How comes my hair suddenly doesn't need to be washed as often?

[Laceandboots]

I'm 17 and recently I started oiling my hair every few days, and leaving the oil on for a long while. I stopped the oiling last week. This week, I washed my hair four days ago to go out, and normally I need to wash my hair every other day. It will be five days tomorrow that I haven't washed my hair and it still doesn't need a wash.

Why is this? Did oiling my hair help stretch the time between washes, or is there another reason my scalp isn't getting so oily? I'm confused and I'd just like to hear some theories :eek: xxx

[emsahib]

Well I guess if you were oiling your hair before it meant you had to wash more often and now your not putting that extra oil in your hair doesnt need to be washed that much as washing would dry it out

[Anje]

A decent number of people have scalps (and skin) that react to dryness by putting out more oil. It's quite possible that oiling your hair, especially if it got on your scalp, made it feel less dry and therefore it didn't produce as much sebum as usual. Typically, this takes a bit longer than a week, but it's a possibility. (I noticed the same thing with my face when I was in high school -- once I started moisturizing it, it stopped getting greasy.)

It's also plausible that you're more used to how your hair looks with a small amount of oil in it, and have decided that slightly oily doesn't look like it needs washed as much as you once thought. Which is likely true, since we usually are our own worst critics about things like how oily our hair looks.

[spidermom]

My guess is that you've gotten used to how your hair looks when it's less than fresh and clean, and it's not so bad. That's what happened to me.