Hair that hasn’t been washed for a while has a smell. It may not bother you, or the smell might not reach 3+ feet away to offend others. But if you get a whiff it’s not pleasant, IMO.
Everyone is free to do whatever they like with their bodies. Others should reserve the right to think something isn’t pleasant, though.
what do you mean when you say “not pleasant” are we talking “this hand soap doesn’t smell like anything and that’s weird and i don’t like it” or are we talking “this smells vaguely of a person that exists and does things sometimes”
i think i understand what you mean, but i don’t think that’s inherently negative, i think we’ve just been so aggressively primed to “smell nice” with all the artificial smells that we live in, from soap, shampoo, conditioner, laundry detergent, cologne, perfume, etc…
that the “neutral” human smell is sort of “lost” to the average person.
It’s been 2 years now since I’ve used shampoo, just been rinsing with water only since. I’m no cosmetologist but my hair feels perfectly normal and healthy, and without telling him anything’s changed, my barber hasn’t been able to tell a difference. The first few weeks after stopping using shampoo my hair did get pretty greasy, but it eventually settled down and now it’s totally fine. Instead of stripping away the natural oils with shampoo and replacing them with the synthetic oils in conditioner, just let your natural oils come back. Granted, this doesn’t apply to everyone, I am lucky enough to have a hair type that I’m able to do this with.
lol that’s true but I should’ve said that I asked him how my scalp looks (since I can’t really look at it closely myself), and he said “yeah seems fine, maybe a little dry.” That is one thing that I noticed during the winter that dandruff got a little worse since skin dries out during the winter, but when it warms back up the dandruff dies down again. So again just to be clear, not everyone can stop using shampoo/conditioner especially if they have some kind of scalp condition, but for those people with the right hair type, it’s totally fine and really not a big deal at all. You don’t stink, your hair doesn’t smell like anything at all really (as long as you are still regularly taking showers, I’m not saying to stop taking showers lol).
its been so long so i cant say for sure, but i feel like when my hair gets really sweaty its really obvious to me now as well, it feels like it was less obvious when i did actively shampoo and condition, but i’d have to test that one to be sure lol
My scalp condition is that I have too much hair. Too dense and thick, it gets greasy after not washing it 1 day, so I don’t even dare to replicate your experiment.
I also used to have a cold weather dandruff problem, but that was solved entirely when I started always air drying after every shower. Thanks to a random tip years ago on reddit. My dandruff problem was apparently because of humidity.
The adjustment period is real. I was showering twice a day when I stopped shampooing, because my hair (lots of it, but fine and not coarse) got greasy quick. After a few weeks, it normalized. I can shower once a day now. I still wash it by running my fingers and water through it over and over, so it doesn’t smell. I still have a somewhat dry scalp though, it didn’t really fix that. Don’t really have dandruff, but if I scratch my scalp a bunch or use a comb directly on it several times, I’ll have to rinse the dandruff out.
Potentially part of your issue is that you use shampoo, particularly if it’s really strong. Shampoo strips oil from your hair, which is why you need conditioner to add oil back. Your scalp naturally produces oil to protect your hair. If you strip it, particularly if you don’t replace it, your scalp will go crazy producing oil.
Eventually going no-poo this dies down as everything normalizes. For a little while, it’ll be pretty oily though. What I did many years ago is I went from washing with shampoo daily to every other day, to once or twice a week, reducing until I hit zero. Wash with water daily though. I also recommend trying conditioner washing as an alternative to transition as well. The oil in your hair will bind to the oil in the conditioner and clean your hair, but it doesn’t strip it dry. That’ll probably help reduce how much your scalp needs to produce.
Obviously it’s your hair. Everyone is different. This may not be something that can work for you, but you can’t know until you do some experiments. I wouldn’t assume it’s the case yet.
I’ve been no-poo for many years now. I’ve had barbers ask me what I do to keep my hair so nice.
People shampoo to remove oils and then use conditioner to add oils. It doesn’t make sense, except once you view it through the lense of capitalism and them creating a need to sell you another product.
I mostly just wash with water daily, and about once every week to a month, whenever it feels like it needs to be done, I do a conditioner wash where I just use conditioner to clean my hair.
