Category Archives: Hair Can Be a Topic of Conversation

June 11, 2009 · 11:32 pm

Hair Update — Week 4.

Last Sunday brought about the healthiest, shiniest hair I’ve seen to date in my pooless experiment. It was, dare I say, perfect? The hair I’ve always wanted… from the top to the tip. 25 inches of hairy bliss.

Monday morning things got a little weird because I tried using coffee grounds in my hair for coloring purposes. I was desperate, so I used it full strength, coffee grounds and all. Well, what it did was, it threw the texture off and it was odd (to say the least) to find coffee grounds in my hair (like black dandruff?) and to crave coffee all day. On the upside, no one but me knew and my hair smelled delicious.

After Monday night’s swim and shower (remember, I’ve been using a baking soda rinse & lemon juice), Tuesday my hair seemed a little dry. I determine “dry” by the amount of tangling I get during the day. Which told me that the coconut oil was indeed causing my oily issues. So Tuesday night, instead of my lemon juice rinse, I used an Apple Cider Vinegar (ACV) rinse which, according to Google, is very near to our hair’s natural PH and as such acts as a cleaner and seals the hair shaft. Sure it smells kind of like pickles while it’s wet, but I like pickles.

Wednesday night I again used the baking soda rinse and ACV rinse. My hair seemed a tiny bit better, but still a little dry. So I used a little sulfate free conditioner to see if that helped.

Thursday night I added a tablespoon of aloe vera to the ACV rinse, as well as some rosemary. Aloe vera for moisture and rosemary for scent (nothing quite like pickled rosemary, I say) and hair color. I grow both items in containers in my back yards, so they were readily available.

Saturday after my swim, I used an all natural henna hair coloring gel. The bottle was pretty small, so I wondered if I’d be able to color all of my hair. Of course it didn’t say anything on the outside of the box about needing to buy two for long hair, only on the internal instructions, so I decided to do what I could with what I had. Turns out, there was plenty for such a small bottle and I even have some left over. The best thing about this colorant, since it contains no peroxide or other “bad” things, I can reapply as often as needed, even right away! It didn’t strip my hair, I had zero(!!) loss of hair and it left my hair soft, even during the rinse. I love the color, too. I used ACV post-coloring and my hair felt fine.

In summary, what I did this week:

Hair coloring: Tried coffee grounds. Tried rosemary. Purchased “natural” coloring agents at Mother’s Market on Wednesday and used it on Saturday. The coffee and rosemary didn’t noticeably change my hair’s color, but it did give my hair a deep sheen. Love the new “natural” henna hair color kit. It “washes out gradually”, hopefully the “gradual” slows down because I was a little concerned about how much of it came out with this morning’s post-swim rinse.

Hair growth: I had to snip 3/4 of an inch off my bangs to keep them out of my eyes. I could have easily snipped an entire inch, but I want them just a bit longer than the length they were cut to 4 weeks ago. But, that tells me that the rest of my hair has likely grown between 3/4″ to 1″ since I had it trimmed 4 weeks ago. That’s pretty rockin’ for hair growth, I think.

Hair cleaning/conditioning: Continued using baking soda rinse. Added rosemary and aloe vera to my Apple Cider Vinegar rinse. Used sulfate free conditioner once when hair felt too dry. Did not use any lemon water rinse this week. I’m only using the club soda until the bottle I have is gone. In the course of researching exactly what baking soda and apple cider vinegar do to hair, I learned that, apparently, they are both chlorine neutralizers. The club soda doesn’t hurt, but I now believe it to be an unnecessary expense and just how much chlorine do I need to kill?

Here’s my bottles — the blue one has the baking soda rinse, the red one is the Apple Cider Vinegar rinse and the yellow one has the lemon juice rinse:

Plans for this week: I would like to cut back the BSR to every other day, and alternate the ACV rinse with the sulfate free conditioner. When I used the sulfate free conditioner this past week, I nearly hyperventilated it smelled so good! Talk about glory for my senses! The reason I stopped using the conditioner was because I thought it was causing the oiliness that I was experiencing. Now that I’ve isolated that to the coconut oil that I pre-treated my hair with before swimming, I think I can start trying the sulfate free conditioner again.
Taken today, post-coloring. The sun had set, so I used the camera’s flash.

