A No Poo Update for Early 2015

Well it’s been a while since my previous no poo post, well over a year now. It’s high time for me to catch this blog up.

When I started, my hair looked like this:

I was big on shampooing and conditioning everyday, deep conditioning every week. But my hair still felt dry, brittle. And I have to mention again about that weird scalp smell I would get even immediately after I stepped out of the shower. I started out with the baking soda and ACV combo I described in my previous posts, to wean myself off of shampoo and conditioner. But as of the middle last year, I noticed that baking soda started to wreak havoc on my hair now that I was getting used to all the natural oils my scalp was producing. I cut down my baking soda washes to about once a week, or just when I really felt my scalp needed a cleaning because I think I had hard water back home.

As 2015 started and I went back to the city with kinder water, I just decided to start washing with water every other day. I was finding baking soda and ACV use quite tedious. My scalp doesn’t smell weird anymore, so I’d have no problem not using any products.

Here is my hair now, taken about a couple of weeks before this posting:

I think I got it trimmed two times (hehe) since. I rarely get split ends, and I have noticed a huge difference with my hairfall on wash days or when I comb my hair.

I’m still having a hard time finding a good hairstylist who knows how to work with my hair though. Most just recommend me chemically straighten my hair to deal with it, but hell no. My hair is thicker and healthier than ever and I don’t want your hair straightening chemicals all over it.

A No Poo Update

Hello everyone!

So, it has been almost a month since I started my No Poo adventure and it has been great! I have done four washes now and look at how my hair is after those washes:

Wash 1 and wash 3 are taken after completely air drying and haven’t been tied up in buns or anything, while wash 2 was just after I undid the braids I wore for the day, and wash 4 was after I had my hair up in a bun the day before. So, I’m not sure if my hair has found some inherent waves because of the rinse.

I haven’t experienced the gross over-oily hair some have gotten during their breaking-in period, so that’s weird. My scalp was just very very itchy between my first and second wash.

My “No Poo” Adventure

Taking care of my hair has always been a struggle (see this). I’ve tried a myriad of shampoos and conditioners that promise to tame my mess of hair in just a couple of months! But of course, they don’t. I still end up with dried ends, an itchy, flaky, dandruff-ridden scalp, and so much frizz. To combat the dandruff and the gross smell that comes with being in the humid Philippine weather, I shampooed my hair everyday. But nope, dandruff is still there and I never did feel like it was really clean. I also suffer from a lot of hair fall due to breakage, I swear I feel like a cat shedding mounds of fur everyday. But I guess that is expected when you get your hair wet every single day (wet hair tends to break more). To combat the dry, frizzy feel, I slap on tons of conditioner.

Then I come across this slew of articles stressing the negative effects of shampoo (most of its ingredients) on hair: that sulfates (the stuff that makes shampoo lather like a dream) dry out hair, that shampooing everyday strips the scalp and hair of natural oils which in turn freaks the scalp out and it churns out more oil than necessary which in turn causes gross, greasy hair (and I’m guessing also that weird smell my scalp gets with that buildup of grease).

Natural (sulfate-free) shampoos tend to make my hair feel stiff, and still doesn’t help with my hair fall or my dandruff issue (which I thought it would). And I found that washing with natural shampoos didn’t really thoroughly clean my scalp.

So after reading a buttload of blog posts online about the benefits (those links are just the ones I pinned) of No Poo-ing, I’m finally jumping in and trying it out.

I will update this post regularly on how my hair/scalp is doing as this adventure goes on. May include photos of my hair for comparison once I get someone to take a photo of the back of my head for me.