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Comment by jqm | Hacker News Reader

The unwashed hair seems it would be a problem. I have fairly oily skin and hair and a few days without shampoo, (even if I rinse) and my hair becomes extremely greasy and nasty looking. Maybe there are bacteria that would eat this oil, I don't know. Anything this strong could probably also be used for oil spill clean ups. (As long as it didn't get down into the salt-pit strategic oil reserves I guess).

I do find the basic premiss of the article interesting and agree. We do use too much cleaner and are probably doing ourselves a biological disservice.

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>a few days without shampoo, (even if I rinse) and my hair becomes extremely greasy and nasty looking

Ideally you need to go a week or two without shampooing to allow your hair to adjust. The thinking on this (and I don't know if it's based in science) is that your scalp is producing excess oil because you keep washing it away. When you stop using shampoo your scalp will, over time, slow down its oil production.

I have very dry skin, so I can't comment definitely on whether those theories about oil production are based in truth. I can detail my own experience, though.

I used to shampoo daily and had terrible issues with dandruff. A couple of years ago I decided to stop using shampoo as an experiment. After about 3 weeks my dandruff cleared up completely. These days, the only time my hair gets shampooed is when I get it cut - around once every 6-8 weeks. For a few days afterwards my hair feels very limp and my scalp is very dry and flaky.

I do make sure to rinse thoroughly with warm water on a daily basis.

Yup, that's the trick. I stopped using shampoo last year - my hair was greasy as all hell for around a month, then one day I noticed that it just stopped. Now, I just go into the shower and scrub thoroughly with hot water instead of shampoo. And it takes a couple days without showering for my hair to get oily and smelly now, instead of just one.

Oddly enough, my dandruff has stayed completely unaffected (and possibly gotten worse)...

Still use a plain bar soap on my body though, can't get past the self-stigma of the thought of only rinsing down there...

"Down there" actually smells permanently better when you stop using soap. That was my personal experience anyway, and others who have tried this have reported the same.

You're actually not supposed to soap your genitals directly. Even those who use soap don't recommend this. The bacterial balance of the glans penis and the vulva is more delicate.

I second this. I used to fight the dandruff with shampoo, and then one day I just stopped, and used only water. There was a period where my hair got greasier, but then it changed and now it feels as nice and soft as it ever did with shampoo.

When you stop using shampoo your scalp will, over time, slow down its oil production.

I think a similar thing works with anti-perspirant. I switched to deodorant only and after a couple weeks I noticed I sweat less. I now only use deodorant, and my t-shirts and normal shirts last a lot longer before getting nasty looking under the arm pits.

Every time I try this, my scalp itches like crazy. I'm not sure if it is dead skin cells that I normally remove with shampoo, or the excess oils.

  Ideally you need to go a week or two without shampooing
  to allow your hair to adjust.

Yes. Everything you say is true. I think many people give up after a few days, like the person you're replying to did.

I tried the r/nopoo suggestion of baking soda mixed with a bit of water and it worked very very well. I was surprised on how clean my hair felt with just baking soda.

The hard part is having a container convenient enough to house the baking soda and get it into my hair :)

baking soda is amazing for many things. i have a box of it in my bathroom and one in my kitchen.

* deodorizes my dog in between baths * i put some on my toothpaste and it gets my teeth extra clean * or use as mouth wash/gargle with a cup of water * i pour some on my rugs and then vacuum 30 minutes later to de-odorize * de-odorizes my fridge quite nicely * cleans my porcelain sinks * sprinkle some in my hamper to keep my dirty clothes from stinking up while they wait to be washed

if you google uses for baking soda there's about a million more potential uses but this is the stuff that i use it for regularly.

Stop by your local grocer/target/walmart/amazon.com and pick up a squeeze bottle[0]

They're ¢99 at my grocery store and as long as they're made out of PET, they'll be resistent to baking soda.

[0]: http://amzn.com/B007OM9W2E

I just used an old shampoo bottle (housemates still use it). I funnelled in a tub of sodium bicarbonate and added water until it was just runny. 300ml bottle lasts me ~8 months, using about 3 times every 2 weeks.

Cost to me: about £3 / year.

Hair quality: great. I used to pretend I didn't care, but I do and this works and I'm never going back to shampoo.

i tried for ~3 months towards the end of last year then gave up. I did the no shampoo AND no soap. Just showering and this was my experience.

