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how to moisturize the skin?
Awe, I think things will get better and better for your hair, @itsme
My shampoo is just the most regular thing you can find at any grocery store! I'm sure detergent-filled and all. And I repeat it because I want the oils GONE. I figure I use so little of it it doesn't matter and I actually DO want it to strip away any oils once a week. I think that's GREAT since perhaps they are loaded with VA's or other bad juju that I've forced to the surface.
I feel the same way about toothpaste now. And soap. I think that was why these harsh things were invented. To help us detox.
I don't know too much about castor oil except one thing: I used to put castor oil packs on a family member to reduce a fatty cyst. It worked somewhat, at least better than nothing, but the cyst never resolved and the person opted for surgery which left a scar. Kind of interesting stuff though. I can't help but think that all veg products do have some veg toxins.
I personally found some good styling thoughts (for my rat's nest) in curly-hair communities online, mostly about leaving the hair alone to find it's own wave (rather than processing it). But Gosh, they layer on products like nobody's business and that ain't for me. If my hair was a touch curlier I would probably allow it to dry without combing, but I need to comb. But once that dripping-wet comb-thru is done, and a final shake... fingies need to stay out of the mop. And no breezes allowed!
"Women always try to tame themselves as they get older, but the ones who look best are often a bit wilder." -Prada
I love the topic of hair! I'm super super particular about what I put on my body, it's basically nothing lol. I have a jar of cocoa butter and if my skin feels a little dry somewhere I only use that. I also use castor oil if something is really causing a problem, it does seem to help inflammation but I don't know why. It doesn't work for my buttcrack rash though! Well nothing does.... But anyway I finally found a brand of hair products I can recommend to people it's called Attitude. A couple months ago I got their unscented shampoo and conditioner and oh my word! It's so much better than anything I've ever used. Most products have too many ingredients, it has very few only what's necessary to make the hair soft. And no silicones so it's curly girl approved! I'm not a curly but I have been following their recommendations because they have to be so kind to their hair to prevent it from becoming a mess. I have natural waves if I scrunch it when I'm done showering. I have super thick hair which seems low porosity though I'm not totally positive. It's just really thick and hard to manage well. This new brand is making it feel soft and not loaded down with a bunch of product. I wash about every 4 days. I don't usually use anything else, though sometimes I use a spray detangler from Fairy Tales because it's pretty clean, just to freshen up my waves.
@itsme, yes they do have a brand called Attitude Super Leaves with oat. I can't vouch for anything else other than what I've tried though. But I'm super impressed.
This is the one I bought: https://attitudeliving.com/products/oatmeal-sensitive-care-shampoo-extra-gentle-and-volumizing?variant=46393466814777
Aqua / Water / Eau, Sodium Coco-Sulfate, Coco-Glucoside, Glycerin, Sodium Cocoyl Isethionate, Lauryl Hydroxysultaine, Citric Acid, Sodium Chloride, Inulin, Glyceryl Oleate, Sodium Benzoate, Potassium Sorbate, Panthenol, Vitis Vinifera (Grape) Seed Oil, Guar Hydroxypropyltrimonium Chloride, Avena Sativa (Oat) Kernel Extract, Hydrolyzed Soy Protein.
It's still a list, but way shorter than anything I've ever seen! It cleans my oily hair very well.
Quote from ItsMe on July 13, 2024, 9:44 am@janelle525 thanks for the link. I've looked and it appears they don't sell that one here. Personally, I also don't know how I feel about the soy protein in it. Regardless, if you say it cleans oily hair well, I'm not sure if it would be the rigth choice for me bc my hair tends towards dryness not oilyness.
I should have been more clear because now it seems I've made this awesome shampoo out to be some kind of powerful degreaser! No not at all. I should have said my hair does get a bit greasy after 4-5 days and it is able to clean it, but it's no where near like a cheap shampoo full of sulfates. This is more of a high quality shampoo that doesn't strip the hair, but will clean it if it is dirty (some sulfate free shampoos aren't up to the task). And yes my hair does tend to be more dry towards the ends. The conditioner is pretty awesome too. Anyway, just thought I'd share with the forum because I've never found anything like it. My husband works for a major salon company and I think MOST if not all of their products are complete crap. It's all marketing. I've found parabens in high end products! Unbelievable.
