I often get compliments on my hair, and then astonished looks when I mention that I have been nopoo (i.e., shampoo-free) for ~9 years. Admittedly, I haven’t had long hair until very recently (I stopped cutting my hair almost two years ago), and the difficulty of maintenance does scale with hair length. But after some self-experimentation I think I’ve figured out the right combination of habits and heuristics that make for a healthy head of hair – at least, on my scalp. This is just a short post to share these ‘tips and tricks’; partly because most of them were self-taught (I don’t know whether they exist anywhere else online), and partly also because I think most people are very confused (and mistaken) about what proper hair maintenance entails – especially hairdressers and other such ‘professionals’.
My theory is simple: patterns of human hair growth are not entirely random (when was the last time you saw a maned monkey), so we should expect there was a related evolutionary selection pressure whirring away at some point during the Pleistocene.1 If so, then our organism probably evolved its own mechanisms for hair maintenance.2 If so, then disrupting these biological processes probably sends the wrong signal to organism, causing some weird compensatory effect (e.g., excessively oily scalp). To restore balance you have to break the cycle, but it takes time for organism to adjust (depending on hair length & age), so to avoid social stigma everybody is stuck in a local minima of using shampoo. But this is just theory – here are the practical results of my habits:
Washing
Now, just because I don’t use shampoo (or any other commercial hair products for that matter) this doesn’t mean that I don’t wash my hair. But the longer it grows, the more involved the process, and subsequently, less frequently I am motivated to wash. I currently wash my hair every 4-7 days based on how it feels (scratchy scalp = time to wash), which depends significantly on my worldly location (e.g., more air pollution = more frequent wash). Importantly, I only wash my hair under cold water – hot showers didn’t exist in the Pleistocene, and hot water strips away natural oils that your scalp produces to protect individual hair strands. For technique, I use my fingers to massage / scrub my scalp, focusing on areas that don’t usually see the sun (my hair also happens to be very thick).
I care a lot about water quality; in Barcelona (my current home) the tap water quality is awful, so after washing my hair in the shower I sit on the floor and thoroughly rinse my hair & scalp with bottled water.3 If you follow this method, use a wide-rimmed bucket to catch the water, and then dunk your hair & scalp in the bucket at the end for one last wash.
Drying
For drying, I use my hands to squeeze any excess water from my hair and then let it sit for 3-4 hours, occasionally using a wide-toothed comb to break up and mix the different layers for better air flow. Given this time constraint I typically wash my hair in the morning / afternoon, sitting outside in the sun & wind if I want to accelerate this process (a hair dryer would probably also work, but I like having the incentive to sunbathe). I avoid using a towel for the same reason I avoid using hot water – it plausibly strips oils from the hair. Finally, I always try and hang upside down at the end of the drying process as this allows gives airflow to any remaining damp parts of my scalp.
General Advice
In regular life I tend to keep my hair tied up in a loose bun – this keeps the heat off and reduces how much particulate matter it collects (due to natural oils this is perhaps more than the average head of hair). To remove particulate matter and shed weak strands I like to use a detangling hairbrush in the morning and evening (you can use a smaller comb to clean it).
I don’t have much additional advice other than: trust your hair to take care of itself. My hair only seems to become stronger and more voluminous the longer it grows (e.g., I’ve never had split ends). Love your hair and it will show you love in return.
- Something something UV protection, thermoregulation, sexual signaling. ↩︎
- Something something hydrolipidic film. ↩︎
- Recently I visited Rome which, thanks to some impressive stone engineering, has had clean water flowing for >2000 years! ↩︎