The same is true for shaving gels/creams. I wasn’t really sure what the point of my shaving cream was, only that my skin started to itch the next day if I used it. So I tried to shave without it and lo and behold, it’s fine without. I notice no difference in shaving, but my skin doesn’t itch anymore and I use 1 less product
I shave with a double edge razor and don’t usually do a clean shave, just clean up the edges of my facial hair, but yeah I don’t usually use that stuff either. It’s mostly not required. When I do do a clean shave I do use shave soap, but it’s also nicer quality than the cream or gel you’d buy in a store, with lanolin, tallow, and/or other oils added. It’s slightly more effort but if I’m going through the effort of a clean shave anyway I like to enjoy it.
Same, although I’ve been going for longer than two years. Honestly, I cant really remember when I stopped use shampoo. But if I don’t shower for a day, it starts looking a little greasy. I have lots of straight fine hair, run the water and my fingers through it rigorously in the shower, and then I come out, scrunch it with the towel (dont rub, it will break the hair fibers) and then air dry. Get compliments on my hair all the time.
As for smell, it just smells like hair. It can get slightly more pungent if I dont shower, but otherwise it just smells like me. Every once in a while I ask my full-poo GF to check if my hair smells because my own noseblindness, and she hasn’t told me to go shower yet.
Definitely when you go from poo to no-poo, your hair is extra greasy. I don’t know the science behind it, but it seems to over produce oils and takes a couple weeks to normalize. During that period I was showering once in the morning and once at night, again running my fingers and water through my hair for ~2-3 minutes straight. After a while my hair didnt get so greasy.
When I use soap or shampoo, my hair loses all of its body and shine doesn’t go back to normal for a day or so.
I imagine for some people this works, but for others it doesn’t. I do feel a little weird when people ask me what my “secret” is and I’m literally like “yeah just don’t wash it lol”
I don’t know the science behind it, but it seems to over produce oils and takes a couple weeks to normalize. During that period I was showering once in the morning and once at night, again running my fingers and water through my hair for ~2-3 minutes straight. After a while my hair didnt get so greasy.
i think it might just be that it “feels” greasy, as you move from using shampoo, to not, but as you move from not using shampoo to using shampoo, you’ll notice how dry your hair is after using it, and if you condition you’ll notice how “greasy” it is as well.
If you do not apply some sort of (proven) cleaning agent to your hair on a reasonably frequent basis, i dont care how in touch with nature and your primal self you are, you stink. If you dont want to deal with the maintenance cut it off, rocking the wrecking ball aesthetic is pretty great actually.
The no-poo (no shampoo) movement is very real and definitely works for many people (dependant on hair type and oil secretions). Basically, once you stop washing away your natural oils daily, the production normalizes and then a regular rinse with water and occasionally something like diluted soap, lemon juice or apple cider vinegar.
I’ve met them, I was one, I know them. You wouldn’t know unless they told you.
For a normal human with no health problems affecting their oil production/smell, if you aren’t using shampoo/conditioner to constantly strip the oils from your hair, you very quickly stop overproducing oil.
Bedsheets and pillows should still be washed regularly, since they definitely get covered in excess skin oils/grime/etc.
But as long as you are caring for your hair in other ways like brushing daily and keeping it away from food/grease/mud/etc, using soap isn’t necessary unless you actually soil it - rinsing is enough to get rid of sweat buildup.
Obviously, if you are working something like a trade job, its not possible to avoid debris, grime and other things and you need to wash your hair more, but an office job? Retail? Just brush and rinse regularly, and your hair will smell and look just fine.
not washing sheets is bad because they collect and hold body oils. Like your hair if you don’t wash it either.
Which is why most people here are saying to wash your hair regularly…
Likewise, you probably don’t need super aggressive detergent to clean your sheets, you could probably just get away with using steam alone, though you might want some detergent or surfactant for obvious reasons.
i think part of it is also that humans have evolved to be scent neutral (to our sense of smell), whereas dogs and other animals, obviously benefit from having some smell to them.
Though you would think maybe the smell gene would’ve died in humans? Maybe it has.
You can also clean your hair with conditioner or even rose water in between instead of soaps or vinegar. See the curlygirl subreddit for details about safer hair products that won’t mess up curl patterns
i think you might be confusing the idea of “artifical smells” with “natural human scent” where as humans normally smell like “nothing”
as a chronic non scented user, because i hate smelling like things, i would annoy the shit out of you.
If you dont want to deal with the maintenance cut it off
this isn’t even remotely true, you still have to brush it, tie it off, and wash it out properly, all of which takes a lot of time. You can’t not do that.
