It’s a natural desire to want thick, luxurious hair. Regardless of your gender. Women want long, strong and shiny locks while men want hair that’s going to enhance their face shape and look like it’s been taken good care of. In order to get our perfect hair, we’ve always been told not to wash it often. Our moms and elders have always said to not shampoo it every day, otherwise, we might end up destroying its natural texture!
While that fact remains, it is believed that our scalp produces its own oil. Just like our skin does (where my oily girls at? ya’ll know the struggle). The oil produced naturally by our scalp is said to be beneficial for hair growth and providing necessary nutrients important for the maintenance and well-being of our hair.
However, when you don’t wash your hair, for let’s say; 2 days; you’ll start to notice an oil build up in your roots which starts to weigh down your hair and make it look less volumized and more slicked down – in a bad way. Your ends start to look dry and weary. It’s just not a cute look, to say the least.
This happens because our hair is accustomed of being detoxified aka cleaned with shampoo all the time. Even if you wash your hair every alternate day, you still can’t survive 2 whole days without looking like a grease ball. Keeping all this in mind, have you wondered what happens to your hair when you don’t wash it for a whole week? Your hair will get a little confused at first, here’s how I’ve broken down the cycle aka transformation.
Day 1
Today’s the day you washed your hair. It’s going to look extremely shiny and feel squeaky clean at the same time. Because it’s newly washed, you’re going to experience low volume but incredible softness.
Day 2
Your hair will still feel clean, only the middle of your head will start to oil up a teeny tiny bit but it won’t show up or look bad at all. You’ll experience a ton of volume today plus second-day hair is ideal for styling with heat.
Day 3
It’s going to get messy from here. Oil has started to pile up and on a normal day, you’d run over to have a shower asap but since you’re not going to today (for the sake of science), your hair will basically feel like crap. No volume, greasy roots and dessert dry ends.
Bonus Tip: When your roots feel oily but your ends feel crappy, try to massage the oil from the roots (produced naturally by your scalp, don’t use additional oil) to the tips. This helps in evenly coating the whole head with the good stuff and reduce the oil from the scalp.
Day 4
It is recommended to wash your hair today with hot water in the roots and then use cold water to rinse the whole head out. Doing this, won’t make your hair squeaky clean but it’s going to feel much, much better! Also, If you do this right, your hair may look bomb AF today.
Day 5
Your scalp is probably confused about what’s happening and it may produce fewer oils today as compared to Day 3 when it went chaotic.
Day 6
Today your hair will feel moisturized but a little heavy and oily. It is best to comb out the grease to the ends. Not only are you nourishing your hair with this, but you’re feeding it what it needs to grow with.
Day 7
Your hair is completely and totally transformed today. It will feel and hopefully look good (That is if you’re up for a little grease)
You see, when you wash your hair every alternate day, you strip off the important nutrients it needs. Hence your scalp feels the need to produce more oil to compensate for the lost moisture. The trick is to wash your hair as less as possible to promote growth. Your scalp won’t adjust to this ASAP, it will take time. Start slow, wash your hair after 3 days if you use to wash it after 2.
Disclaimer: This is in no way, shape or form to discourage personal hygiene and cleanliness. Please go on with your daily routine as you will, this was only written for educational and awareness purposes.
