I stopped using shampoo (and conditioner) two years ago.

• B&q Shower Shampoo Holder
• Q Shower Shampoo

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Quitting mostly happened on accident, but now that I’ve seen just how unnecessary shampoo ever was to my hair’s health and appearance, I don’t see myself ever going back.

I explained how this experiment started and some of the initial results in my first post, and now that it’s been two years I wanted to expand more on what I’ve learned and seen related to not using shampoo. Luckily, at least a dozen of my friends have tried this as well since my first article, so I have a bit more data to reference.

How to Quit Shampoo

Quitting shampoo is fairly simple… you just stop. I know it’s tempting to think you need special products, or natural remedies, or a shaman to come bless your hair or something, but you don’t. You just stop using it.

The hard part is the adaptation period. Depending on how long your hair is, how good your diet is, how well you’re sleeping, how naturally oily your hair is, and other health related factors, your hair could take anywhere from one week to over a month to adjust.

During that time, your hair gets oily, flat, greasy, smells bad, your scalp gets itchy, and you’re generally not all that pleasant to look at. This is why most people give up. You’ll get self conscious around one week into it, think “Nat must have been wrong” and scurry back to the shower to chemically assault your hair into compliance.

But if you can wait out the adaptation period, your hair will adjust and you’ll reach the point of just needing to rinse it with water every day or three to keep it looking nice.

And when you do make it through that period, you’ll probably notice a few effects that I’ve noticed and that my adapted friends have reported as well:

Effects of Quitting Shampoo

Healthier Hair

The biggest one is that your hair gets healthier. It has better color to it, isn’t as dry or brittle if that’s an issue for you, and stays healthy looking for longer than shampoo-adapted hair.

Now that it’s been so long since I stopped, I can easily go 2-4 days without rinsing it without a noticeable hit to its appearance. When I was using shampoo it would start to look greasy and get oily once I hit the ~20-24 hour mark since shampooing it.

Now, the only negative effect from not rinsing it for a few days is that my scalp gets itchy. But if I’m rinsing every day, my scalp never gets itchy, hair never gets dry, and it never starts to look oily.

Easier Styling

B&q Shower Shampoo Holder

I still use product to style my hair, but I only need a quarter or less of the amount I used before. I can manipulate it into the same shape more easily, and it’ll keep that shape for longer than it would back when I was shampooing it.

More Volume

It seems that most people who quit shampoo also see their hair get more voluminous. I think this is because conditioner in particular can make your hair soft and flat, and by cutting out the product your hair naturally gets thicker again.

This is also part of why my hair became easier to style. It was less flat, which made it easier to work with.

Your Hair Reveals Your Health

Here’s a big one: once you stop shampooing and conditioning your hair, it will reveal your health. If you eat poorly, undersleep, stop exercising, get stressed out, your hair will show it. It’ll get darker, more oily, your scalp will get dryer, it’ll get unhealthier with you.

It makes sense. Our hair is a big signaling tool for showing potential mates how healthy and unhealthy we are, which is part of why we use shampoo to manipulate it into projecting health and youth. When you stop shampooing, you have to actually keep your health somewhat in line if you want to keep your hair looking nice.

This doesn’t mean that the moment you eat bad food or sleep six hours you’ll look like a mess, my hair still looks fine when I do that, but if I do it consistently for a week or longer I’ll start to notice my hair changing to reflect the poor life choices.

Neutral Smell

One effect that’s not good or bad is that your hair smells like, well, hair. It doesn’t smell nice and fruity anymore, but it also doesn’t smell bad so long as you rinse it. You could use a small amount of essential oil to scent it if that matters to you, though.

Finer Details on Quitting

Since so many people have tried quitting shampoo, successfully or not, since my first article came out, I’ve realized a few of what I think are the finer details of quitting.

You Need to Be Living Healthy

A few people who tried quitting shampoo were in college, partying, staying up all night, not showering that often, and otherwise not living super healthy lives. Their hair got really oily, then never really stopped being oily, and they ended up looking like a greasy mess for a month.

I think it’s harder for your hair to repair itself from the damage shampoo has done over the years if you’re not living a somewhat healthy life in tandem with this change. If you’re eating poorly and not sleeping, it’s going to be much harder for your hair to rejuvenate itself, so you should make sure you have those parts locked down before you make the switch.

