no-poo for 6 mo, looking for advice on longer-lasting clean look
Hey, so I have a question for the long-termers (and anyone else that would like to offer advice). I've been no-poo for about 6 months now. For a while I was doing a WO wash with a ACV rinse, and then a couple months ago I switched to egg yolk (as shampoo) and the ACV rinse (as conditioner). My hair looks great for two days, and then it needs a wash. I don't mind the third day look, and I regularly rock that look, but it does look like it's wash day. It's not gross, by any means, but unless it's perfectly coiffed, you can tell it's slightly oily. This means that (if I'm not being lazy) I ought to wash my hair 2-3 times a week. I would really like to get to the point where my third day look is actually my 7th day look, and only need to wash my hair once a week. To be honest, I've never washed my hair all that often, so I don't know if no-poo has made my hair less oily at all. When I used shampoo, it used to completely strip all the oils off, and my hair was too dry for a day or two, and then there's the period where it looks great for a day or two, and then I let it look oily for a day or two. Which means I was washing it about once a week, but my hair only looked good for two of those days. Nowadays, the egg yolk doesn't lift so much oil that my hair looks dry, so we skip the first two days of that cycle, but I'm not sure that my total oil production has changed. Maybe I'm misremembering how my hair was, because to be honest, I'm not vain and back then I literally couldn't have cared less how my hair looked. Most days I didn't even look in a mirror. So it's possible that my hair was oilier than I remember. But I distinctly remember that 2nd and 3rd day hair (with real shampoo) was much nicer than 1st day hair.
My question is this: is there any way to encourage my scalp to produce less oil? Does waiting out that 3rd and 4th day naturally encourage less oil production, so that eventually, my 3rd day look will be my 4th day look, and then my 5th day look, and so on? I ask this because, although I know that increasing the time between washes when using real shampoo will help discourage oil production, I'm not sure that this will be true of alternate washes, given that they're not stripping the hair of oils in the first place.
Or is there a wash that helps move more oil down through the length of my hair? Right now I comb my hair about once every other day in order to move the oil down, but a) I feel like it doesn't do anything, and b) I know that combing your hair encourages the scalp to produce more oil. So if I found a wash that moved the oil to the length, maybe I could stop combing my hair (which I pretty much never did in my life until going no-poo and everyone was all OMG! the BBB saved my life), which in turn would decrease oil production.
Just a couple things that might give people a better idea of my hair: When I first started, I didn't do anything with my hair for maybe two weeks (my hair was nasty), and then I used WAAAAY too much baking soda (I didn't know how much to use at all), followed by ACV, and that made my hair clean for WEEKS. As in, maybe two weeks, it was crazy. But I don't want to use BS because as far as I'm concerned it encourages the same stripping/oil production cycle for your hair that shampoo does, admittedly without the chemicals. Also, I use henna, which has made my hair crazy soft, I highly suggest it, and it's also relaxing the curls. My hair is dark, so you can't see a color change (unfortunately). The henna is mixed with lemon, I wash it out of my hair with just water, but it's impossible to get it all out, I think, so after the two day waiting period I'm so happy to use the egg and ACV to get it all out of my hair (because I think the lemon makes the length feel dry).
Also, I'm considering using essential oils to discourage oil production, and I've heard of bergamot, tea tree, and rosemary. What have people heard about those?
My question is this: is there any way to encourage my scalp to produce less oil? Does waiting out that 3rd and 4th day naturally encourage less oil production, so that eventually, my 3rd day look will be my 4th day look, and then my 5th day look, and so on? I ask this because, although I know that increasing the time between washes when using real shampoo will help discourage oil production, I'm not sure that this will be true of alternate washes, given that they're not stripping the hair of oils in the first place.
Or is there a wash that helps move more oil down through the length of my hair? Right now I comb my hair about once every other day in order to move the oil down, but a) I feel like it doesn't do anything, and b) I know that combing your hair encourages the scalp to produce more oil. So if I found a wash that moved the oil to the length, maybe I could stop combing my hair (which I pretty much never did in my life until going no-poo and everyone was all OMG! the BBB saved my life), which in turn would decrease oil production.
Just a couple things that might give people a better idea of my hair: When I first started, I didn't do anything with my hair for maybe two weeks (my hair was nasty), and then I used WAAAAY too much baking soda (I didn't know how much to use at all), followed by ACV, and that made my hair clean for WEEKS. As in, maybe two weeks, it was crazy. But I don't want to use BS because as far as I'm concerned it encourages the same stripping/oil production cycle for your hair that shampoo does, admittedly without the chemicals. Also, I use henna, which has made my hair crazy soft, I highly suggest it, and it's also relaxing the curls. My hair is dark, so you can't see a color change (unfortunately). The henna is mixed with lemon, I wash it out of my hair with just water, but it's impossible to get it all out, I think, so after the two day waiting period I'm so happy to use the egg and ACV to get it all out of my hair (because I think the lemon makes the length feel dry).
Also, I'm considering using essential oils to discourage oil production, and I've heard of bergamot, tea tree, and rosemary. What have people heard about those?