Literally the only reason i ever stink is because my clothes aren’t clean (i sweat like a motherfucker) or i genuinely just haven’t showered in like a week.
i have a very sensitive nose, and let me tell you i have not met a single person who says of themselves they don’t smell and actually don’t, they absolutely do. We are just used to our own and dont register it unless it gets intense.
I’m not saying you should bathe in perfume or obsessively rinse your scalp with bleach, just that if people go several days without using soap on themselves I 100% always smell them. For hair it isn’t much different.
are you talking about scented or scentless soap? You’re probably just smelling the soap itself.
There is also a difference between “smells just a tinge bit stinky” and “i can smell you from here dog” if it’s the former it probably doesn’t make the cut as “stank”
I have a very sensitive nose too, described as that of a dog by my sister, and it’s not that people not using shampoo smell worse, it’s that they smell of sebum and pheromones and all that stuff, which I don’t mind. I smell more like an animal, and I love animals.
A few years ago I had to stay inside a lot, so I tried showering without soap on my body too, and it does seem to work better for longer than using soap, but it’s less convenient and sort of less reliable I find, so I use soap again on the three key areas. My hair though, I just use water to wash. My girlfriend tried to argue with me once that I needed shampoo and she just looked it up briefly and said “I was wrong!”
You don’t need shampoo or conditioner except sometimes medicinally!
And more often socially.
Soap works fine.
It literally only needs 3 ingredients – water, lye and oil.
And conditioner in most cases is just a bunch of solvents and surfactants meant to spread silicone over your hair.
you really don’t i’ve only ever had one person comment on my not washed hair, and they were autistic, and also a female.
Literally nobody cares.
Hair that hasn’t been washed for a while has a smell. It may not bother you, or the smell might not reach 3+ feet away to offend others. But if you get a whiff it’s not pleasant, IMO.
Everyone is free to do whatever they like with their bodies. Others should reserve the right to think something isn’t pleasant, though.
Oi, I said you don’t need shampoo or conditioner, not that you don’t need to wash your hair.
what do you mean when you say “not pleasant” are we talking “this hand soap doesn’t smell like anything and that’s weird and i don’t like it” or are we talking “this smells vaguely of a person that exists and does things sometimes”
“This person smells overcooked.”
i think i understand what you mean, but i don’t think that’s inherently negative, i think we’ve just been so aggressively primed to “smell nice” with all the artificial smells that we live in, from soap, shampoo, conditioner, laundry detergent, cologne, perfume, etc…
that the “neutral” human smell is sort of “lost” to the average person.
It’s been 2 years now since I’ve used shampoo, just been rinsing with water only since. I’m no cosmetologist but my hair feels perfectly normal and healthy, and without telling him anything’s changed, my barber hasn’t been able to tell a difference. The first few weeks after stopping using shampoo my hair did get pretty greasy, but it eventually settled down and now it’s totally fine. Instead of stripping away the natural oils with shampoo and replacing them with the synthetic oils in conditioner, just let your natural oils come back. Granted, this doesn’t apply to everyone, I am lucky enough to have a hair type that I’m able to do this with.
Your barber probably wouldn’t tell you if they think your hair is kinda gross unless it was so bad they wanted to reject you as a client.
lol that’s true but I should’ve said that I asked him how my scalp looks (since I can’t really look at it closely myself), and he said “yeah seems fine, maybe a little dry.” That is one thing that I noticed during the winter that dandruff got a little worse since skin dries out during the winter, but when it warms back up the dandruff dies down again. So again just to be clear, not everyone can stop using shampoo/conditioner especially if they have some kind of scalp condition, but for those people with the right hair type, it’s totally fine and really not a big deal at all. You don’t stink, your hair doesn’t smell like anything at all really (as long as you are still regularly taking showers, I’m not saying to stop taking showers lol).
its been so long so i cant say for sure, but i feel like when my hair gets really sweaty its really obvious to me now as well, it feels like it was less obvious when i did actively shampoo and condition, but i’d have to test that one to be sure lol
My scalp condition is that I have too much hair. Too dense and thick, it gets greasy after not washing it 1 day, so I don’t even dare to replicate your experiment.
I also used to have a cold weather dandruff problem, but that was solved entirely when I started always air drying after every shower. Thanks to a random tip years ago on reddit. My dandruff problem was apparently because of humidity.
