May 11, 2009 • 10 mins
Lather-rinse-repeat is a common mantra for Americans, but all that shampooing can be bad for your hair. Tune in to this podcast from HowStuffWorks.com to uncover past hairwashing trends and a new movement to cut back on the 'poo.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Brought to you by the reinvented two thousand twelve Camray.
It's ready. Are you welcome to stump Mom Never told you?
From how Stuff Works dot Com? Hey there, and welcome
to the podcast. This is Kristen and this is Molly Molly. Today,
(00:22):
as you know, we are tackling the ever important question
of how often should I wash my hair? I know
I've been pondering this for so long, Not really, but
it does remind me of an interesting tidbit about a
fellow How Stuff Works podcasts of ours from the Wonderful
(00:44):
Stuff from the B Side, Mark Larson co host Molly,
Mark doesn't wash his hair. I know I've heard this
about Mark Larson. He also, do you know how long
it's been since you wash his hair? Give it to
me one year. Well only I wouldn't have guessed so
that Mark didn't wash his hair unless I had actually
asked him about it, because he has pretty nice hair. Yeah,
(01:06):
you would definitely sound like he's the greasy kid of
How Stuff Works and he doesn't smell weird that we
know of. No, I mean, it's it's you know, like
you said, if he hadn't told us about his no
poof movement, which is a movement that many people have
adopted recently, this idea that you don't use shampoo. You know,
we would have never known that he was the kid
who didn't wash his hair. Yeah, it kind of started
(01:27):
off as a joke between him and another coworker here
and how stuff works. They're gonna see if they could
do just like natural hygiene type of stuff. And Mark
just kept it up for a year. And what he does, uh,
in a nutshell is I think every couple of weeks
or so he does a baking soda and vinegar rents,
which he said it was very very exhilarating for a scalp,
(01:48):
very refreshing. And other than that, I think that's it. Yeah,
he said it changed his life. No more buying shampoo.
But he is so polite because he does leave an
abolish shampoo in his shower for guests. That is sweet. Yeah,
he's always thinking about the the non no pooh ers.
(02:08):
Well you should um listen to now stuff on the
b sides knowing that you're listening to someone who doesn't
wash his hair. Crazy. But you know, if I were
to hear that, Okay, Mark doesn't wash his hair, I
would think oh he's a guy. Whatever. Christ and you
and I are ladies. We've got long, lustrous locks we
need to be caring for. Like this no Pooh thing
is not gonna work for us, not necessarily, Molly, because
(02:28):
Americans might actually wash their hair too much. According to
a story on NPR, Americans wash your hair in average
of four point nine times every week, and that's twice
as often as Italians and Spaniards. But that stay was
put out by a shampoo maker. And I think Italians
and Spaniards, you know, maybe we see them as a
(02:49):
little greasy. That's an odd way of flimming it. Um.
But you know, Christ and we weren't always at this
healthy four point five nine times a week of shampoo. Actually,
there was this column in the New York Times in
nineteen o eight in which the column said, is okay
to wash your hair every two weeks because at that
time women were only washing their hair about once a month. Wow. Yeah. Basically, shampoo,
(03:13):
like many things in a woman's life, has all been
fed to us by marketing. Yeah, something that we need
to do to make ourselves like attractive women. Um. But
like we mentioned earlier, there is this thing called the
no Pooh movement that's been gaining speed recently. And there
are two main reasons why people are considering tossing the shampoo,
(03:35):
and the first one of those is um environmental reasons, uh,
people wanting to reduce the amount of plastic products that
they use. And also, Molly, there are kind of some
some bad ingredients in a lot of common shampoos, right, Yeah,
if you look at the ingredient list, you've got silicone
for shine, sodium laurel sulfate. Preservative technologies such as parabins
(03:56):
and parabins have been linked to breast tumors breast can sir.
So a lot of people just don't want to put
this stuff in their hair anymore. And like you said,
from a plastic standpoint, you don't want plastics in the environment.
