Saturday 24 May 2014

UPDATE FOR NO-POO / SHAMPHREE (4 months)

Hi everybody!

So I'm doing another update only one month since the last update because I've tried several things out this month that I wanted to talk about before I forgot about them.

Firstly, the first week of the 4th month I tried washing with sea salt and water instead of baking soda and water. Reason: I realised that baking soda is a type of salt and that to be more natural and eco (logic and nomic) I should try using sea salt. I researched it and found that some natural shampoos use sea salt as their main ingredient. I was also thinking about people with dread locks, originally in Jamaica, didn't wash their hair, but probably still swam in the ocean and had their hair exposed to sea salt which probably helped in keeping their hair clean. This is just some theory I came up with but found no proof for it anywhere.
Some say that sea salt is too harsh and is bad for the hair whilst others argue that it is the mix of sea salt + other minerals in sea water + sand + wind which creates a dreadful combination for hair health. Some others still, say they love beach hair! So... what to do... Well my research found that if you boil your home water with a good amount of sea salt, cool it down and then use it on your hair, it will have the same effect as using baking soda. Personal experience: It didn't work. My hair was the same as when I do a WO.

Secondly, the day after trying the sea salt - and it not working - I washed by hair with baking soda. Then I did WO for a week.

Friday: Baking soda wash.
Monday: Water Only
Thursday: Water only
Saturday: Shikakai (check next section)

This was fine. The reason I didn't wash my hair with anything else is because it didn't seem to require anything else. I could have (and should have) continued, but I got tempted by a new product I discovered: shikakai - see next section. This tells me that I should now leave a greater interval between washes and I can do more WO which was my objective from the start.

Thirdly, Shikakai powder. This powder is from a ground fruit found on a shrub in Asia. Shikakai literally means 'hair fruit' and has been used for centuries to wash hair. It is a natural soap. I used it once (on a Saturday) and loved the smell and the feel. On the same day I was researching how to naturally die my hair brown. The reason is that since I've been using lemon on my hair for 4 months, it has bleached it and my hair is much lighter than it was naturally, so I decided to try to get my colour back. I found that coffee can be mixed in to what you use to wash your hair to strengthen natural browns. It won't dye the hair, but if you have natural brownish hair then it will help to make it more vibrant and bring the brown out more. So the next day; Sunday, I washed my hair again with Shikakai and coffee this time. -It did not make my hair any darker - and after a couple days of reflection I decided that I didn't really care that much about the colour of my hair. Of course after washing it two days in a row, I didn't do a WO on the following Monday and waited until Thursday. My hair was oily by then so I did another shikakai wash.

I like the Shikakai powder because it's easy to mix, I've used it similarly to baking soda, in a squeezy bottle to aim better. (2 teaspoons of 100% natural shikakai powder, in 1 cup of water), this time I also used the lemon-water mix afterwards to make my hair softer. Other reasons why I like shikakai are that it is a very soft cleanser, it gets rid of less oil than the baking soda does and helps to spread the rest. It's less harsh on the hair and more natural too. I find the smell very delicious also; it has an earthy, chocolaty smell. Sweet and bitter at the same time. I really advise trying this one out, but it might only clean your hair if you've been no-poo for at least a couple months, because as I mentioned before it is a very mild cleanser.
Another great thing about shikakai, is that because it is such a soft cleanser, it helps to ween off and leave more interval days between washing, because it is not as harsh as the baking soda, which still requires 1 to 2 washes weekly.



So that's it for now. I'm going to continue using Shikakai powder for a while and also try to do more WO. I repeat that using the lemon mix after the Shikakai wash is very beneficial in helping to clean and soften the hair.

Thanks for reading, you're welcome to leave comments on the post or feedback on anything you've tried.
have a good weekend!

<3

CHECK OUT MY 5 MONTHS UPDATE!!

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