The first week you will smelly a bit iffy (off). It's the transition period. Powered thru and was fine after a couple of weeks and smelled quite okay but my hair suddenly became this mop of oil,gooey gunk on week 4/5 and I couldn't get rid of wash it out. When hair gets that oily, all the dirt, dust and grime sticks to it and it's almost impossible to get rid of it. I tried baking soda, apple cide vinegar and few other things without much success. My hair had never been that oily. Off the NOPOO regiment I'd shampoo once a month and I'd be fine.

Even though my BO was quite good leading up to the sudden oily hair 'syndrome' it became very bad very quickly. It became bad because I couldn't really get clean because the oil from my hair would get onto my body and dirt would gradually layer from wash to wash. Try washing something oily with just water. Now I couldn't get my body clean effectively from the nowash protocol. So I gave up for the sake of my coworkers ( and my dating life).

Sadly the protocol doesn't seem to work for all skin and hair types out there.

I color my hair with vivid colors, and shampooing daily quickly deteriorates the color. So I learned to start treating my hair less often.

It turns out that many male-grooming/hair care experts recommend you shampoo at most once or twice a week, and to not "lather" the shampoo, but instead rub it on top and downward to prevent breaking up the oils on your scalp & in your roots. The rest of the time you do the same procedure, but with just conditioner instead of shampoo.

Besides this method, I also use a kind of spray-on hair treatment and conditioner that's loaded with all kinds of healthy crap I don't understand, but basically keeps my hair healthy while also giving it weight so I can style it. By adding water I can comb out whatever dirt the conditioner+water loosens. So I don't need to wash my hair daily, and it doesn't get greasy.

I will say that without at least washing my hair it begins to itch after a week, especially if i've been exercising. So while this product is interesting, there's definitely some kind of cleaning that needs to be done on a regular basis.

I had the same problem. one day I realized the oil in my hair depends on my food intake.

In particular, for me it has a huge correlation with the "glycemic index": http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glycemic_index

Chocolate is the biggest scalp hair oil producer of all. For me it is incredible how fast it goes from my stomach to my hair, I feel my hair grease within hours!! of eating it. The same could be said about acme and skin pimples.

If instead of Chocolate I eat Apples or even sugar fruits like plums, I have no such a problem. It has to be something like the fiber controlling the sugar released on blood per second or something.

What I think about is, what am I putting down the drain and ultimately into the river/water-table? I want it to be as biodegradable and non-poisonous as possible. Liquid soap made of plant oils (such as Dr Bronners) seems like a good solution.

Most soap like things are pretty biodegradable. This is a frequent ingredient in liquid soaps and shampoos:

http://personalcaretruth.com/2010/05/a-closer-look-at-sodium...

They would rot in the bottle if there weren't some preservatives in there. After the soap gets diluted into water, the preservative isn't going to work anymore.

I, too, had extremely greasy hair. I'm talking shower and shampoo in the morning and it would start becoming visibly greasy by the end of work that day. I stopped using shampoo about a year ago.

It was bad for about a week. After that, my hair has been more manageable and better looking than it ever has in my life before (I'm not quite 30). It takes a couple of days without cleaning for my hair to get as bad as it'd get after only hours in the past.

I still use body soap, but I don't do anything to my hair other than rinse thoroughly with water. It's been a seriously life-changing thing for me.

Same here. I stopped using shampoo a few years ago after reading an article claiming that it may contribute to acne. I did notice that my hair is now much more manageable when I don't shampoo. I'll wash my hair with soap maybe once a month, and then I notice that my hair feels awful for a day or two after.

You can think of it this way: our perception of attractiveness is the product of evolution and is really just the recognition of healthy individuals, and so every beauty product out there is designed to put back what other products take out. You shampoo your hair, and remove the oil, and so to get a nice healthy sheen you use conditioner, mousse, or pomade. It's a silly balancing act.

If you just leave it alone (assuming no other serious health problems) it should revert to a naturally attractive state.

Is "extremely greasy and nasty looking" just a self evaluation or is it shared by others? It could be that it just violates your self image and because of that you are repelled by it.

Plus the dead skin cells & dirt. You can get much of that with a rough brush, but I find I can really never get all of it without the help of SOME kind of soap.

I had the same problem. I solved it using Aleppo soap (100% natural) once in a week, and no more chemical aggressive shampoo.

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