Cold Water Helps

Another common thread I’ve seen in people able to adapt and those unable is their willingness to use cold showers. There’s decent anecdotal evidence that hot water damages your hair and scalp, so until you’re fully adapted to not using shampoo, showing with exclusively hot water can slow down the process.

Now, the good news: I use hot water for most of my non-post-exercise showers now and it has no effect on my hair. The cold water seems to be necessary primarily during the adaptation phase, to make sure you’re not further challenging your hair while it adapts.

You don’t have to take completely cold showers, but you should at least rinse your hair in cold water at the end of the shower for a minute to help it recover.

Guys Seem to Have it Easier

Most men I’ve talked to have no problem making the transition. Their hair tends to rebound in 2-3 weeks, and then they’re good to go and haven’t used shampoo since.

Women seem to have more challenges with the switch. I’ve heard many more “tried it, didn’t work” stories from women readers, most of whom say their hair gets disgustingly greasy compelling them to give up after a week or two.

This is most likely caused by women simply having more hair. The more hair you have, the more hair that will need to adapt, the more oil that could be produced, the more greasy you can look. I suspect that if you have hair past your shoulders it could take over a month, if not months, to fully adapt.

So how can women implement this? One option would be to cut your hair shorter, adapt at the shorter length, and then let the adapted, healthier hair grow out. Another is to stick it out and wait for it to adjust (with lots of putting your hair in a bun in the meantime). A third option that I’ve heard can work is to use dry shampoo, moroccan oil, or some mixture of both to help supplement your hair’s health while you wait out the transition.

Oil Helps

The last thing worth noting is that if, once you quit, your hair doesn’t look as nice as you’d like, lightly massaging your hair and scalp with moroccan oil, or olive oil, and then rinsing it out, can keep your scalp more moist and your hair looking shinier.

I don’t do this personally, but I know at least one friend who does (and who has very different hair from me) so it might help depending on your hair type.

Other Things You Can Quit?

From my experience quitting shampoo, there are a number of other hygiene products I think we can quit using, significantly decrease the use of, or use a much less intense version of. I’ve been working on removing or adjusting them in some form, which I’ll probably cover in a future article.

Ones that I’ve thought about so far:

• Deodorant (reduce & replace)
• Toothpaste (replace)
• Soap (reduce & replace)
• Floss (quit)
• Mouthwash (quit)
• Lotion / moisturizer (quit)
• Everything acne related (quit)
• Vaccines (quit) (just kidding)

If you’ve figured out how to reduce, replace, or quit any of the ones mentioned above while still getting the supposed benefits of using them, definitely let me know on Twitter. It’s something I’m particularly interested in and have thought about a lot.

Shower gel (also shower cream or body wash) is a specialized liquid product used for cleaning the body during showers. Not to be confused with liquid soaps, shower gels, in fact, do not contain saponified oil. Instead, it uses synthetic detergents derived from either petroleum or plant sources.

Body washes and shower gels have a lower pH value than the traditional soap, which is also known to feel less drying to the skin. In certain cases, sodium stearate is added to the chemical combination to create a solid version of the shower gel.

History[edit]

Shower gel is a derivative invention of the liquid soap, which first appeared in the 1800s. In 1865, William Shepphard patented the formula behind the liquid soap,^[1] but the product gained eventual popularity with the rise of Palmolive soap in 1898, by B.J. Johnson.^[2]

Q Shower Shampoo

Modern chemistry later^[when?] enabled the creation of the shower gel, which specialized in cleaning the entire body during baths and showers.

Properties[edit]

Shower gels are known to consist of the same basic ingredients as soap - water, betaines, and sodium laureth sulfate, or SLS. But the main difference between the two products lie in its surfactants - compounds known to lower the surface tension between substances, which helps in the emulsification and the washing away of oily dirt. The surfactants of shower gels do not come from saponification, that is by reacting a type of oil or fat with lye. Instead, it uses synthetic detergents for surfactants derived from either plant-based sources or petroleum. This gives the product a lower pH value than soap^[3] and might also feel less drying to the skin.^[4] Some people have likened the effect to feeling less squeaky clean, however.^[5]

