Authors: Lorraine Massey,Michele Bender
B003YL4KS0 EBOK (5 page)
I can’t say this too often:
You do not need to use shampoo.
I’m not saying leave your hair dirty. You still must cleanse the hair and scalp, but as you read on, you’ll see that I recommend doing so with a sulfate-free cleanser or a botanical conditioner (derived from real plant extracts). You need to give up your lather habit and shampoo dependency. I did and it worked! In the bad old days, I would subject my scalp and hair to a vigorous lathering several times a week, for no good reason except force of habit.
Afterward, for the first two days, my hair would appear to float in space like a helium balloon, defying the laws of gravity and reaching to the heavens above. I had ruffled the surface cuticle and dehydrated the curls. As a result, the cuticle was following its natural instinct—to reach out for moisture from the atmosphere, hence the frizz. Another three days would go by before my hair had recovered enough from the trauma that I was ready to admit we were related. Then we’d happily coexist for the rest of the week (two days), until it was time—according to my self-imposed schedule—for my next shampoo. And the vicious cycle would begin all over again.
I unquestioningly followed this routine, because I’d never found any care instructions that addressed the specific needs of curly, as opposed to straight, hair. Then one morning I looked in the mirror and I had to admit that my hair looked frizz-free and curlicious. According to my schedule, I was due for a shampoo, but I couldn’t bear to mess with success. I dared myself to wait another day. One day stretched into a second, then a third, until I’d managed to hold out for almost three weeks. All I did was cleanse my scalp with a spritz of lavender and squeeze some watered-down conditioner onto my hair and scrunch. My hair had never looked better, so I decided to try an experiment: I would see how long I could refrain from washing my hair with detergent-laden shampoo and replace it with what I now call “no-poo.” And you know what? The moment I stopped using shampoo was the moment I started loving my hair!
HARD WATER AND CURLY HAIRHard water contains dissolved salts of calcium and magnesium. When these combine with the sulfates in shampoo, a chemical reaction occurs that makes it even harder to rinse the detergent out and leaves your hair even drier. But it’s not all bad news: If you use sulfate-free hair products in areas with hard water, their lack of detergents makes these cleaners even easier to rinse out.
Now I live in what I call a no-poo household. I don’t use shampoo or detergents at all anymore, not even a drop. I work up a sweat running most mornings in all different environments and I swim in the ocean and pools not far from my home, and yet my scalp smells fresh and my hair has never looked better.
If you examine a cross-section of a hair fiber under a microscope, you’ll see that it looks like a piece of spaghetti. Growing around the shaft are tiny scales, which cover the cortex or center of the hair like tiles on a roof. Those overlapping tiles are called the cuticle of the hair, and they’re essential in protecting each strand and making your hair look good. When the tiles lie flat, they reflect light and your hair shines. When they’re ruffled, your hair won’t shine because light needs to be reflected off a smooth surface. Detergents, heat from a blow-dryer or flat iron, chemicals, and brushes damage hair by making the cuticle rough and scaly. Instead of lying flat, pieces of cuticle stick out and lock together like Velcro, causing knots, snarls, and tangles.
The cuticle resembles a pinecone. Smooth = moist cuticle. Open = dry, frizzed cuticle.
A strand of healthy, well-conditioned hair: The tilelike cuticle lies flat.
PREGNANCY CURLSOne day when Jamie, a favorite client and friend, sat down for a haircut, I looked at her hair and knew she was pregnant. When I asked her, she said no and laughed off my ability to read her hair for signs of impending motherhood. That was until the next day when she called to say she’d done a pregnancy test and I was right.
Even at the very early stage of pregnancy, the hair is fuller and more abundant from the roots to the ends. Of course, as your pregnancy progresses your hair may change. Though it doesn’t happen to every woman, many moms-to-be find that their hair is thicker and grows more quickly as a result of the extra hormones circulating through their body. During pregnancy, hairs stay in the resting phase longer, meaning that fewer fall out each day, so it looks thicker and fuller. Unfortunately, a few weeks after your bundle of joy arrives, more hair than usual tends to fall out. However, you’re too busy tending your newborn to care.