And even like the best shower gel is going to
take eight hundred years to fully wash away, Like it's
really not good for the environment. Are showering habits right? So, Uh,
we have all of these weird chemicals that we're using
(04:19):
on a daily basis that that might not be the
best thing for our bodies. And then on the other side,
we we have hair follicles that are especially equipped to
kind of do a little bit of cleaning work on
their own. Uh. The stuff that makes our hair and
our faces actually look greasy is an oil called sea bum,
(04:39):
and our hair follicles excrete see bum, and it's it's
pretty important for our hair. But when we sort of
feel that grease in our hair, we want to wash
it get out. But the fact of the matter is
by getting it out, the seedum follicles just sort of
put more out there that kind of go into overdrive.
They're like, must produce sea bum. And so even hairdressers
say that to keep the those oil glands under control,
(05:02):
you should be activating them so much with all the shampooing. Yeah,
and that explains why a lot of people will have
to use a conditioner as well as a shampoo, because
we're pretty much stripping the hair of the sea bum
and then having to artificially replace moisturizer in our hair.
Because sebum is really important. It's it's an oil that
protects our hair shafts from breaking, It keeps our scalping
good conditions, and gives our hair that lustrous shine that
(05:25):
that we love so much. So the thought is, if
you don't constantly wipe out the sea bum, then your
hair kind of reaches a state of perfect equilibrium. And
that right, Christa, Yeah, I think it's after a couple
of weeks of not shampooing, these sebum production levels gotta
balance out and your hair doesn't get more and more greasy.
(05:45):
It just produces as much as it needs to, which
doesn't I mean, you know, from my personal experience, just
doesn't seem a cap trio. If I don't, I mean,
I'm I'm gonna admit I'm an everyday hair washer. I'm
too molly. And if I don't wash my hair, my
spout feels really greasy. I can't make it to the
third day. But well, it might have to do with
the texture of our hair. I don't know about you,
but I have pretty fine hair, and uh, fine hair
(06:08):
is often oilier than people with thicker, coarser hair because
we actually have more hair follicles across our scalp, and
each hair follicle has two or three oil glands. So
since we have more hair follicles, we have more oil glands,
so we have more sea bum being excreted into our hair.
So that might be why after like a day and
(06:28):
a half, especially if I exercise sweat a lot my hair.
I mean it just feels like a helmet on my head. Yeah,
there's definitely this is not a one size fits all prescription. UM.
There's a lot of variation among hair types like Christmas
saying and curly hair. UM in particular can go longer
between washes. People African Americans can go longer between washes.
According to an article this NPR story we're talking about,
(06:51):
but I do want to play Devil's advocate. We are
reading this New York Times article about you know, not
shampooing the no pooh and uh. They're interviewing a scientist
who studies hair and scalp issues. His name is Philip Kingsley,
and he said of people who went for the non
shampoo method that these people have just gotten used to
the fact that their hair is greasy and dirty, so
they don't notice anymore. Well, would Mark Larson say about that?
(07:15):
I think Mark Larson would disagree, and I back him
up on that, Mark Mark Mark's hair looks looks pretty great.
But you don't just have to use these homeopathic um
shampoo replacements. They're also dry shampoos that a lot of
higher end um hair hair care companies are starting to
come out with now, Like I think you just spray
(07:35):
it like on your roots and it sort of stakes
up the excess oil if you don't actually want to
have to go through the process of washing and then
blow drying your hair, because I have a feeling that
people who are blow drying their hair every day like me,
are doing added damage to it and addition to just
stripping all that sea bum from the hair, and it's
a waste of time. It just saved so much time. No, Molly,
but doesn't hair look great? You do look great today, Christen.