Overall, I’m very, very pleased with how this experiment is coming along. I’m getting more and more ready to ditch all my shampoo bottles. I love how my hair feels to me. In fact, I’m pleased to report that this is turning into a new way of doing things and less and less of an experiment every day.

Skin Care: In addition to all of the above, I started using the BSR and a washcloth on my face as a cleanser. As my hormones shift through my cycle, I get painful outbreaks of under-the-skin acne on my face and back. The frustrating part of that is, just when the acne clears up from the break-out due to ovulation, it breaks-out again when my menses get ready to start, then clears up just in time for the ovulation break-out. I’m hoping that a more natural cleansing will help.

…and finally, I’d like to thank my husband for putting up with all these weird bottles rotating in and out of the shower, sitting outside of the shower, or some inside while others are outside, all because I’m trying to figure this stuff out. The man has an inordinate amount of patience with me, because I know full well that if I were him, I’d be irritating myself. Thank goodness I’m me and he’s him. If that made any sense at all.

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Filed under Chick Chat, Hair Can Be a Topic of Conversation

June 7, 2009 · 1:20 pm

Hair Update – Week 3.

This Sunday marked three weeks of no shampoo. This week also marks the week that I changed up a lot of things I was doing and started doing “new” things… because I almost gave in this week. In fact, I had the bottle of baby shampoo in my hands and had squeezed out a dollop of it to sud up, but I used it on my body instead of my hair. I was that close, My People.

On Tuesday the “leave in” conditioner feel, or a damp feel, was all the way to the ends of my hair. It was definitely the “oily” feel that women have reported and it almost sent me reeling back into consumer usage of shampoo. But instead, I decided to see what happened that night when I showered, that maybe something would change and I wanted to research something I’d read somewhere about using egg and lemon juice as an emulsifier. So my hair lived in a clip on Tuesday.

I showered after swimming on Tuesday night and Wednesday morning when I got up, my hair was still oily. So down to the fridge I went, grabbed an egg and whipped it up. I had one lemon in my fruit basket, so I juiced it and added it to the egg with some water, and ran upstairs and used that concoction on my hair in the shower. I made sure to use cool water and rinse thoroughly, but even at that I had egg bits in my hair. Argh. Easy enough to comb out, but still… ick.

The thing about that was, it emulsified the oil out of my hair (hooray!) leaving it the right texture, but it smelled like egg. I hate the smell of raw eggs. By 10:30 that morning, it was making me feel a little nauseated. So up in the clip it went. The next day, Thursday, was better and my hair felt normal. I could still smell a light scent of the egg, but I made my work friend smell my hair and she said it smelled perfumed, like flowers. *blink* I have no idea. Could be the lotion I use on my body or maybe she just has good smelling nose hairs. But she said it definitely did not smell like eggs.

Friday morning I used a small bit of my baking soda rinse (since I didn’t swim Thursday night, I didn’t use club soda) and then I used a lemon water rinse as the conditioner. Except I didn’t strain the pulp out of the lemon juice, so I had pulpy hair. (sigh, reminding myself that this is a learning process) However, all day Friday it felt fine and I love the smell of lemons in my hair.

But after swimming and showering on Saturday morning, there was that the oil again, except it was only on the lower part of my hair.

This puzzled me… why only the lower part? The oils come from the scalp, right? Then I realized — it might be the coconut oil that i pre-treat my hair with before I swim. This is something I’ve done for so long, I didn’t even realize I was doing it anymore. So before Sunday’s swim, I pre-treated by rinsing my hair with water only. After my swim, I cleaned it with my baking soda rinse, then club soda and then lemon juice rinse. My hair has just finished drying and it feels normal. We’ll see over the next couple of days if that solves the problem.

So, to recap, here’s what I’ve done this week: Continued no shampoo. Continued club soda after swimming. Stopped using sulfate free conditioner. Stopped using Scalpicin. Stopped using hair serum. Stopped pre-swim treatment of hair with coconut oil. Used one treatment of egg/lemon/water to emulsify oils. Started pre-swim treatment of water only rinse. Started using a baking soda/water rinse. Started using lemon/water rinse.