Surfactants can make up as much as 50 percent of the shower gel content, with the remaining proportion being made up of a combination of water and ingredients to thicken, preserve, emulsify, add fragrance, and color.^[6][7] Multiple surfactants are often used to achieve desired product qualities. A primary surfactant can provide good foaming ability and cleaning effectiveness, while a secondary surfactant can add qualities of mildness to prevent irritation or over-drying of the skin. To prevent shower gel ingredients from separating, emulsifiers such as diethanolamine are added.^[8] Conditioning agents may also be added to moisturize the skin during and after product use.^[9] They are also available in different colours and scents.^[10] Ingredients, like scent in the form of essential oils or fragrance oils^[6] and colorant in the form of water soluble dyes are common in shower gels.^[9]

Microbeads were commonly used in shower gels until recently. Microbeads are tiny spheres of plastic that were added to a variety of cosmetic products for their exfoliating qualities.^[11] They are too small to filter out of water systems and end up in waterways and oceans, potentially passing toxins to animal life and humans.^[12] Following the legislative actions of other countries, the United States passed the Microbead-Free Waters Act in 2015, which bans microbeads in the U.S. incrementally starting in 2017, with full implementation set for 2019.^[13]

Shower gels for men may contain the ingredient menthol, which gives a cooling and stimulating sensation on the skin, and some men's shower gels are also designed specifically for use on hair and body. Shower gels contain milder surfactant bases than shampoos, and some also contain gentle conditioning agents in the formula. This means that shower gels can also double as an effective and perfectly acceptable substitute to shampoo,^{[citation needed]} even if they are not labelled as a hair and body wash. Washing hair with shower gel should give approximately the same result as using a moisturising shampoo.^{[citation needed]}

Marketing[edit]

Like shampoo and bubble bath products, many are marketed directly towards children. These often feature scents intended to appeal to children, such as fruit scents, or cookies or cotton candy scents. Many bottles feature popular characters from children's television or movies. As with men's body wash, they often are specifically designed to be used also as a shampoo and conditioner. They also often contain gentle ingredients designed for young skin.

References[edit]

1. ^'On This Day – August 22 : The first patent for liquid soap was issued to William Sheppard on this day in 1865- Learn Chemistry'. www.rsc.org. Retrieved 2018-08-01.
2. ^'The Cleanest Inventions: Soaps and Detergents'. ThoughtCo. Retrieved 2018-08-01.
3. ^Pai, Deanna (November 23, 2016). 'Please Help Me Understand Why You Still Use Bar Soap'. Glamour. Retrieved July 25, 2018.
4. ^'Try these 11 expert tips for a better shower; your skin will thank you'. NBC News. Retrieved 2018-08-01.
5. ^'Why you shouldn't *actually* want to be squeaky-clean after a shower'. Well+Good. Retrieved 2018-08-01.
6. ^ ^abHornsey, Sally (2014). How to Make Your Own Soap. London, England: Constable & Robinson. pp. 24, 198. ISBN9781908974235.
7. ^Flick, Ernest (1992). Cosmetic and Toiletry Formulations, Second Edition, Volume 2. Park Ridge, New Jersey: Noyes Publications. ISBN0815513062.
8. ^Boyd, Christopher (4 August 2014). 'EXAMINE THE CHEMISTRY OF BODY WASH'. www.chemservice.com. Retrieved 2018-10-21.
9. ^ ^ab'Cosmetic Formulations – Body Wash – Chemists Corner'. chemistscorner.com. Retrieved 2018-10-21.
10. ^Guarnieri, Anne-Marie (January 6, 2014). 'Bar soap vs. shower gel: A brief look at the history of how we bathe'. Fashion. Retrieved July 25, 2018.
11. ^DeWeerdt, Sarah. 'Tiny biodegradable spheres could replace plastic microbeads'. Retrieved 2019-06-28.
12. ^Han, Esther (2016-08-16). 'Microbeads are leaching toxic chemicals into fish, sparking public health fears'. The Sydney Morning Herald. Retrieved 2019-06-28.
13. ^Bailey Bischoff Staff (18 April 2018). 'How the world made macro strides in curbing microbeads'. Christian Science Monitor – via MAS Ultra - School Edition.

Further reading[edit]

• Chang, Katie (April 25, 2017). 'Bar Soap Vs. Body Wash'. Ask Men. Retrieved July 25, 2018.