Get your daily dose of Recent Beauty
Post
Contributors
Become a Santana Row fan on Facebook
Follow our Santana Row Twitter feed
To Shampoo or Not to Shampoo
There’s been another recent wave of articles on the perils of daily shampooing. These articles caution the reader that daily hairwashing strips the hair and scalp of natural oils and cause the hair to be dry and dull.
I’d like to challenge these articles with my own two cents, culled from 28 years of working with heads of hair. First, some scalps have more oil than others. So we wouldn’t want to make a general statement applying to everyone. I think more important than the frequency of washing is the actual products used. With so many types out there, it’s important to choose the right product for the individual. There are shampoos for oily scalp, dry hair, color-treated hair, or shampoos targeted mainly to men, who tend to have double the oil than women.
It’s also important to remember, you shampoo the scalp and condition the hair. And hair doesn’t generate oil, only the scalp has oil glands. Next, let’s think about hygiene. If not washing your hair for one day is good for the hair, two days must be better, right? Well, let’s think about leaving a stick of butter out in 98.6 degree heat for a couple of days. How would that butter tend to smell? Yuk. But our bodies produce that same heat, and our scalps produce oil that is affected by temperature.
So, yes, if you wash your hair with a high detergent product daily and you have a lower production of oil on your scalp, you might dry it out. So, the answer is to choose the shampoo and conditioner that is right for you, by getting a professional recommendation from your hairdresser.
There’s my two cents!