The adjustment period is real. I was showering twice a day when I stopped shampooing, because my hair (lots of it, but fine and not coarse) got greasy quick. After a few weeks, it normalized. I can shower once a day now. I still wash it by running my fingers and water through it over and over, so it doesn’t smell. I still have a somewhat dry scalp though, it didn’t really fix that. Don’t really have dandruff, but if I scratch my scalp a bunch or use a comb directly on it several times, I’ll have to rinse the dandruff out.
Potentially part of your issue is that you use shampoo, particularly if it’s really strong. Shampoo strips oil from your hair, which is why you need conditioner to add oil back. Your scalp naturally produces oil to protect your hair. If you strip it, particularly if you don’t replace it, your scalp will go crazy producing oil.
Eventually going no-poo this dies down as everything normalizes. For a little while, it’ll be pretty oily though. What I did many years ago is I went from washing with shampoo daily to every other day, to once or twice a week, reducing until I hit zero. Wash with water daily though. I also recommend trying conditioner washing as an alternative to transition as well. The oil in your hair will bind to the oil in the conditioner and clean your hair, but it doesn’t strip it dry. That’ll probably help reduce how much your scalp needs to produce.
Obviously it’s your hair. Everyone is different. This may not be something that can work for you, but you can’t know until you do some experiments. I wouldn’t assume it’s the case yet.
I’m saying stop taking showers. But over there where you are, not near me.
I’ve been no-poo for many years now. I’ve had barbers ask me what I do to keep my hair so nice.
People shampoo to remove oils and then use conditioner to add oils. It doesn’t make sense, except once you view it through the lense of capitalism and them creating a need to sell you another product.
I mostly just wash with water daily, and about once every week to a month, whenever it feels like it needs to be done, I do a conditioner wash where I just use conditioner to clean my hair.
The same is true for shaving gels/creams. I wasn’t really sure what the point of my shaving cream was, only that my skin started to itch the next day if I used it. So I tried to shave without it and lo and behold, it’s fine without. I notice no difference in shaving, but my skin doesn’t itch anymore and I use 1 less product
I shave with a double edge razor and don’t usually do a clean shave, just clean up the edges of my facial hair, but yeah I don’t usually use that stuff either. It’s mostly not required. When I do do a clean shave I do use shave soap, but it’s also nicer quality than the cream or gel you’d buy in a store, with lanolin, tallow, and/or other oils added. It’s slightly more effort but if I’m going through the effort of a clean shave anyway I like to enjoy it.
ironically i prefer shaving in the shower without cream, it’s almost like women figured out something mildly useful in that regard…
how do you shave your face without a mirror?
with my hands.
your fingernails should not be used as razors.
You’ve saved me a good chunk of typing, thank you.
Same, although I’ve been going for longer than two years. Honestly, I cant really remember when I stopped use shampoo. But if I don’t shower for a day, it starts looking a little greasy. I have lots of straight fine hair, run the water and my fingers through it rigorously in the shower, and then I come out, scrunch it with the towel (dont rub, it will break the hair fibers) and then air dry. Get compliments on my hair all the time.
As for smell, it just smells like hair. It can get slightly more pungent if I dont shower, but otherwise it just smells like me. Every once in a while I ask my full-poo GF to check if my hair smells because my own noseblindness, and she hasn’t told me to go shower yet.
Definitely when you go from poo to no-poo, your hair is extra greasy. I don’t know the science behind it, but it seems to over produce oils and takes a couple weeks to normalize. During that period I was showering once in the morning and once at night, again running my fingers and water through my hair for ~2-3 minutes straight. After a while my hair didnt get so greasy.
When I use soap or shampoo, my hair loses all of its body and shine doesn’t go back to normal for a day or so.
I imagine for some people this works, but for others it doesn’t. I do feel a little weird when people ask me what my “secret” is and I’m literally like “yeah just don’t wash it lol”
i think it might just be that it “feels” greasy, as you move from using shampoo, to not, but as you move from not using shampoo to using shampoo, you’ll notice how dry your hair is after using it, and if you condition you’ll notice how “greasy” it is as well.
If you do not apply some sort of (proven) cleaning agent to your hair on a reasonably frequent basis, i dont care how in touch with nature and your primal self you are, you stink. If you dont want to deal with the maintenance cut it off, rocking the wrecking ball aesthetic is pretty great actually.
The no-poo (no shampoo) movement is very real and definitely works for many people (dependant on hair type and oil secretions). Basically, once you stop washing away your natural oils daily, the production normalizes and then a regular rinse with water and occasionally something like diluted soap, lemon juice or apple cider vinegar.
