Not washing your hair ever?

[hairwegoagain]

Excellent post.

Next hot topic will be rubbing dookie into your scalp.

Washing your hair has no effects in hairloss. But is certainely has an effect on personal hygeine. Dont you use styling products? Anyone who does will know you need to wash your hair everyday to avoid looking like a greasy tramp.

 

[Aplunk1]

Does rubbing dookie into your scalp prevent male pattern baldness?

Sounds like a great idea to me!

jk...

 

[powersam]

noones heard of sodium lauryl sulfate? its a common ingredient in shampoo and has been shown to have a very damaging effect on skin health. some people will have robust skin which can take everything you throw at it, while some people will have sensitive skin which would benefit from less washing, and anything that benefits your skin (scalp) benefits your hair.

 

[iamnaked]

Washing your hair has no effects in hairloss. But is certainely has an effect on personal hygeine. Dont you use styling products? Anyone who does will know you need to wash your hair everyday to avoid looking like a greasy tramp.

Um... How can I put this? I don't look like a greasy tramp?

Different for everyone I suppose.

And nah, I don't use styling products. They don't do people with male pattern baldness any favours.

Anyone got any studies on the effects of shampoo not washing hair?

 

[Bryan]

Anyone got any studies on the effects of shampoo not washing hair?

What does that mean?

 

[iamnaked]

Sorry - that should have been the effects of shampoo on hair, or the effects of not washing ones' hair. Been one of those days. :wink:

 

[Britannia]

Sorry - that should have been the effects of shampoo on hair, or the effects of not washing ones' hair. Been one of those days. :wink:

You mean a "ask stupid questions day"?

 

[theendoftheend]

Sorry - that should have been the effects of shampoo on hair, or the effects of not washing ones' hair. Been one of those days. :wink:

You mean a "ask stupid questions day"?

The second double quote should be placed before the word 'day'.

 

[cook'n'milkies]

Sorry - that should have been the effects of shampoo on hair, or the effects of not washing ones' hair. Been one of those days. :wink:

You mean a "ask stupid questions day"?

The second double quote should be placed before the word 'day'.

Also, "ask" starts with a vowel. Your question should read "You mean an 'ask stupid questions day'"?

I hate it when people make smartass remarks using atrocious grammar. Way to destroy your own credibility.

 

[Bryan]

Sorry - that should have been the effects of shampoo on hair, or the effects of not washing ones' hair. Been one of those days. :wink:

Yes, I made a vague reference to such a study earlier in this thread: "Studies on the Effect of Shampoos on Scalp Hair Lipids and Bacteria", Kligman et al, from the book "Hair Research", Springer-Verlag, 1981. Here are some of the salient things they found, in no particular order:

1) Commercial shampoos all have about the same ability to remove lipids from the hair and scalp, regardless of whether they're supposedly designed for "dry", "normal", or "oily" hair. A shampoo is a shampoo is a shampoo is a shampoo...

2) Shampooing the hair frequently doesn't stimulate the scalp to produce more sebum.

3) It's almost IMPOSSIBLE to completely remove all the oil and sebum from hair, just by shampooing. There's always a residue left over which is virtually beyond the reach of shampoos. To completely remove ALL traces of lipids from the hair and scalp, the researchers had to do as many as literally a HUNDRED washings with ether! :shock:

4) Going for long periods of time without shampooing appears to be safe from a medical point of view, although it's not cosmetically very appealing.

5) Sebum doesn't get "soaked-up" or "wicked-up" by hair. Oil and sebum appears to get onto hair in the first place only by direct physical contact, like when we comb our hair, or touch or scratch our heads, or sleep on a pillow, etc.

Bryan

 

[iamnaked]

Sorry - that should have been the effects of shampoo on hair, or the effects of not washing ones' hair. Been one of those days. :wink:

You mean a "ask stupid questions day"?

The second double quote should be placed before the word 'day'.

Also, "ask" starts with a vowel. Your question should read "You mean an 'ask stupid questions day'"?

I hate it when people make smartass remarks using atrocious grammar. Way to destroy your own credibility.

Ha! owned

 

[iamnaked]

Sorry - that should have been the effects of shampoo on hair, or the effects of not washing ones' hair. Been one of those days. :wink:

Yes, I made a vague reference to such a study earlier in this thread: "Studies on the Effect of Shampoos on Scalp Hair Lipids and Bacteria", Kligman et al, from the book "Hair Research", Springer-Verlag, 1981. Here are some of the salient things they found, in no particular order:

1) Commercial shampoos all have about the same ability to remove lipids from the hair and scalp, regardless of whether they're supposedly designed for "dry", "normal", or "oily" hair. A shampoo is a shampoo is a shampoo is a shampoo...

2) Shampooing the hair frequently doesn't stimulate the scalp to produce more sebum.

3) It's almost IMPOSSIBLE to completely remove all the oil and sebum from hair, just by shampooing. There's always a residue left over which is virtually beyond the reach of shampoos. To completely remove ALL traces of lipids from the hair and scalp, the researchers had to do as many as literally a HUNDRED washings with ether! :shock:

4) Going for long periods of time without shampooing appears to be safe from a medical point of view, although it's not cosmetically very appealing.

