How often do you wash your hair?  Are you in the everyday camp, the once-a-week camp or somewhere in between?  Some folks are highly fortunate to have thick hair that doesn’t get oily until five to seven days after a wash.  Some folks are feeling oily at the end of a day and some of us might sweat so much during a workout that we might feel compelled to wash our hair twice a day!  

If you wash your hair in the morning and then feel like you have an oily ‘do at the end of the day, then you simply didn’t wash your hair well enough!  You should be using a good shampoo to start with – one that is not packed full of sulfates that make a shower full of suds.  If you’re using a good quality shampoo, you should use a smaller amount of shampoo and work it into your roots.  It may not suds up.  This means, you need a second round to completely get the oil and product off the hair strands and off the scalp.  Your second wash should be sudsier, and this is how you know your hair is actually clean.

Personally, I used to wash and style my hair every single day because I have fine hair and it is on the thinner side.  My hair is long and the ends would look crimpy and down right frizzy the next morning.  Silk pillowcases have really helped with the ends not looking crazy in the morning and when Covid hit and I started working from home, I decided to try to train my brain and my hair to extend the life of a wash.  Silk pillowcases are good for your face, too – bonus! The dry shampoo that I used after a midday workout did come to my rescue and I would spritz it on the next day.  This was a great tool to help me get over the addiction of that freshly washed and styled hair I was so used to.  However, I pushed it to the limit and used the dry shampoo more than I should have.  I started to notice that I would get a tiny bump on my scalp.  Then I read the ingredients list of my Batiste Naturals dry shampoo that I thought was a life saver.  It had some ingredients I really didn’t love.  Like alcohol, which was drying my hair and scalp and two different forms of chloride, butane and fragrance.  It was starting to clog up my hair follicles and that’s what caused the scalp bumps.

Recently Batiste has been in a lawsuit claiming that their products contain benzene, a known carcinogen that causes cancer.  Batiste settled and didn’t admit to the claims but it certainly makes you wonder.  The FDA leaves it primarily up to the manufacturers of beauty products to ensure the safety of their products.  The rules of safety in the beauty industry are slack at best.

While dry shampoo does help absorb the oil on the scalp and hair, how clean is your hair when you’re drenching it in alcohol, chloride and aluminum?  Probably not as clean as you hoped!

So what options do we have in order to find a clean option?  They do exist!  And you can make your own.   If you have dark hair, don’t worry, there are ingredients that won’t leave your hair gray.  

First, try a double wash in the shower.  This is going to extend the life of the wash without adding anything to your scalp or hair.  If you want to make your own dry shampoo, start with a base of Kaolin clay.  This is pretty inexpensive.  Arrowroot powder is readily available in grocery stores and can be mixed with the clay.  The clay and arrowroot are going to absorb the oils. Baking soda can help with the cleaning and deodorizing.  Finally in the powders, cocoa powder; use a little if you have light hair, use a generous amount if you have dark hair.  Essential oils of grapefruit, rosemary, lavender, and peppermint are all great options when we start looking at our hair and scalp health.  Grapefruit is cleansing and smells wonderful.  Rosemary keeps the hair follicles healthy and helps them with blood flow.  Lavender is another powerhouse for all areas of the body and it has been shown to grow hair on mice.  Peppermint invigorates the scalp to bring fresh blood to the area by increasing circulation.  

Home-made and a lot of natural versions on the market are not going to be in a spray so finding the best application can be tricky.  I like to put my home-made concoction in a saltshaker.  I sprinkle some onto a big fluffy make-up brush and then apply the brush through my part and sections of my hair.  This helps me from overdoing it in any area – less is always more.

Then turn your head upside down and work the formula into your scalp with your fingers, giving yourself a nice massage!  Voila! Brush through and you’re set to go with a healthy, good for you wash extension.