I’ve met them, I was one, I know them. You wouldn’t know unless they told you.
i.e. some sort of (proven) cleaning agent
By occasionally, they mean once a month at most.
Hair only stinks if you get crap in it.
Like… oils and dander?
What’s next, not washing your sheets because body soil is natural?
Uhm, no? That’s quite a leap you made there.
For a normal human with no health problems affecting their oil production/smell, if you aren’t using shampoo/conditioner to constantly strip the oils from your hair, you very quickly stop overproducing oil.
Bedsheets and pillows should still be washed regularly, since they definitely get covered in excess skin oils/grime/etc.
But as long as you are caring for your hair in other ways like brushing daily and keeping it away from food/grease/mud/etc, using soap isn’t necessary unless you actually soil it - rinsing is enough to get rid of sweat buildup.
Obviously, if you are working something like a trade job, its not possible to avoid debris, grime and other things and you need to wash your hair more, but an office job? Retail? Just brush and rinse regularly, and your hair will smell and look just fine.
What’s next, stop wiping your butt because poop is natural?
Fuck off troll.
what next, start eating shit to completely digest the nutrients???
not washing sheets is bad because they collect and hold body oils. Like your hair if you don’t wash it either.
Which is why most people here are saying to wash your hair regularly…
Likewise, you probably don’t need super aggressive detergent to clean your sheets, you could probably just get away with using steam alone, though you might want some detergent or surfactant for obvious reasons.
Okay, but it’s important for everyone elseto know that they aren’t going years without using a cleaning agent like wild animals.
You ever smell an animal’s fur? It’s not great.
My cats smell just fine. The dog on the other hand…
True, but you aren’t a cat. You’re an ape.
How do you think an ape smells?
With their nose.
An unwashed ape. Probably an odor only another unwashed ape would love.
This is a negatively loaded non argument. You’re just making the assumption that apes smell bad, but do you actually know that?
If you are brushing them often, feeding them good food, and not letting your dog roll in everything, they smell a lot better.
That being said, animals in general do have stronger smelling oils than humans - often for some evolutionarily advantageous reasons.
i think part of it is also that humans have evolved to be scent neutral (to our sense of smell), whereas dogs and other animals, obviously benefit from having some smell to them.
Though you would think maybe the smell gene would’ve died in humans? Maybe it has.
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On the other hand, dogs don’t sweat.
And sweat rinses off quite easily.
The only people saying you should use shampoo daily are the shampoo makers. Most people can get away with once a week.
You can also clean your hair with conditioner or even rose water in between instead of soaps or vinegar. See the curlygirl subreddit for details about safer hair products that won’t mess up curl patterns
You all smell, sorry.
cringe
minge
dinge
i think you might be confusing the idea of “artifical smells” with “natural human scent” where as humans normally smell like “nothing”
as a chronic non scented user, because i hate smelling like things, i would annoy the shit out of you.
this isn’t even remotely true, you still have to brush it, tie it off, and wash it out properly, all of which takes a lot of time. You can’t not do that.
Literally the only reason i ever stink is because my clothes aren’t clean (i sweat like a motherfucker) or i genuinely just haven’t showered in like a week.
i have a very sensitive nose, and let me tell you i have not met a single person who says of themselves they don’t smell and actually don’t, they absolutely do. We are just used to our own and dont register it unless it gets intense.
I’m not saying you should bathe in perfume or obsessively rinse your scalp with bleach, just that if people go several days without using soap on themselves I 100% always smell them. For hair it isn’t much different.
are you talking about scented or scentless soap? You’re probably just smelling the soap itself.
There is also a difference between “smells just a tinge bit stinky” and “i can smell you from here dog” if it’s the former it probably doesn’t make the cut as “stank”
I have a very sensitive nose too, described as that of a dog by my sister, and it’s not that people not using shampoo smell worse, it’s that they smell of sebum and pheromones and all that stuff, which I don’t mind. I smell more like an animal, and I love animals.
A few years ago I had to stay inside a lot, so I tried showering without soap on my body too, and it does seem to work better for longer than using soap, but it’s less convenient and sort of less reliable I find, so I use soap again on the three key areas. My hair though, I just use water to wash. My girlfriend tried to argue with me once that I needed shampoo and she just looked it up briefly and said “I was wrong!”