I’m trying to celebrate Rationalist Lent continuously by periodically denying myself things I think are ultimately bad or at least that are unnecessary. So far I’ve given up porn, shampoo, and Tumblr.
I’ve come to realize that I am very bad at noticing I am confused and am not sure what to do about this.
I’ve been told that it’s unnecessary for having clean hair and possibly unhealthy. So not using it saves me time and money with basically no effort, and possibly I gain some health benefits (I haven’t looked into this, but see the Wikipedia article).
NASA and Soviet studies on hygiene in preparation for space station missions do not support this conclusion,[28] and no mechanism of action for how the sebaceous glands below the skin detect sebum levels in hair has been proposed.
The given reference #28 seems to be chapter 10 of Packing for Mars… I can’t find anything in that book chapter which matches the claim made in the Wikipedia article that no poo and specifically the reduction in sebum has been debunked by both NASA & Russia. The closest passage seems to be
The head in general is a problem. The majority of our sebaceous glands are attached to hair follicles, thus the unwashed scalp quickly becomes a greasy thing. So much so that the bathphobic hordes of the sixteenth century would rub powder or bran into their scalps before retiring for the night, much as homeowners today sprinkle kitty litter on motor oil spills. Like sweat, sebum develops a distinctive aroma as bacteria break it down. “At least two of the Skylab astronauts reported that their heads developed offensive odors,” noted space psychologist Jack Stuster in a 1986 NASA report on space station habitability.
But it also gives a study which suggests no poo could work:
Commander Borman did not wish to discuss skin care. But later, in his memoir, he would write about “our scalps” and about the case of “terminal dandruff” he had. Though it probably wasn’t, technically speaking, dandruff. Dandruff is caused by an inflammatory skin response to oleic acid, which the scalp fungus Malassezia globosa excretes after dining on your scalp oils. Either you’re sensitive to oleic acid or you’re not. If Borman didn’t have dandruff before he went into space, he didn’t have it afterward, says dermatologist Jim Leyden. Leyden once paid prisoners to not wash their hair for a month, specifically to see if they developed dandruff. They did not. The flakes on Borman’s head and skin were most likely the accumulation of millions of shed skin particles—particles normally washed away in the shower—mixing with sebum and clumping together.
And the chapter confirms the ‘adjustment’ claim for regular hair (although does not specifically claim it applies to the scalp):
Once a set of clothes becomes saturated and oil starts to build up on the skin, what’s the end point? Does uncleansed skin grow ever greasier as the days pass? It does not. According to the Soviet research, the skin halts its production of sebum* after five to seven days of not bathing and not changing one’s increasingly well-greased clothing. Only when the person changes his shirt or takes a shower do the sebaceous glands get back to work. Skin seems happiest with a five-day buildup of oils. Listen to Professor Elaine Larson, editor of the American Journal of Infection Control, talking about the stratum corneum, the outermost layer of human skin: “This horny layer has been compared to a wall of bricks (corneocytes) and mortar (lipids)” and helps “maintain the hydration, pliability, and barrier effectiveness of the skin.”
The studies seem to be on a more specific claim than the claim I’m making. I observe subjectively that my hair now feels as clean as it did when I was shampooing every day. I’m not making a claim about why.
Perhaps if your hair is particularly dry, this won’t pose you problems, but if I go too long without cleaning my hair with anything other than water, it becomes visibly oily. Humans secrete waterproof substances through glands particularly concentrated in the scalp, so a buildup should not readily be cleaned through water alone.
That’s interesting—Curly Girl claimed that shampoo was unnecessary, but a brief experiment seemed to imply that not using shampoo left my hair feeling nasty. It’s possible I didn’t run the experiment long enough.
I think the gland output varies from person to person. I think some people have glands that will back off if you stop shampooing, but some people’s don’t.
This is consistent with what I’ve heard and personally experienced. I gave up shampoo about 1.5 years ago, but then some time later switched, at the recommendation of my mum who has very similar hair to mine, to a product that’s actually called No Poo. It does some sort of cleansing thing but doesn’t actually lather/foam like soap. I use it once every 1-2 weeks and my hair is absolutely wonderful. It’s nearly a foot long when straight, fwiw.
