I didn’t wash my hair for 10 days and here’s what I learned

How I learned to heed my own advice

There are many horrible things happening in the world right now, but there have also been a few silver linings for me. One of them is that I have been able to do many experiments on my hair.

For years now I have been telling my clients to stop washing their hair every day. I give the same spiel to anyone who asks, or is willing to listen.

“Stop washing your hair every day. You’re destroying the natural oils. Start conditioning more.” I’ve become a robot of healthy hair advice, ready to sound off facts at a moment’s notice. My clientele has had a wide range over my 10 year career of doing hair, which means that my recommendations for shampooing have changed with the years to reflect my ever growing knowledge of how the scalp works. For those with thick hair density, they may want to shampoo less; for those with really thin hair, they may want to shampoo every day.

That’s the thing though: everyone’s hair is different. Personally, the texture of my hair is “fine”. Meaning that the individual strands of hair are smaller than average, and therefore are more easily weighed down by my natural oils, and I have always colored my hair, meaning that the outside layer of each of my hair strands is more damaged, and more porous, causing my hair to look frizzy if left to its own devices. The texture, density, and porosity of each person’s hair, as well as their lifestyle (such as how often they work out or swim), are all factors that I have to take into consideration when I recommend hair care routines. This is why this whole trend of shaming people into not shampooing their hair and only using dry shampoo has irritated me into writing something about it.

I have always struggled with finding the right balance of wash ratio for my hair, probably because I am constantly changing it, so there is zero consistency. Sometimes it’s long, sometimes it’s short. Sometimes it’s only slightly colored, sometimes it’s super bleached and damaged. I like to style my hair down and around my face, which means that if it’s even slightly oily it will drive me crazy.

That is, until I didn’t have to go to work for a month.

Not having to leave the house for any social or professional interactions gave me the idea to run an experiment on my hair. How long can I go without shampooing before I drive myself crazy?

The answer was, about 10 days.

Normally I wash my hair every 2–3 days. I tend to like it best the day after I wash it, and the day after that I have to wear it up again. But if I’m just wearing my hair up all the time, who cares if it falls flat?

And so my experiment began.

I started off just running my hair routine as I normally would:

1. Use a wide-tooth comb while it’s wet to detangle, let air dry.
2. At night, use a natural bristle brush throughout, and loose French braid to sleep in.
3. The next morning I take the braid out, run my fingers though it, and let it be.
4. Then repeat steps 2 and 3 until I wash my hair again.

The problem that I ran into on about day 5 was that my scalp was much itchier than usual, and the ends of my hair honestly didn’t feel that much different. I was getting tired of it.

Until I realized that I was not listening to my own advice. Not the idea behind it, anyway.

A vital part of my hair care process, one that I repeat to long-haired clients all the time, is to brush your hair. Every. Day.

The natural oils that build up on your scalp (called sebum) help condition your hair and protect the outside layer of each hair strand. Sebum is responsible for the natural shine and softness of your hair, but it’s also responsible for clogging up your pores, and preventing dead skin cells from falling off your body.

In theory, this is the purpose of shampoo: to remove excess oils and build up, and help exfoliate your scalp. But what tends to happen is that your shampoo removes all of the oil in your hair, leaving it feeling coarser, and sometimes frizzy. This is why we condition. To put back all the moisture that we just removed for the sake of being “clean”. One of the ways that I have learned to combat this is to be sure that you are only shampooing your scalp, and not pulling the shampoo through to the ends of your hair. Barring some sort of arts and crafts incident, the ends of your hair are not “dirty”.

So what does brushing your hair every day have to do with excessive itchiness?

Well, brushing your hair every night pulls all the oils that have built up on your scalp throughout the day to the ends of your hair and nourishes them. But this is general maintenance, and the longer you go without washing your hair, the more oil is built up on your scalp. And when more oil gets built up on your scalp, other things get stuck to that oil, such as dead skin cells, sweat, dirt, and any products that you may be using, causing your scalp to be itchy. Brushing your hair, aside from moving around your oils, does one other very important job, and that is exfoliating your scalp. When you drag those bristle across your scalp, not only does it feel incredible, but it’s also dislodging all of the dead skin cells from your scalp, giving you fresh, clean skin to work with. Exfoliating your scalp is such a key factor in hair health that is almost never talked about.

What most people know is that the purpose of exfoliating is to scrub off all of the dead skin cells on the outer layer of your skin, giving way for softer, healthier skin. But when it comes to your scalp, another very important function of exfoliating is that it gives way for more hair to grow back better and stronger. You may have heard that one of the best ways to combat ingrown hairs is to exfoliate, because the dead skin cells can make it harder for the hair to grow through, which causes them grow back inward. The same thing happens on your head. If you don’t get all the excess skin cells and built up sebum off your scalp, this can cause hair loss because the new hair strands have to work so much harder to grow out of the hair follicle.

Back to what I discovered, which is that when you don’t wash your hair, you have to brush your hair more. A lot more. I started brushing my hair about 3 times a day, and my god was my hair the softest it has ever been. By day 8 I realized that all the fancy hair masks I had ever done did not compare to how my hair felt after just letting my natural oils do their thing for a while. It really solidified in my mind how important it is to brush your hair as often as you can.

Now, this is not a practical way to live. Who has the time to brush their hair three times a day? Who wants to walk around with their hair in a perpetually oily bun? No one. But if you have the time, like say if you aren’t going back to work for a while, I think it’s important to let your hair be itself a bit, and see what happens. Grab a good, natural bristle brush and pamper yourself. Not by washing your hair, but by brushing it constantly. It’s worth it, and I would highly recommend it. And all of this goes extra for those of you with straight hair. Curly haired people, I know you’re reading this thinking that I’m crazy. And for many of you, you either already do this, or it just won’t work for you.

But if you have straight or wavy hair, especially if your scalp is prone to itchiness or flakiness, trust me. Try brushing your hair more often and you will feel a difference. Not only will you have softer hair and a happier scalp, but you’ll also get to feel superior to your friend Amanda who keeps bragging about how she never washes her hair.