Watching the NFL playoffs last week, I suddenly remembered that division championship weekend marks my one-year anniversary of not using shampoo. It’s crazy to think about, but as I’ve already adoringly professed, it’s a change that has dramatically improved my life for the better.
Not long after I published my last post on this topic, I began noticing a higher rate of breakage from the ends of my hair. I had accepted (and actually enjoyed) a degree of dryness as part of the no-poo result, but this was starting to look like straight-up damage, and I worried that I would have to abandon my shampoo-free ways. However, before doing anything drastic like buying shampoo, I decided to try some adjustments to my hair-washing routine. I was incredibly pleased to discover that these minor changes resulted in my hair looking and feeling even better than before!
I still use the same trusty supplies, but in a different ratio. Still working through my first bottle of ACV from a year ago!
Here’s my updated routine, with the key changes noted:
- Fill a small travel shampoo bottle with one part baking soda and six parts water. This is a much lower concentration of baking soda than I was using previously, and I now only mix one wash’s worth of the solution at a time. I use all or almost all of this mixture for one wash.
- Combine 1-2 tablespoons of apple cider vinegar with 1 cup water in a small spray bottle. This is the same concentration I was using before, but now I spray my hair much more heavily each time. This quantity now lasts me about three washes instead of six. I theorize (with zero science knowledge to back me up) that the dryness and breakage I was experiencing was due to not using enough acid to balance out the effects of the baking soda.
- Wash wet hair and scalp with baking soda mixture. Do not wash ends of hair. Rinse well. Because I’m now using less baking soda, I spend a little more time scrubbing my scalp for extra manual cleaning action.
- Spray vinegar mixture onto hair until fully saturated, spraying the scalp thoroughly to balance out the baking soda and also spraying all the way to the ends of your hair. I let it sit for a minute or two to absorb. Rinse well.
With this new routine, my hair is now softer and shinier than before and breakage has decreased to a normal level. My hair is less voluminous because it’s less dry, but it still successfully holds a curl. For a while I had been back up to three washes per week, but with these changes I’m now back down to two.
There are several blog posts out there in which people describe their horror stories of going no-poo. I certainly can’t attest that this method works for all types of hair—I only know it works for mine. But if you give no-poo a try and start having a bad experience, I encourage you to experiment with your routine to find the method that works for you before giving up completely. Maybe your hair needs a lot of baking soda scrubbing action, or maybe your hair needs hardly any baking soda at all. If you feel like your hair is truly becoming damaged, definitely stop and assess the situation, but a few simple adjustments may be all you need to reset the balance.