(07:56):
Thank you, Molly, really I appreciate that. So if you're concerned,
you should probably just ask your hair stylist. Your hairstyles
can see all the damage that's going into your hair
when it might need et cetera. Ask then how often
you should shampoo your hair. Yeah, but take it from
a fellow podcaster, you could try the no pooh. Trying
the no pooh and no pooh could work for you. Oh,
christ And I smell a sponsorship in your future. And
(08:18):
if you do want to try out some of these
natural recipes on our site how Stuff Works, You've got
an article called how to make your Own beauty products,
and there's a whole section on making your own hair
kit products and I think you'll need a lot of
egg whites and then a girl on hand. Yeah, they're
at the ingredient list is if you're if you're on
the fence about no pooh. I don't know that it's
(08:39):
going to convince you because I was a little scared
by some of the ingredients. But we do have it
at how stuff works dot com. So Molly, before we
close out this episode, we have some listener email could
read right, yes, So I'm gonna start off with like
an email from our listener Joseph who wrote in and said,
the problem to me is less one of gender differences
(08:59):
than one of arning differences. Instead of separating boys and girls,
separate students based on their learning style. This way a
teacher would be able to have a classic studence to
the same learning style, such as visual learners and Taylor
the class towards that. If any went on to say
the gender differences are brought up in this research hard
come back to Victorian era gender roles. When gender roles
are essentialized, it is as much about in eight differences
(09:19):
as a reinforcement of socially inscribed roles. Very interesting, pretty
interesting perspective, And we have an email from Leah that
kind of follows up on that point, takes a little
bit of a step further. Leah wrote, when discussing this issue,
we should also remember that gender is not necessarily binary anymore.
There are more gender differences than just email and mail.
So what would the hermaphrodite, trans sexual, or ambiguously gendered
(09:42):
students do in this situation? This will likely put them
in a very awkward and confusing place. Very interesting, very true,
and now I'm only to close things out. We have
an email from an actual real life middle schooler who
was listening to it and had her own perspective to
add to it. She her name is Rainier, and she
is thirteen years old and attends a public school, and
(10:03):
she wrote, I was listening to your podcast and just
wanted to say that, frankly, school wouldn't be the same
without boys in my classes. A lot of the boys
I know aren't really annoying, crude and loud, maybe even
nice and smart too. I don't really think that single
sex classrooms would be all that effective and not as
much fun for us girls. Nice point. Rainier. Nice point. Yeah,
(10:25):
I kind of want to go to school where she does,
where all these nice and smart boys are, but sometimes
crude and loud sometimes but still fun. Well, if you
have any questions or comments about any of the podcasts
you've heard, uh, send me your Molly an email at
mom stuff at how stuff works dot com for moral this,
and thousands of other topics. Does it have stuff works
(10:48):
dot com? Brought to you by the reinvented two thousand
twelve Camray. It's ready, are you
Brought to you by the reinvented two thousand twelve Camray.
It's ready. Are you welcome to stump Mom Never told you?
From how Stuff Works dot Com? Hey there, and welcome
to the podcast. This is Kristen and this is Molly Molly. Today,
(00:22):
as you know, we are tackling the ever important question
of how often should I wash my hair? I know
I've been pondering this for so long, Not really, but
it does remind me of an interesting tidbit about a
fellow How Stuff Works podcasts of ours from the Wonderful
(00:44):
Stuff from the B Side, Mark Larson co host Molly,
Mark doesn't wash his hair. I know I've heard this
about Mark Larson. He also, do you know how long
it's been since you wash his hair? Give it to
me one year. Well only I wouldn't have guessed so
that Mark didn't wash his hair unless I had actually
asked him about it, because he has pretty nice hair. Yeah,
(01:06):
you would definitely sound like he's the greasy kid of
How Stuff Works and he doesn't smell weird that we
know of. No, I mean, it's it's you know, like
you said, if he hadn't told us about his no
poof movement, which is a movement that many people have
adopted recently, this idea that you don't use shampoo. You know,
we would have never known that he was the kid
who didn't wash his hair. Yeah, it kind of started
(01:27):
off as a joke between him and another coworker here
and how stuff works. They're gonna see if they could
do just like natural hygiene type of stuff. And Mark
just kept it up for a year. And what he does, uh,
in a nutshell is I think every couple of weeks
or so he does a baking soda and vinegar rents,
which he said it was very very exhilarating for a scalp,
(01:48):
very refreshing. And other than that, I think that's it. Yeah,
he said it changed his life. No more buying shampoo.
But he is so polite because he does leave an
abolish shampoo in his shower for guests. That is sweet. Yeah,
he's always thinking about the the non no pooh ers.