Quote from ItsMe on July 15, 2024, 9:46 am@janelle525 Lol....I didn't think it was some kind of a superdegreaser shampoo, but thanks for clearing it up anyway.
After 4-5 days my hair doesn't feel even mildly greasy. It seems to become even more dry and rougher. Instead of a superdegreaser I seem to need a supermoisturizer .
Ok we are getting to the details! You'd probably do better using conditioner as a shampoo, many curly girls do that, it's called co-wash and you can even buy shampoo called co-wash. I tried more moisturizing shampoos for a while like shea moisture and it did clean but I guess I just have too much oil for that.
I lost hair like crazy after CO washing with Shea Moisture, have no idea why, which ingredients. Could have been simply because of the CO washing but I'm afraid to use it again.
My hair takes a week to get greasy and is wavy (neither straight or curly).
I did CO wash for a long time (in my case it was Trader Joe's mint/tea tree Conditioner), I also did liggets bar shampoo (which is more like soap) and I tried some other things such as baking soda and vinegar. I've also experimented with old fashioned ideas like egg or beer etc. My stylist always said my hair and scalp felt "coated". And it did. How can that be good for detox?
I truly didn't really like any of those methods as much as I like now just lather-rinse-repeat once per week with bad-old shampoo. (Trader Joes mint/tea tree Shampoo).
I get that people suspect modern products are bad, and maybe they ARE toxic, but sometimes you just have to admire what modern times have come up with. Lather-rinse-repeat just gets my scalp and hair really clean! And that is detoxing in itself. It is easy. It is cheap. I use NOTHING else on my head, no conditioner, no products so maybe that makes up for any bad ingredients. (conditioner stays with you, that is why you get the "slip")
Natural products (such as herbs or oils or whatever) have their own problems/toxins, and leave stuff behind.
It takes me about a year to go through a bottle of shampoo. It gets rinsed away completely and leaves my head detoxed. My scalp is happy. My hair IS hard to detangle, and I've posted about how I fixed that. I no longer comb it when wet. And when I do comb I'm exceedingly gentle. Hair should be treated as gently as delicate antique lace (see my log)
Now, the only thing I can think of here is that stripping the oils might cause your body to send more oils out and they might be VA-ladened. So I don't know if my method will cause some scalp upset. Maybe there is just hell to pay. I wouldn't let grease sit up there too long, so maybe shampoo more often. My scalp gets itchy when it is time to shampoo. You can brush the oils down into the lengths, and that can stretch the time between shampoos a bit.
In the far-back olden days (before me) people kept their hair covered with hats and bonnets all the time, used powders on it that worked almost like dry shampoo, brushed it daily, kept it neatly braided or wound even at night, and had different ideas of what normal hair looked like. It's interesting to think about not using modern products, but modern hair is a totally different ballgame. Apples and oranges. That being said, hair looked great in pictures of the olden days, I'm thinking because they didn't fry it with dyes and perms and blow dryers.
Here is my hair today (I'm 61 and went white in my forties, probably because of VA overload). I'm pretty sure I've been using my lather-rinse-repeat-only-when-greasy method for the entire time I've been low VA (5.5 years). My hair has not regained its color. My hair texture has gotten better (feels like hair!) with time on lowered VA. This is day 4, after being carefully brushed out, which makes it shine a little because it distributes any oils. I still have some thinness in the front. But I'm happy with it.
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I don't go to all this trouble to try to get you to live my way, I don't care about that, but only to help you in case you might think shampoo is harming you. It could be that shampoo really is helping you by getting rid of VA-ladened scalp oils and leaving almost nothing behind to re-absorb odd things from, such as might come from conditioners or pomades. But who really knows? (shrugs).