There's a movement that is
upending shower routines across the country.
- There's a new trend in the beauty world.
It's called the No Poo Method.
- The secret could be not shampooing.
Skip the shampoo.
Your hair's better off without it.
At least that's the slogan for the No Poo Movement
that's got people claiming they haven't
used conventional shampoo in years.
And their hair looks amazing.
But is this just a fad?
What would really happen if you didn't shampoo
your hair for an entire year?
To find out, we asked dermatologist Angela J. Lamb, MD,
from Mount Sinai Hospital in New York.
So what shampoos do mostly is they do
what's called saponification.
So the actual shampoo comes along and
wraps around oil and dirt,
and when you rinse, it kinda comes out with the shampoo.
You kinda rinse out both the shampoo and the oil and dirt.
But most conventional shampoos
are too good at what they do,
stripping away too much oil from your hair to the point
where you start producing extra oil to compensate.
As a result, after the first few days without using shampoo,
your hair will look and feel way more oily than normal,
especially if you have straight hair.
So for people that have straighter-patterned hair,
and like I said, what happens with that
patterned hair is the oils, the sebum,
tend to progress down the hair shaft faster,
so their hair is going to feel oilier, dirtier sooner.
After a month of no shampoo,
that oil will have caught a good amount of dead skin cells,
dirt, and possibly even bacteria,
which could start to make your scalp itchy
and even smell kind of funky.
I would say if you go longer than about a month,
that you may see some, again, what you would get
is sometimes odor, you would get some trapping
of bacteria on your scalp.
After six months to a year,
all that gunk can clog up your hair follicles,
which can prevent new hair from growing and, over time,
ultimately lead to hair thinning or even hair loss.
There's also a risk of your scalp getting infected
from all the bacterial buildup.
So the signs you want to look for that would be
problematic that are telling you you're not
washing your hair often enough are scale, odor,
sometimes pimples that lead...that are basically saying
you're getting an infection or bacteria.
Those would be the signs that you would
know that you're not washing often enough.
But here's the thing: rinsing your hair
with gentle cleaning agents like baking soda
or even just plain water is often enough to
prevent itching, hair loss, and infection.
So how often should you be rinsing?
So to not wash at all, to use no water, no cold washing,
no detergent, shampoo, I think the cut off for how long
you can go really does depend on your styling pattern.
So many people can do that for a couple of days,
some people can do it longer, I would say two to four weeks,
for example if your hair is locked or if you have
any kind of prosthetic in your hair like a weave or a braid,
you often can go a little bit longer just because
of the way the hair is kind of tied down and
not getting as disrupted.
So if you would like to wash your hair less frequently,
try to go maybe I'd say about three days
to a week and see how you do.
So you should still wash and rinse,
but you don't have to repeat every single day.
Just try it out, and see how you do.