(02:08):
Well you should um listen to now stuff on the
b sides knowing that you're listening to someone who doesn't
wash his hair. Crazy. But you know, if I were
to hear that, Okay, Mark doesn't wash his hair, I
would think oh he's a guy. Whatever. Christ and you
and I are ladies. We've got long, lustrous locks we
need to be caring for. Like this no Pooh thing
is not gonna work for us, not necessarily, Molly, because
(02:28):
Americans might actually wash their hair too much. According to
a story on NPR, Americans wash your hair in average
of four point nine times every week, and that's twice
as often as Italians and Spaniards. But that stay was
put out by a shampoo maker. And I think Italians
and Spaniards, you know, maybe we see them as a
(02:49):
little greasy. That's an odd way of flimming it. Um.
But you know, Christ and we weren't always at this
healthy four point five nine times a week of shampoo. Actually,
there was this column in the New York Times in
nineteen o eight in which the column said, is okay
to wash your hair every two weeks because at that
time women were only washing their hair about once a month. Wow. Yeah. Basically, shampoo,
(03:13):
like many things in a woman's life, has all been
fed to us by marketing. Yeah, something that we need
to do to make ourselves like attractive women. Um. But
like we mentioned earlier, there is this thing called the
no Pooh movement that's been gaining speed recently. And there
are two main reasons why people are considering tossing the shampoo,
(03:35):
and the first one of those is um environmental reasons, uh,
people wanting to reduce the amount of plastic products that
they use. And also, Molly, there are kind of some
some bad ingredients in a lot of common shampoos, right, Yeah,
if you look at the ingredient list, you've got silicone
for shine, sodium laurel sulfate. Preservative technologies such as parabins
(03:56):
and parabins have been linked to breast tumors breast can sir.
So a lot of people just don't want to put
this stuff in their hair anymore. And like you said,
from a plastic standpoint, you don't want plastics in the environment.
And even like the best shower gel is going to
take eight hundred years to fully wash away, Like it's
really not good for the environment. Are showering habits right? So, Uh,
we have all of these weird chemicals that we're using
(04:19):
on a daily basis that that might not be the
best thing for our bodies. And then on the other side,
we we have hair follicles that are especially equipped to
kind of do a little bit of cleaning work on
their own. Uh. The stuff that makes our hair and
our faces actually look greasy is an oil called sea bum,
(04:39):
and our hair follicles excrete see bum, and it's it's
pretty important for our hair. But when we sort of
feel that grease in our hair, we want to wash
it get out. But the fact of the matter is
by getting it out, the seedum follicles just sort of
put more out there that kind of go into overdrive.
They're like, must produce sea bum. And so even hairdressers
say that to keep the those oil glands under control,
(05:02):
you should be activating them so much with all the shampooing. Yeah,
and that explains why a lot of people will have
to use a conditioner as well as a shampoo, because
we're pretty much stripping the hair of the sea bum
and then having to artificially replace moisturizer in our hair.
Because sebum is really important. It's it's an oil that
protects our hair shafts from breaking, It keeps our scalping
good conditions, and gives our hair that lustrous shine that
(05:25):
that we love so much. So the thought is, if
you don't constantly wipe out the sea bum, then your
hair kind of reaches a state of perfect equilibrium. And
that right, Christa, Yeah, I think it's after a couple
of weeks of not shampooing, these sebum production levels gotta
balance out and your hair doesn't get more and more greasy.
(05:45):
It just produces as much as it needs to, which
doesn't I mean, you know, from my personal experience, just
doesn't seem a cap trio. If I don't, I mean,
I'm I'm gonna admit I'm an everyday hair washer. I'm
too molly. And if I don't wash my hair, my
spout feels really greasy. I can't make it to the
third day. But well, it might have to do with
the texture of our hair. I don't know about you,
but I have pretty fine hair, and uh, fine hair
(06:08):
is often oilier than people with thicker, coarser hair because
we actually have more hair follicles across our scalp, and
each hair follicle has two or three oil glands. So
since we have more hair follicles, we have more oil glands,
so we have more sea bum being excreted into our hair.
So that might be why after like a day and
(06:28):
a half, especially if I exercise sweat a lot my hair.
I mean it just feels like a helmet on my head. Yeah,
there's definitely this is not a one size fits all prescription. UM.
