Ask Sherry: Why I stopped going no poo
You asked, and I am answering every Friday once I have enough questions!
You can ask any question using the form here.
Hi Sherry! You’ve mentioned (I think) that you use Feedly. I noticed Feedly is currently offering 30% off on their Feedly Pro subscription service. Do you use Feedly Pro? If so, why? If not, why not? Or perhaps you’ve just never looked into it, which is cool too 🙂 Thanks!
Never tried it actually. I don’t know what the difference would be, and I don’t do RSS Reading so often and for work that I need something “professional”. There aren’t many things I read online, and I can always just go through a bunch of bookmarks and click on the same sites daily. *shrug*
Hi! A looong time ago you talked about soapnuts to wash your hair, nowadays I guess you don’t do that anymore, any reason why? I myself am thinking of going to the no poo path and was thinking of using this soap as an alternative to shampoo.
Soap nuts are really freaking drying.
They dry out your hair and skin like NO OTHER. Like PURE soap stripping away all the oils and possible help for your hair.
See, your hair is already dead when it grows out. It isn’t a living thing which is why preserving the hair shaft, and making sure it isn’t lift up and stays slick and down, makes it and keeps it shiny looking and healthy rather than ragged, with split ends, frizzy and/or dull.
It’s why so many commercial products have silicone in there — it is to slick down the hair shaft so that it doesn’t get roughed up and look dull.
You can try this experiment with a hair strand that has fallen out. Stroke it gently one way and feel how smooth it is, and then stroke it back the other way holding it gently between the tips of your fingers, you will immediately feel resistance and a roughing up of the shaft in the opposite direction — this is what soapnuts did to my hair, it stripped it, dried it out, and made the shaft super rough.
I tried the no-poo path, and for some reason it worked for a bit, but then I think my hair oil built up so much that it became unmanageable (think: unitentional beehive à la Amy Winehouse). When I went for a haircut, the hairdresser was horrified, and after they properly washed my hair, it deflated and looked way better.
No shampoo works for people with super short hair or barely any at all like my partner. He just uses water, and scrubs off the hair oil, and it works just fine for him. For people with longer hair, or hair you actually want to maintain, forget it. DO NOT GO THE NO POO ROUTE.
Try more organic or natural shampoos, I use John Masters Organics shampoos (any of them are awesome, but this Sage & Zinc one smells like vanilla).
In short, try it… to satisfy your curiousity… but if you find your hair dull and lackluster, with a strange frizzy look with caked on oil at the scalp, you’ll know why 😉
Still have a burning question?
You can ask any question using the form here and all of my previous Ask Sherry posts are here.
6 Comments
-
-
-
Grace
I highly recommend Chagrin Valley Soap and Salve shampoo bars if anyone is looking for an organic, eco-friendly alternative to commercial shampoos in plastic bottles. You can buy them on the company’s website.
I’ve been using them for about a year now, and my hair looks better than it has in years. There is a transitional process where your hair and scalp adjust to the gentler cleaning of the shampoo bar, which can be unpleasant, but it pays to be patient. It took about 2 weeks for my scalp to adjust to producing less oil, but now after a year, my scalp is a lot less oily, so I don’t have to wash my hair as often (a few times a week versus everyday before), my ends aren’t dry anymore, and my hair is bouncier and shinier than it was before.
-
Sherry of Save. Spend. Splurge.
Oh really! I’m interested in this now. I have to make a note because I’m spending a TON on my fancier sulfate-free shampoos.
-
Grace
I think shampoo bars are definitely worth a try, as long as you can find a sulfate-free one that works for your hair type. Some of the brands I’ve seen (Lush comes to mind) contain sulfates, unfortunately, so be sure to check the ingredient list.
Shampoo bars are a LOT cheaper than sulfate-free shampoos. I pay under $9 US for a bar that lasts me about 4-5 months. (I have shorter hair, so people with longer hair will probably go through their bars more quickly) And as a side benefit, they’re so much easier to travel with than liquid shampoo. All I do is cut off a bit of my shampoo bar and pop it in a plastic bag, and that’s it. No decanting into travel-size bottles or having to deal with pesky airline restrictions about liquids.
-
Sherry of Save. Spend. Splurge.
So they don’t ship to Canada without charging $50 🙁 …. This is sad. I need to find shampoo bars locally here.
-
-
-
Post a comment
You may also like
Man’s relationship with the natural world
Thought-provoking, and kind of sickening, even in cartoon form. We really are a sick, abusive specie
Ask Sherry: What are some quality brands of clothing that will last
You asked, and I am answering every Friday once I have enough questions! You can ask any question us
Ask Sherry: All about negotiating as a freelancer and trying to find a 12% return
Answers to "Ask Sherry Anything!" on how to ask for a percentage of your contract upfront & what I d
CorianneM
I got a really nice shampoo from the hairdresser, does a great job. I’m still at 1x a week hair washing (so even though hairdresser shampoo is more expensive, if you don’t use it everyday, it’s actually quite economical 😉 ), I was trying to extend it to every ten days, but it’s a bit hard schedule-wise. It’s much easier to “remember”/”plan” to wash my hair on Saturday/Sunday when I actually have the time to dry naturally first, and then go in and straighten it… I honestly don’t know how people could do that every day, it takes about an hour or more to dry naturally, then I spend 20 minutes straightening it…