I’m proud of myself that I didn’t give up this week. I’m realizing that there’s a lot of “natural” things out there that I can do, I just need to learn what these things actually can do! Also, I remind myself that this is a daily journey. What my hair needs one day, it may not need the next. Since my hormones change on a daily basis, so does the oil my body produces. One thing I learned that I found to be a huge encouragement is that there are women who have successfully transitioned to using no hair products at all and are able to wash their hair with water only. Wow — I have to admit, that intrigues me.

I’m also pleased with how healthy my hair feels when it’s wet — that right there is probably the one thing that keeps me going with this. Three weeks ago after I showered, my hair felt as if it would shatter in my hands and I hurried to get the hair serum in it so I could detangle it. I really, really hated what shampoo did to my hair. Now, I lose (maybe) one hair when I shower, most times none at all — that one hair looks like a lot because it’s so long, but one single hair, max? That’s not bad. I lose some when I brush or comb, but a whole lot less than I used to. I think that’s a pretty good testament to how healthy it is right now. My scalp also feels really good, so good in fact, that I’ve been able to stop using Scalpicin entirely. If there’s an itchy spot, it’s usually because I missed it when I was rubbing in the baking soda rinse.

Now I’m almost ready to ditch all the shampoo I have left in my house. Imagine the storage I can free up! Isn’t that something — in one week, to go from almost giving in and going back to shampoo, to being ready to discard all the shampoo bottles I still have?

This coming week I’m anticipating that I’ll have to address my hair color, as the natural color is becoming a bit more obvious to me, what with all the lemon juice and such, so, yeah, that’ll have to be addressed this week. I have some ideas, which I’m going to try… I’ll let you know how it pans out next week!

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Filed under Gross Can Fascinate, Hair Can Be a Topic of Conversation, Mermaid Envy

June 1, 2009 · 7:53 pm

Searches & Hair Update.

Now that I’m “out there” again, so to speak, with no password to hide behind, I thought it’d be fun to mark the one month anniversary of this landmark occasion by sharing the search terms which have brought guests to my blog in the past 30 days!

Oh, how I’ve missed thee, Google search words!

Grouped by category, I present:

jammie, jammie j and http://jammiej.com
Congratulations! You have successfully found me by searching my Internet Identification. Anonymity is now a thing of the past! Unless, of course, you were searching for another Jammie J., in which case, I’ll have to sigh and say there’s only one REAL Jammie J. and you’re looking at her! Accept no imitations, I’m a one-of-a-kind gal.

locks of love, for locks of love, donated locks; and “locks of love” knees
A worthy cause, to be sure, but to be clear, I have not yet donated my hair to Locks of Love; maybe someday. The last search concerns me just a bit because i do have that Crazy Hair that lives behind my knee — I’m really not at all confident that Locks of Love would be interested in my rogue knee hair.

discipline lillle boys
I lay no claim to being an expert on disciplining boys of any type, lillie or otherwise. I can, however, with confidence, refer you to my friends “Charmed,” who is raising five of them, Vince, who is raising two of them, or my sister-in-law, Marigold, who is raising two of them. Boys, that is. Healthy, strong boys. Maybe you can find your answer there. Or maybe you’re trying to discipline your male garden lilies?

boy growth size story, story of the little boy
Jack and the Bean Stalk is a good one, if I remember right…

youngest boy to be dad
Yes, eventually the youngest boy can be a dad. Birth order has nothing to do with male fertility.

does dermaswim work and dermaswim complaint
Now this I am an expert on. Yes, Dermaswim works. The only fallible part of whether or not is works properly is whether I remember to put it on before I rush out of the house to go swimming. If you’re looking for complaints about Dermaswim Pro, you’ll not find them here.

endo is going to kill me
No, no it won’t. This I know for certain. Endo may debilitate you with pain and take away your ability to live life like a normal person, and sometimes the pain might make you wish you were dead, but you will live through it. Find yourself a good support system, hook up with an endo association, locate a doctor who is an expert on endometriosis. Don’t be afraid to try things — exercise, acupuncture, herbs — each woman is different and you need to find the thing that helps you get through this. Don’t give up.

i don’t know what is causing my brittle hair
I really don’t know either. Could be any number of things — could be something that might seem to be benign, like shampoo, or maybe you swim every day and have chlorine damage. Swimming in the ocean is bad for hair, too. Or maybe you got it stuck in a vacuum cleaner or a power drill. Not that I’m speaking from experience or anything, but those things have been known to cause brittle hair…

…and that’s it for the We’re All Searching for Something update.
***
Now for Week Two, No Shampoo Update.