5) Sebum doesn't get "soaked-up" or "wicked-up" by hair. Oil and sebum appears to get onto hair in the first place only by direct physical contact, like when we comb our hair, or touch or scratch our heads, or sleep on a pillow, etc.

Bryan

Thanks for that Bryan - very helpful.

My suspicion at the moment is that sebum on the scalp, like sebum on the skin can help to keep the skin moist, and thus healthy. Commercials tend to harp on about the drying effects of soap on your skin. I wondered whether this drying effect was actually a bad thing or just a way for admen to sell you the product. Either way, my scalp feels good now, whereas often when I shampoo- especially with Nizoral, actually, for a day or so afterwards it's not uncommon for me to get itches. Whether this is psychosomatic or not is up to others to decide.

 

[Bryan]

My suspicion at the moment is that sebum on the scalp, like sebum on the skin can help to keep the skin moist, and thus healthy. Commercials tend to harp on about the drying effects of soap on your skin.

Sebum on the skin (or scalp, for that matter) has no apparent connection to the level of the skin's hydration. It's the lipids of epidermal origin which support the skin's barrier to water loss, not sebum. Sebum and epidermal lipids are very different. So soaps can indeed have a drying effect on skin, but not not because they remove sebum; it's because they also remove those deeper epidermal lipids. Check out the abstract below:

Journal of Investigative Dermatology. 1987 Mar;88(3 Suppl):2s-6s.
"Skin lipids: an update"
Downing DT, Stewart ME, Wertz PW, Colton SW, Abraham W, Strauss JS.

(excerpt from this study follows below, including the references...)

Sebum and Dry Skin "...skin can be healthy and have charming cosmetic properties in the virtual absence of sebum." (14)

Kligman drew attention to prepubertal children, who produce almost no sebum, to support his thesis that skin does not depend upon sebum for maintaining its barrier to water loss: "...there can be no doubt of the insignificance of sebum as a waterproofing material." (14) Our recent studies at the other end of the human age spectrum have supported this conviction. In a survey of sebum secretion rates and the incidence of dry skin among subjects aged 65 to 97, no correlation was found between sebaceous gland activity and the presence or severity of dry skin (34). Kligman recognized that sebum could mask the scaliness of dry skin without producing any actual change in the condition: "Sebum, like any oil, has some emollient or smoothing effect when a sufficient quantity is rubbed into dry, scaling skin." (14) In spite of the clear inference to be drawn from the cutaneous characteristics of children and the experimental data obtained from the elderly, it remains difficult to dispel the myth that low sebum secretion rates cause dry skin. It is a rare individual who realizes that "dry" is not the obverse of "oily".

(14) Kligman AM: The uses of sebum. Br J Dermatol 75: 307-319, 1963

(34) Frantz RA, Kinney CK, Downing DT: A study of skin dryness in the elderly. Nursing Res 35: 98-100, 1986.

 

[iamnaked]

Again - thanks. I'm very impressed at your command of information.
I find it hard to believe that sebum doesn't fulfil *some* important function, as the article implies.

 

[Z]

Again - thanks. I'm very impressed at your command of information.
I find it hard to believe that sebum doesn't fulfil *some* important function, as the article implies.

It is interesting to note that humans do in fact have more and larger sebaceous glands than any other primate and in places where they don't have any hair. The only known role for sebum is to waterproof hair and skin. So far, very little research has gone into explaining why we have them to such a great degree. They have been largely ignored and dismissed as a "throwback" from the past

 

[Britannia]

Sorry - that should have been the effects of shampoo on hair, or the effects of not washing ones' hair. Been one of those days. :wink:

You mean a "ask stupid questions day"?

The second double quote should be placed before the word 'day'.

Also, "ask" starts with a vowel. Your question should read "You mean an 'ask stupid questions day'"?

I hate it when people make smartass remarks using atrocious grammar. Way to destroy your own credibility.

Speaking of destroying ones own credibility, werent you the one who thought it would be big and clever to label people who parcipitate in the para-olympics as "retarded". Nice going considering these people are actually physically handicapped and not suffering with mental retardment.

 

[cook'n'milkies]

Nice going considering these people are actually physically handicapped and not suffering with mental retardment.

That's retardation, moron.

I didn't say I wasn't mean, just not stupid.

 

[cook'n'milkies]

Speaking of destroying ones own credibility, werent you the one who thought it would be big and clever to label people who parcipitate in the para-olympics as "retarded

A) Participate, not parcipitate

B) The special olympics are for handicapped people and retarded people. Good news, huh!? Now you can sign up!!

 

[Aplunk1]

Haha,
you're both assholes.

Just kidding... kind of

 

[powersam]

so its through the removal of the epidermal lipids that shampoo and soap have a drying( possibly damaging) effect on skin? which means that not shampooing could have a beneficial effect on the skin, if it stayed more moist and supple. not so sure why everyone is so obsessed with sebum honestly, as it doesnt seem to play a large part in our condition.