C’mon. Showering and shampooing takes me maybe half a minute longer than showering without shampooing, and a half-litre bottle of the shampoo I use costs around three euros (around four dollars) IIRC and lasts about half a year.
Yeah, so it’s not a lot of time and money. I get that. Enough money to pay for RTM, maybe. But it’s basically free time and money, so why not pick it up?
I’m curious now how the time saved by not-shampooing compares to the time spent discussing not-shampooing on LW, and the relative payoffs of both. Of course, that’s not to suggest that the former necessarily entails the latter.
The most worrying cost of time spent discussing not-shampooing on LW is the opportunity cost, since it funges against talking about more important things. There’s a smallish chance someone could’ve given me useful information (e.g. “actually if you don’t shampoo all your hair will fall out”) but that currently seems unlikely, so maybe we should just stop talking about it.
I’m trying to celebrate Rationalist Lent continuously by periodically denying myself things I think are ultimately bad or at least that are unnecessary. So far I’ve given up porn, shampoo, and Tumblr.
I’ve come to realize that I am very bad at noticing I am confused and am not sure what to do about this.
Why have you given up shampoo?
I’ve been told that it’s unnecessary for having clean hair and possibly unhealthy. So not using it saves me time and money with basically no effort, and possibly I gain some health benefits (I haven’t looked into this, but see the Wikipedia article).
Note: NASA and the Soviet union both did studies on this, and it failed to replicate.
Cite? The Wikipedia article doesn’t mention anything about those studies.
It’s in the wiki article for shampoo: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shampoo#Theory
The given reference #28 seems to be chapter 10 of Packing for Mars… I can’t find anything in that book chapter which matches the claim made in the Wikipedia article that no poo and specifically the reduction in sebum has been debunked by both NASA & Russia. The closest passage seems to be
But it also gives a study which suggests no poo could work:
And the chapter confirms the ‘adjustment’ claim for regular hair (although does not specifically claim it applies to the scalp):
I have pointed out this discrepancy on the talk page: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Shampoo#Theory_section:_dubious_use_of_reference
The studies seem to be on a more specific claim than the claim I’m making. I observe subjectively that my hair now feels as clean as it did when I was shampooing every day. I’m not making a claim about why.
Perhaps if your hair is particularly dry, this won’t pose you problems, but if I go too long without cleaning my hair with anything other than water, it becomes visibly oily. Humans secrete waterproof substances through glands particularly concentrated in the scalp, so a buildup should not readily be cleaned through water alone.
This is temporary. My hairy was quite oily for about two weeks but now it’s about as oily as it was when I was shampooing every day.
That’s interesting—Curly Girl claimed that shampoo was unnecessary, but a brief experiment seemed to imply that not using shampoo left my hair feeling nasty. It’s possible I didn’t run the experiment long enough.
I think the gland output varies from person to person. I think some people have glands that will back off if you stop shampooing, but some people’s don’t.
This is consistent with what I’ve heard and personally experienced. I gave up shampoo about 1.5 years ago, but then some time later switched, at the recommendation of my mum who has very similar hair to mine, to a product that’s actually called No Poo. It does some sort of cleansing thing but doesn’t actually lather/foam like soap. I use it once every 1-2 weeks and my hair is absolutely wonderful. It’s nearly a foot long when straight, fwiw.
C’mon. Showering and shampooing takes me maybe half a minute longer than showering without shampooing, and a half-litre bottle of the shampoo I use costs around three euros (around four dollars) IIRC and lasts about half a year.
Yeah, so it’s not a lot of time and money. I get that. Enough money to pay for RTM, maybe. But it’s basically free time and money, so why not pick it up?
I’m curious now how the time saved by not-shampooing compares to the time spent discussing not-shampooing on LW, and the relative payoffs of both. Of course, that’s not to suggest that the former necessarily entails the latter.
The most worrying cost of time spent discussing not-shampooing on LW is the opportunity cost, since it funges against talking about more important things. There’s a smallish chance someone could’ve given me useful information (e.g. “actually if you don’t shampoo all your hair will fall out”) but that currently seems unlikely, so maybe we should just stop talking about it.
Do you just rinse your hair, or do you use soap on it?
Just rinse. I started about three weeks ago and now it’s about as clean as it always was.