Shampoo is an Unnecessary Product

While also thinking about the evolution of humans and toothpaste, I came across the idea that shampoo was unnecessary. It makes sense - commercial shampoo is a recent invention and humans did not evolve with shampoo, so why would we need it? Being adventurous, I decided I'd stop using shampoo and see if it made any difference.

The theory is, if you stop using shampoo at first the hair will become greasy from excess production of oils because shampoo washes out your natural oils and at first the scalp over compensates. This is why if you stop using shampoo, your hair becomes greasy. This is also why people think you need shampoo or your hair will go greasy permanently, because it takes about two months for the greasiness to stop, and most people won't go that long without shampooing. Shampoo affects the scalps natural oils so it takes about two months to adapt to not using it.

Conditioner is only necessary if you use shampoo. It puts artificial oils back in your hair to replace the oils you lose when you use shampoo. This masks the damage shampoo does to your hair so there appears to be no link between the two, and it makes people assume they are both necessary products to use often.

I have not put shampoo or conditioner in my hair for over half a year. Shortly after stopping my hair returned to normal and it has stayed the same. It is not at all unhealthy, it is not greasy, and it is even softer than it was when I did use commercial shampoo products. There is no reason why I would want to start using them again, and I haven't even had to explore natural alternatives to using commercial shampoo.

It all comes down to that humans did not evolve to need the chemicals that are in commercial shampoo products to keep our hair clean. We do just fine with washing with only water and the natural oils produced in our scalp keeps the hair strong and healthy.

The Benefits of Not Using Shampoo and Conditioner
Aside from being natural and letting the hair take care of itself the way it's meant to, there are other benefits too. One of those is saving money. Using shampoo and conditioner is not particularly a big expense itself but it increases the time you need to spend in the shower. This means you spend more money on water particularly hot water if you have hot showers.

If you are one of those people that have hot showers and get dried out skin, the reason is probably spending too long in the shower with the temperature too high. This is easy to do on cold days. Without the need to use shampoo or conditioner, showers are much shorter which gives the skin less time to become dry. This means you also will not have to use moisturising lotion on your face to keep it appearing healthy, and you can save time and money on that too.

Try it yourself to see if it works. You can look past this article and never try it for yourself and continue using shampoo products but you will never know if it actually works. It won't hurt in the long run to not use shampoo for a while, and when you find you don't need it anymore, you will have to worry about one less thing, and you'll save a small amount of money and time.