Most of us treat our hair and scalp as a single entity. But the scalp is very different from the hair. The scalp is skin that needs to be treated the way we treat our facial skin—by cleansing it gently and keeping it moisturized. The hair is a skin appendage made up mainly of a protein called keratin that has a fiberlike consistency. Each hair follicle that produces the hair on our heads is also home to sebaceous (oil) glands, which release sebum, an oily substance that lubricates the hair. One reason experts say curly hair is so much drier than other types of hair is because there are only about 100,000 hairs on a head of curly hair, as opposed to about 120,000 hairs on a head of straight hair. And because there is less curly hair, there are fewer follicles, and therefore fewer sebaceous glands to produce oil. If you have tightly curled hair, the sebum sometimes has trouble getting to the ends, which tend to be especially dry, so you have to compensate with extra moisturizers.
It’s possible to have dry hair and an oily scalp. Having combination skin, oily in the T-zone (the chin, nose, and forehead) but dry everywhere else, is one clue that you might have an oily scalp. The sebum and sweat that your scalp produces are sterile and clean but they attract dirt and bacteria, which must be rinsed off regularly to keep the scalp healthy. But it’s not necessary to remove all the oils from your scalp; in fact, it’s not good for you.
HAIR TODAY, GONE TOMORROWHair, which grows at a rate of about a half inch a month, develops under your scalp in a tiny sac called the follicle. When the hair comes to the surface it hardens and keeps growing for three to five years. After this, it goes into a period of rest for a few weeks while the root is released from the follicle and then drops out. You lose about a hundred hairs a day. That may seem like a lot, but within days after a hair is shed, another hair starts growing to replace it.
You need a fine layer of sebum—called the acid mantle—to protect the scalp.
My solution is to a give the scalp a firm massage and a good water rinsing followed by conditioner or to spritz the scalp with lavender mist. (See
page 83
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Genetics determine whether your hair is naturally curly or straight. Look at a cross-section of very straight hair and you’ll see that its shape is round. (Think of toothpaste coming out of a tube.) A strand of curly hair looks elliptical, with a slight curve in the middle (like ribbon candy). The center indentation makes the hair flex and spiral—in other words, curl. A strand of fractal or zigzag curls is flatter still than a strand of corkscrew curls and has the finest texture, therefore making it the curliest. Wavy hair looks oval under a microscope. Its spiral is gentler and it bends very slightly.
The fiber of straight hair (top) is round; a strand of wavy hair (bottom) is oval.
As a rule, curly hair is very fine and straight hair is thicker. Someone with
tight, curly hair may appear to have thick hair because it has such volume, but that’s an optical illusion. The curls’ spherical shape fills in space and creates the impression of thickness. But each strand is usually baby-fine.
FRIZZ-ASSISTThe main reason we curly girls are not happy with our hair is because of that curly girl nemesis: frizz (which I now call “halo”). In fact, many women don’t even know they have gorgeous curls because their hair is suffocating under layers of dreadful, dry frizz. I have become what I call a “frizz-assist” so I can help you understand the science behind frizz. Once you do, you’ll never look at it the same way again.
So here’s your frizz education: Most of us spend days, months, and years dehydrating our already dry hair with harsh, detergent-filled shampoos, blow-dryers, and chemical treatments. It’s the natural inclination of the little strands of your hair to literally lift up off your head and outward to quench their thirst from moisture in the air due to their molecular structure. These lifted hair fibers create a poof of frizz. This is why curly girls who straighten their hair dread days when it’s humid or it rains. (I actually have a chart from the 1500s that used hair as a weather barometer! It sounds crazy but it makes sense.)
The solution, however, is simple: moisture. Once the hair fibers are sufficiently hydrated with conditioner, they will hold onto the moisture they need and the frizz will go away. Curly hair is porous, but the conditioner fills the holes a bit like spackle on walls and smoothes the surface. And thanks to gravity, the weight of the conditioner pulls the hair down and even makes it appear longer in some cases. With enough hydration, anyone and everyone can have beautifully defined curls without the frizz!
An eighteenth-century hygrometer that used hair to measure humidity.
