Shampoo updates and why prenatal vitamins will kill me

So it's now day 114 or so without shampoo. The greasiness has gotten better, but is still not completely gone. My hair is kind of shellack-y if I just comb it and let it dry, but if I comb it after it's dried, it's pretty decent.

My grandma's hair was thin, at the end of her life. The words "painfully thin" come to mind. Mine was getting that way, too, which was freaking me out to no end. Not anymore, though, hoo boy. About a week after I started taking prenatals, I noticed a fringe of new hair about 1/2 inch long, right at the front of my hairline. It was too long to give credit to the prenatals, so I guess I was just being dense and male and not seeing it when it first sprouted. Anyway, I've got new hair growth at the front, and probably everywhere else.

Reader Alicia commented that prenatal vitamins would be bad for me. I didn't see how that would be possible, but it turns out that they give a whole day's supply of iron in one pill. So if I eat meat or something, I'll be getting too much iron and putting myself at risk for a heart attack or various cancers. So if I go vegetarian at some point, I might go back on them, but for now they sit on the shelf. Hey, I paid 4 bucks for those! I'm not throwing them out! I may try a different approach, and put together a supplement schedule with everything but the iron. That folic acid is supposed to be the bomb, and it's well-nigh impossible to overdose on.

I thought it would be funny, you know, "Ha ha, Pete's on prenatal vitamins" and I was led to expect awesome results with hair, nails, and overall nutrition. I don't eat a balanced diet, and I need to supplement with something. Yet I distrust multivitamins; I'm not quite convinced that they're digestible enough to be doing real good. I thought if there was one thing that the vitamin companies wouldn't dare screw up, it'd be the prenatals.

Next up: Investigating Human Growth Hormone (HGH). Do I need a prescription for this crap, or can I just swing into GNC and pick some up?

65 days without shampoo

Me, to guy at party last night: "I haven't used shampoo in 65 days."

"Is that why your hair looks greasy?"

"...yeah."

I've been waiting and waiting for the incredible results that the "no poo" advocates blog about. Is my hair thicker? Well, somewhat, but I don't know if it's new growth, or simply that the hairs themselves are thicker because of waxy buildup.

Is my hair shiny? More manageable? I guess. Is it incredibly soft? Sometimes. It's softer than it was when I was using shampoo + conditioner + styling product.

My hair still has a greasy, waxy coating, which is driving me nuts. A couple of weeks ago, I decided it must have been residue from the previous 6 weeks, and decided to wash it out with apple cider vinegar.

Apple cider vinegar is one of those wonder products that health nuts are constantly recommending for everything from gout to herpes; in my experience, it's not useful for anything other than smelling like vinegar all day. So down to the kitchen to grab the apple cider vinegar. All out. I'd used it all trying to cure my toenail fungus. We had 2 containers of white vinegar, though, so I grabbed one of those.

I used about a quarter-cup of white vinegar in the shower (don't get that shit in your eyes) and gave my hair a thorough scrubbing. It definitely got rid of the waxy buildup, but by the time I stopped smelling like vinegar, 2 days hence, the buildup was back.

I've decided I'm very nearly done with this experiment. I'm going to stick with it until the end of September; if I haven't seen any wonderful results at that point, I'll go back to shampooing on a more-or-less regular basis. It's not that I'm horribly dissatisfied with any of the results, it's just that I'm not delighted, like the no-poo crowd said I'd be. And if I'm not delighted, then what's the point?

There is another product which is supposed to do awesome things for your hair (and nails), and recently I started taking it. I don't think the results will overlap. So you can look forward to the next blog post:

My results with prenatal vitamins.

Day 27 Without Shampoo

I just linked this on Reddit, so I suppose I'd better update.

It's day 27 without shampoo, conditioner, or any product. My hair is soft and not particularly greasy--call it a 2 out of 10 on the greasiness scale--and I do think it looks fuller, though maybe that's just wishful thinking.

Occasionally I catch myself thinking about shampoo, and how my hair used to be "clean". That's just silly programming. It's clean right now. It's just not dried out and perfumed like it used to be.

I'll start looking for some water-soluble products (hairsprays and whatnot) in the next couple of weeks.

Day 17 of the "No Poo" experiment

A little over 2 weeks ago, I got butchered at the Blown Away salon here in Owatonna. The following day, we were set to leave for a 4-day trip to cabin with (I later found out) no shower. It seemed like a perfect time to try the "no shampoo" experiment. According to those in the "no poo" movement, quitting shampoo stops exposing your skin (scalp) to harsh chemicals, and blah blah blah. Oh, wait. It's also supposed to make your hair fuller and more manageable. Hel-lo? Fuller hair? As a male in my 40s, I can use all the help I can get.

So for the past 17 days, I've used no shampoo. None. I haven't even used apple cider vinegar, which some of the no-poo folks recommend. (I've never found apple cider vinegar to work for any of the applications for which it's widely touted.) I also haven't used any styling product, largely because my hair is so short I haven't needed any.

The various websites which recommend this practice tell you to expect greasy hair from "a few days to a few weeks", until your body re-calibrates your, uh, hair oil production. My understanding is that shampoo strips out essential oils from your hair, then your body goes "Uh-oh, we're running low on oil. Better make some more," and so it cranks out more than it otherwise would. And then it takes a while for the body to realize it's producing too much.

This sounds "right" to me; that is, it sounds about like how I understand the body works, constantly balancing out its chemical supplies. In my experience, I got to a somewhat greasier state of existence, then kind of plateaued there. So if my shampooed hair produced hair that was at a 1-2 on the greasiness scale, I got to about a 3 or a 4, and it hasn't gotten any worse. I'm led to believe that it will drop back to a 2 in another couple of weeks, so we'll see how that goes.