Hair Experiment
Together with fellow writer Margaret Badore, we embarked on the same experiment with two slightly different approaches. She stopped using shampoo altogether, while I replaced it with baking soda and apple cider vinegar. At the end of the month, we compared notes. Margaret didn’t like it. Going cold turkey is admirably hard-core, but her hair never adjusted to the lack of washing. I, on the other hand, loved the results I got and didn’t want to stop.
Over the past 18 months, I have continued to use baking soda and apple cider vinegar as my standard hair-washing procedure, and I’d say that my hair has only gotten better over time. Only while travelling in Brazil for 10 weeks did I revert to shampoo – partly because I was curious to compare after being ‘off the bottle’ for so long, and because it was easier to travel with shampoo in my suitcase than a box of mysterious white powder and a jar of smelly vinegar.
It was interesting to see the difference. The shampoo made my hair look duller. It was frizzier and harder to control after washing, and took a couple days for the natural oils on my scalp to return and calm the strands. By then, however, my hair felt and looked greasy, and I found myself having to wash it every 2-3 days. It was impossible to go past the third day without looking awful.
As soon as I got home to Canada, I switched back to baking soda and vinegar and was relieved to see that my hair returned to its former easy-to-manage and low-maintenance state. Because the baking soda merely absorbs the excess oil, it isn’t being stripped of its natural oils with every wash and doesn’t feel dry and frizzy; the apple cider vinegar leaves it feeling silkier, smoother, calmer, and generally more manageable. I don’t have to wait a day and sleep on it before being able to straighten or style it, as I did with shampoo.
Best of all, it doesn’t turn greasy very quickly. By the fourth day, it starts to look a bit too shiny, even though I don’t feel it on my scalp.
To find out the ingredients and method please click here, you will be taken to the original article.
Source: treehugger.com
