissolve with water and get rinsed away.

2) Removal of oils/grease/other stuff. These are not water soluble, often, and require a soap of some sort to remove.

My scalp and hair are naturally very dry, so I don't have a bunch of oils to wash away. Chemical buildup from my conditioners, maybe, though I don't use silicones so my buildup is fairly minimal.

Which means I don't need to shampoo very often.

If my hair gets dirty, like with dirt, that's different.

The problem is that the advertisements and the advice usually claim that "one solution" is universally applicable. And they fail to acknowledge that individuals can and will respond...individually. Experimentation is key, finding what works best for you as an individual is the important part.

Why are you asking this question? Are you trying to address a specific issue?

If not, ignore the ads.

[Kat]

If it ain't broke, don't fix it. I know there's a lot of different advice here, and things to try, etc. But that makes it easy to forget that just because something doesn't work for Person A, doesn't mean it won't work for you. I've seen a lot of post here where someone is trying something they read about here, or giving up something they read about here, and then it turns out they weren't getting bad results with whatever they were already doing but they read here that X is always better or Y is always bad, and that's not always true.

Can you experiment with stuff and see if something works for you? Sure, and it can be fun or you might find that even though you didn't actually have issues, you find something you really love. But if you're happy with what you're doing, don't feel like you *have* to change it. If you switch to something someone told you that you "should" and it's not working for you, it's okay to go back to what did work, even if you read that it's "bad" or "not as good"* . If you find yourself buying a bunch of products you can't afford, or using methods you don't have the time for, or whatever, or you're getting a hair obsession that's taking over your mind/life, or in some other way advice you read here is negatively affecting your life, it's okay to step back and use/do what keeps you healthy, happy, and sane. :)


*I see this a lot with things like water-only washing or stretching washing, or sometimes even less-harsh products, where someone will come in and say "my hair stinks, it's greasy, it's unmanageable, I can't stand this, what do I do?" and then after some questioning we find out that they were just fine washing every day with a super-sulfate shampoo and they only tried something else because someone said they should, not because their hair was unhappy.

[Sarahlabyrinth]

Take Pantene, for example. I tried it once. It made me itch so much!

...And yet I used to love it, and nearly always used it, until we moved here and you can't buy it. So yes, we are all different.

[lapushka]

Hey there! I often read about regular shampooing being bad for your hair because of the chemicals. But natural shampoos are much too expensive. I was wondering, is it okay to wash your hair with water only and maybe only wash it with shampoo once a month or something? And what would be the benefits of that? Right now, I wash my hair once a week with l'oreal shampoo and conditioner. :)

Be sure your scalp can take it! If at any time you get itchy all over, flaky, or red, stop immediately! And *wash* it with the harshest shampoo you can find. No joke.

There is nothing whatsoever wrong with regular shampoo.

There are however shampoos with sulfates, and sulfate-free shampoos. I rather think that is where you want to start. And a sulfate-free shampoo doesn't have to cost an arm & a leg. HASK is pretty affordable.

[Nox_Inber]

The benefits really come down to what your hair needs. I love natural ingredients but my scalp can't handle so gentle of a wash, it's too oily. I can't imagine water only washing but some people have great luck with it. I think Lapushka has a great point about sulfate free. SLS shampoo strips my hair like mad but a commercial SLS free shampoo works wonders. It's the perfect medium.

[RottenMango]

Cowashing can moisturize your hair, but will also cause build up if you never clarify. You can also look into shampoo bars which are supposed to be more gentle.

[Chromis]

Be sure your scalp can take it! If at any time you get itchy all over, flaky, or red, stop immediately! And *wash* it with the harshest shampoo you can find. No joke.

There is nothing whatsoever wrong with regular shampoo.

There are however shampoos with sulfates, and sulfate-free shampoos. I rather think that is where you want to start. And a sulfate-free shampoo doesn't have to cost an arm & a leg. HASK is pretty affordable.

My scalp gets itchy, red, and flaky if I use those harsh things however! So, basically we are saying each scalp is going to be different.

It's hard to know where to start. If you don't like your current results, try a different one, but it often works best if you don't try and change too many things all at once because then you won't know which thing actually worked ;)

[EdG]

The downside of shampoo is that it removes the body's natural conditioner (sebum), and so one has to use an artificial conditioner.

You can dilute shampoo so that it does not remove all the sebum. A small number of LHC'ers get good results with water-only washing.

ETA: Water-only washed hair looks and feels different from hair that has been shampooed and coated in silicone conditioner. It is almost like animal fur (just with human hair length!) This may or may not be to your liking.
Ed

[Reyn127]

As someone who went without store-bought/conventional shampoo or conditioner for a year and a half... I would say the main benefits would be the lack of harsh chemicals on your body and contributed to the environment, and, depending on the method you use, can be gentler on your hair.

Though, as many others have said, going without shampoo or conditioner might not be necessary to achieve whatever you’re hoping to gain from switching from it. It could possibly hurt your scalp by not being able to cleanse it enough, depending on your body’s sebum production and scalp care needs. I was lucky in that I never had any scalp problems when I was doing my no S/C experiments. But, overall, I realized that it is easier to actually “wash” and I achieve better results when I use S/C. I am very diligent about researching each and every ingredient in all of my hair care products though. So I still can feel comfortable putting it on my body, and they are formulated to work automatically, as well. No (or much less) experimentation needed.

If you ARE very interested in stopping using S/C, here’s what i would recommend: start by stretching your shampoo washes to 2 weeks, with a Water Only wash in between. Search for the Water Only washing thread for tips about scritching/preening and water temperature. If your scalp seems ok with that, maybe attempt to stretch your shampoo washes out to once a month. You can dilute shampoo if you want to as well. It would probably be a good idea to research a BUNCH of different methods of cleansing, to start to incorporate those/experiment with what works for you. There are traditional Indian herbs of Shikakai (sp?)/Amla/ fenugreek, Water Only of course, I used mainly rye flour “shampoo” so there’s a ton of information about that on my blog here on LHC.

I would avoid anything with soap, baking soda, or anything with a high PH in general. Keep in mind that skin and hair like to be more on th acidic side, so between about ph 5-6, I believe. Anything much more basic than water (ph 7, usually) can do damage to your hair, so it’s a good idea to look into the PH of things you’re about to put on your hair, no matter where you heard it from. Sometimes things like clay can have a high PH, so watch out - not everything natural is going to be good for your hair, or even necessarily WORK.

In the end, for me, it just ended up being easier to switch back to store bought products. My main thing I couldn’t replace was conditioner; I just could not find something to replace it which gave me fully satisfying results. Again, there’s a bunch of stuff in my blog about it if you’re interested. And if you would like some guidance about how to research product ingredients, myself or someone else here can give you lots of information.

[FrayedFire]

Right now, I wash my hair once a week with l'oreal shampoo and conditioner. :)
That already sounds like a good stretch between washes - if your hair likes those products well enough to only use once weekly, try keeping with them, but experiment with dilutions and cowashing.