Quite the opposite! At least the one I use regularly, tea tree & hemp oil, has a moisturizing quality and leaves my hair (if it's not shaved) and my beard feeling healthier. I also only wash hair/beard twice a week (any product is harmful to hair on a daily basis).
Water is okay depending on your water and your hair.
I keep my hair clean by keeping it tidy, and with routine maintenance. But daily cleaning with anything soapy cleans oils that naturally protect it.
I don’t want to presume sex or gender identity but this is pretty general knowledge among women and fem identified people. Many men and masculine identifying people wash especially their hair too much. If you’re the latter, I encourage you to talk to people you trust among the former about hair care.
I’ll also say, being male presenting, this applies to body hair too. I also used to shower once to twice daily. I always felt like I was keeping clean but just barely.
I actually have better scent and skin if I shower every three to four days.
It sounds ridiculous, but your body is a biome, not just inside. If you nuke it you’re just managing chemicals on meat.
I shower daily, but only use soap on my ass. Dandruff shampoo once a week or so on my hair and that’s it. The women in my life think I smell just fine. Most of us probably don’t need all the soap we use.
Does anyone know of any testimonials of this from people of Mediterranean descent? My hair gets very, noticeably, oily if I don't shampoo every single day. It's kind of gross.
I know many people who don't shampoo every day, but they're all of different European backgrounds: English, Irish, German, etc.
Do you only use shampoo, and what kind? You should really use a mild shampoo and then a high quality conditioner. My hair used to be incredibly oily all the time when I used shampoo or shampoo+conditioner combo, even if I showered every day. Now it takes around 3 days to get greasy and I shower every few days. My skin is much more balanced and healthier (less acne, more even sheen, no dryness issues). I also do the equivalent of conditioner for my body- I use cetaphil on any part that I notice routinely gets dry (the bottoms of my feet, elbows, face, knees, etc.) since I started doing all this, my elbows went from being dry and ashy and scaly to looking just like the rest of my skin. I do use deodorant every day and have a bidet, but I don’t have any scent issues as far as I’m aware (I do ask others to check me, and days where I don’t use deodorant, I can smell myself, so I don’t think it’s a false bias.)
So does mine, and my skin too. My ancestry is half Scots-Irish Borderer and a quarter each Austrian and Italian, of which the latter seems strongly expressed in my integument; for example, despite half my family being very fair, my skin has an olive undertone, and I tan easily and well.
More to the immediate point, I likewise have rather oily skin and hair, to the point where if I don't shower daily with ample soap and shampoo, I start leaving smears on anything I touch. I've tried the experiment of going without soap a few days, to see if the oiliness was in compensation, and it wasn't; it's just that I either wash daily or turn into a greaseball, and always have done.
(I'm also one of those people whose skin oil gradually dissolves ABS plastic with regular contact. Of the last ABS set I used, to the tune of ~10M keystrokes, before switching to PBT caps, the spacebar had enough material removed to put a distinct curve in its lower edge where my thumbs would strike. Too, I now belatedly wish I'd put a protector on the Wacom tablet that doubles as a touchpad for my work machine. Not sure if the plastic-melting thing is related, but it seems fairly uncommon and so worth mention in this context.)
I’m a mix (maternal grandfather was Lebanese/Greek, rest of my family various European) and also had fairly oily hair. It also didn’t get less oily overnight when I started washing less, it took maybe a few months and yeah it felt gross. For what it’s worth.
Not the same guy, but I'm in the same boat. If I wash my hair every day, it gets insanely dry. I just keep most of it out of the water on the days I don't wash it. Some if it still gets wet, that's ok.
Interesting! As I recall, that was the same one that motivated my advice above. Maybe something about the tea tree oil, I thought, but I was strongly disinclined to further experiment.
It’s entirely possible we just have very different skin/hair/body chemistry and react very differently to it! Let this be a disclaimer to anyone reading the thread above: it might affect you differently!
I used Dr. Bronner's as a shampoo for about ten years. No noticeable dry hair problems. It doesn't feel exactly the same as using a commercial shampoo with lots of softeners, etc.
