Dear Familia,
I've always had pretty healthy hair mostly due to the fact that I don't really "do" anything to it. Alysha bought me a Chi straightener for my UA graduation and that is literally the only hair styling tool I own (other than the brushes and combs she gave me as well!). I keep my hair long even though I end up pulling it back in a pony-tail or a bun 99.9% of the time. However, again during Peace Corps, I decided to look into the "no-poo" (as in shampoo, not feces ;) method. My brain is the most important part of me and I wanted to see if I could avoid putting chemicals on the skin that sits closest to it. Haha. Now there are a hundred million different blogs and online communities that can give you the low down on this method, but here are the basics: a baking soda/water "shampoo" and apple cider vinegar/water rinse "conditioner."
Like my deodorant experiment, it was really easy to try out while I was in Guatemala and worked really well. I mixed about a tablespoon of baking soda and a cup of water and scrubbed that into my scalp then I rinsed with water. After that, I poured a mixture of ACV and water over my head and let it sit for a minute then rinsed that out as well. I probably did that 2x a week. My hair was clean and shiny and just as manageable as with normal shampoo and conditioner. I will say that I did use Bumble and Bumble leave in conditioner once a week that Steven had so kindly brought for me from the States.
If you are interested check these pages out:
THEN I got back to AZ and after about 2 months my hair was in super sorry shape. I went back through all of those blogs and then discovered that this method is very tricky if you have hard water. So I googled "hard water in the US" and was thrilled to discover Mesa sits in a super crappy part of the US as far as hard water goes.
Image via this site.
It's been a rough back and forth trying to get my hair back to what I would consider healthy. I still do the same routine as in Guatemala, but I've tried a couple of different conditioners since I ran out of the Bumble and Bumble when I got back and it was too spendy to replace. I did honey which was waaay too heavy for my hair. I bought an all natural conditioner from Walmart which I was not too impressed with. Coconut oil seems to be good to my ends, but too greasy for near my scalp.
With the start of my running regimen (can you call 2x a week a regimen??), there is added sweaty nastiness to my hair so I have started to use a couple of drops of Dr. Bronner's once every 10 days or so. I've done this twice and it made my hair supa dupa clean. I might throw that into the mix permanently. Anyway, I will give you an update when I find a happy routine for my hair. But really, I wear my hair up and tucked away 99.9% of the time so it doesn't matter too much.
Love,
Jem