My hair continues to feel great after I wash it with club soda and use my sulfate free conditioner, especially when it’s still wet and fresh from the shower. I only felt the need to use Scalpicin three times this week. My concern is that I may be battling an allergic reaction to chlorine on my scalp and I may not be able to discontinue Scalpicin.

One odd thing, though, on Thursday after my hair was supposedly dry, it felt odd… as if I’d used a “leave-in” conditioner, which I hadn’t. I don’t know if maybe that is the oily feeling that other women have reported? I’m really not sure. It did bother me enough that I put it up in a clip and that night after swimming I used a baking soda rinse after using club soda, hoping to break up whatever that coating was. It worked because on Friday my hair felt normal again.

My hair still tangles by late afternoon, but it’s definitely less of a snarled tangle knot and more of a hair-crossing tangle, if that makes sense. Maybe to other long-haired ladies it does.

Two weeks is done, and so far, overall, I’m still pleased. No picture this week, because it looks the same as last week.

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Filed under Hair Can Be a Topic of Conversation, We're all searching for something

May 25, 2009 · 9:32 pm

The Hair Story.

Back in October of 2005, my dermatologist at the time told me to start using baby shampoo and only baby shampoo. Those instructions were in response to my inflamed scalp, which had become so badly inflamed that it was causing my hair to fall out and my lymph nodes to swell.

I was good. I listened to him. Only baby shampoo did I use for about a year. Then I discovered that if I used Scalpicin on my scalp it would not become inflamed AND I could use other shampoos. Then in July of 2006, I added another bad thing to my hair regiment — chlorine damage — I started swimming nearly every day.

So, I started using various shampoos that professed to remove chlorine. Truly, I don’t know if they do or not. But I also started using hair serum (my favorite of which was John Frieda’s Lite formula) to mask the fact that my hair was super brittle from chlorine exposure. Everyone thought it looked so healthy, except I knew differently. And the lady who trims my hair, she moaned in sadness every time she ran her hands through it… “so beautiful, so dry!” she would say.

Then in May of 2008, I noticed something on my scalp. A mole I thought. Right there in the middle of my part. But it had appeared rapidly and would diminish, then reappear in a different shape. It felt scaly to the touch, and itchy. Uh oh.

I made an appointment with my PCP so I could get a referral to a dermatologist — HMO insurance requires a referral to a specialist. My PCP looked at it and said he didn’t think it was cancerous, but not to be alarmed because to get me to a dermatologist, he had to write “suspicious mole” on the referral sheet. I scheduled the dermatologist appointment to occur just before our Hawaii trip last August, but rescheduled it because I didn’t want to be waiting for biopsy results while on vacation. It was bad enough that my pet fish were dying left and right.

Vacation came and went, as vacations are wont to do, and a couple days before my dermatologist appointment, I reached the pad of my finger up to a feel the “suspicious mole” and it was gone. Totally gone. I hadn’t scratched it, I hadn’t brushed it, but it was gone. Figures, I thought. Just like computer problems, the second you call your I.T. guy, the computer fixes itself. In the second before I pulled my finger away and noticed it was covered in blood, I had pondered canceling the appointment. When i saw the blood, I decided to keep the appointment.

The dermatologist confirmed that it wasn’t skin cancer or anything life threatening. He said it was likely a build-up of irritation and he recommended freezing the spot where it had been to prevent recurrence. Except in those two days the spot had completely healed and we couldn’t really tell for sure precisely where it had been. I declined the freeze and said I’d be back if it reappeared. It hasn’t.

Then I factored in the fact that each time I used shampoo it made my hair feel stripped and brittle, I hated how it felt after shampooing. Then I started to think about the fact that it seemed as if I was using ten products to replace the one thing my hair needs… moisture. All my life I’ve used moisturizing shampoo, moisturizing conditioner, recently adding in hair serum (an oil) for the ends and Scalpicin (for dry scalp). Who says scalp oil is a bad thing, anyway? What if the very thing my scalp and hair needs is being produced by my body?