There's a lot of variation among hair types like Christmas
saying and curly hair. UM in particular can go longer
between washes. People African Americans can go longer between washes.
According to an article this NPR story we're talking about,
(06:51):
but I do want to play Devil's advocate. We are
reading this New York Times article about you know, not
shampooing the no pooh and uh. They're interviewing a scientist
who studies hair and scalp issues. His name is Philip Kingsley,
and he said of people who went for the non
shampoo method that these people have just gotten used to
the fact that their hair is greasy and dirty, so
they don't notice anymore. Well, would Mark Larson say about that?
(07:15):
I think Mark Larson would disagree, and I back him
up on that, Mark Mark Mark's hair looks looks pretty great.
But you don't just have to use these homeopathic um
shampoo replacements. They're also dry shampoos that a lot of
higher end um hair hair care companies are starting to
come out with now, Like I think you just spray
(07:35):
it like on your roots and it sort of stakes
up the excess oil if you don't actually want to
have to go through the process of washing and then
blow drying your hair, because I have a feeling that
people who are blow drying their hair every day like me,
are doing added damage to it and addition to just
stripping all that sea bum from the hair, and it's
a waste of time. It just saved so much time. No, Molly,
but doesn't hair look great? You do look great today, Christen.
(07:56):
Thank you, Molly, really I appreciate that. So if you're concerned,
you should probably just ask your hair stylist. Your hairstyles
can see all the damage that's going into your hair
when it might need et cetera. Ask then how often
you should shampoo your hair. Yeah, but take it from
a fellow podcaster, you could try the no pooh. Trying
the no pooh and no pooh could work for you. Oh,
christ And I smell a sponsorship in your future. And
(08:18):
if you do want to try out some of these
natural recipes on our site how Stuff Works, You've got
an article called how to make your Own beauty products,
and there's a whole section on making your own hair
kit products and I think you'll need a lot of
egg whites and then a girl on hand. Yeah, they're
at the ingredient list is if you're if you're on
the fence about no pooh. I don't know that it's
(08:39):
going to convince you because I was a little scared
by some of the ingredients. But we do have it
at how stuff works dot com. So Molly, before we
close out this episode, we have some listener email could
read right, yes, So I'm gonna start off with like
an email from our listener Joseph who wrote in and said,
the problem to me is less one of gender differences
(08:59):
than one of arning differences. Instead of separating boys and girls,
separate students based on their learning style. This way a
teacher would be able to have a classic studence to
the same learning style, such as visual learners and Taylor
the class towards that. If any went on to say
the gender differences are brought up in this research hard
come back to Victorian era gender roles. When gender roles
are essentialized, it is as much about in eight differences
(09:19):
as a reinforcement of socially inscribed roles. Very interesting, pretty
interesting perspective, And we have an email from Leah that
kind of follows up on that point, takes a little
bit of a step further. Leah wrote, when discussing this issue,
we should also remember that gender is not necessarily binary anymore.
There are more gender differences than just email and mail.
So what would the hermaphrodite, trans sexual, or ambiguously gendered
(09:42):
students do in this situation? This will likely put them
in a very awkward and confusing place. Very interesting, very true,
and now I'm only to close things out. We have
an email from an actual real life middle schooler who
was listening to it and had her own perspective to
add to it. She her name is Rainier, and she
is thirteen years old and attends a public school, and
(10:03):
she wrote, I was listening to your podcast and just
wanted to say that, frankly, school wouldn't be the same
without boys in my classes. A lot of the boys
I know aren't really annoying, crude and loud, maybe even
nice and smart too. I don't really think that single
sex classrooms would be all that effective and not as
much fun for us girls. Nice point. Rainier. Nice point. Yeah,
(10:25):
I kind of want to go to school where she does,
where all these nice and smart boys are, but sometimes
crude and loud sometimes but still fun. Well, if you
have any questions or comments about any of the podcasts
you've heard, uh, send me your Molly an email at
mom stuff at how stuff works dot com for moral this,
and thousands of other topics. Does it have stuff works
(10:48):
dot com? Brought to you by the reinvented two thousand
twelve Camray. It's ready, are you
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