All of that to say, it just seemed to be a natural step to try the “no poo” thing.

Sunday (5/24) marks one week with no shampoo usage. Tony took this picture on that day.

1 week pooless

My regimen: Pour one cup of club soda over my scalp, gently rub it in. Use another cup of club soda which I coil the length of my hair into, uncoil it, and then pin it to the top of my head for about 30 seconds. Unpin it and rinse.

I then use a sulfate free conditioner for the scent. Frankly, the smell of my hair is something that my husband loves and having that for him is important to me. Beyond that, I’m not partial to the natural smell of my scalp. It’s not that it’s offensive or bad, it just smells different than what I’ve become accustomed.

My hair looks healthy, but more than that, it feels healthy and softer. I noticed a difference after the very first day… it feels thicker at the scalp, and resists moisture for the first second or so when being rinsed. When I part it, it keeps the part instead of sliding all over the place. Someone used the word “trainable”, and I would agree with that. I haven’t really had what other women experience as far as “oily days” because I’m not training it to expect less cleanings per week. I don’t really feel as if washing my hair less is an option due to the daily chlorine exposure that it receives.

The only bad thing, so far, is my scalp. A couple times it’s started to feel itchy and I’ve had to use Scalpicin for my comfort. I’m trying to reduce my scalp’s dependency on it, but don’t want to end up with an inflamed scalp, hair loss and swollen lymph nodes. That wasn’t fun.

So, one week of the “no poo” science experiment done… so far, it’s all good. I’ll let you know how it continues to progress!

Click to read updates on my “no poo” journey: Link

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Filed under Hair Can Be a Topic of Conversation

May 19, 2009 · 10:50 pm

Love & Loathe — 05/19/09

Love:

* Spaghetti. Simple, easy, and loaded with carbs. Yum.

* The gardenia tree in my back yard. I wish I could show you how glorious it is, but 3/4 of its beauty comes from the olfactory senses.

* Dermaswim. A lotion that is applied before swimming to guard against chlorine rash. Oddly, all the dermatologists I’ve seen haven’t been able to figure out the incredibly painful rash I get in certain spots where my swimsuit rubs. It’s gotten so bad and inflamed that, at times, it bleeds. Yet, even though I’ve told them I swim a lot, which means that I get a lot of swimsuit rubbing action, and even though they’ve validated my statement with, “that’s where your swimsuit rubs.” They’ve never correctly diagnosed it. I’ve tried steroidal creams, anti-bacterial creams, anti-fungus creams — all to no avail. A couple weeks ago, I found Dermaswim. I apply this lotion before my swim and, like magic, no rash appears. Problem solved. If I forget to apply it, say hello to painful rash.

* Hummingbirds. I love hearing them chirp at each other and watching them perch while they eat.

* Nights like tonight when Snug doesn’t run away like the hounds of hell are on his heels just because someone walks by him when he’s relaxing.

Loathe:
* Current shoes that are in style — I’m already 5’11”. Do I really need heels that are 3 1/2 inches tall? Does anyone who wears a 9 1/2 (or larger) size shoe? If a lady’s feet are that big, chances are she’s either really tall, or has other things going on, and she probably doesn’t need a heel that high.

* How so many people I love and care about are really struggling with various difficulties right now. Emotional, financial and just stuff… and it just always seems that things load up all at once.

One Last Thing:

I’ve been following a few blogs and reading stuff on the ‘net about going pooless. Over the years I’ve tried hundreds of shampoos, literally, and have never been happy with how any of them leave my hair feeling, except one and I can now only find that one on the Internet. Which really bugs me because of the cost of shipping, handling and all that. I wish I could go without shampoo, except I swim every day. Chlorine won’t come out with just a baking soda mix. But I tried it, just to try it… and I hated it. My hair looked fine, but it felt tangled and woolen. Ugh.

And then I read on a long hair forum about how club soda deactivates chlorine. And it cleans hair of dirt. So, I thought, why not? $.79 for a 2 liter bottle of it?

I thought I would hate it. I was prepared to hate it. But I don’t. Today was my second day using club soda in lieu of shampoo and I love it. I am still using a sulfate free conditioner — not ready to give that up yet. But here’s the bonus, the last two days I’ve not had to use detangling spray or hair serum to get through it with a comb.