A couple of months ago I heard about something called the Six Week Challenge, the challenge being on the premise that the Shampoo and Conditioner Industry is a sham, that Shampoo probably does more harm to your hair than good and the idea that you need to ‘wash’ your hair is simply untrue, it’s just a marketing ploy to get you to buy something you don’t really need. If your looking to save money then the simplest way to do so is to cut out items you usually buy that you don’t need, so is shampoo one of those items? Well like most people I know I’ve been groomed to believe so, up until a few months ago I had never gone more than a few days without shampooing my head, ever, since childhood I’ve assumed you have to wash your hair with Shampoo and possibly Conditioner was I just another victim of consumerism?
So I started the challenge because I had just conveniently run out of my usual shampoo anyway. As a rule my hair before the challenge had been quite dry, I had constant bad hair days because of it’s tendency to “fluff”, I also have a receding hairline which becomes more apparent the longer my hair gets which means I have to get it cut fairly regularly. The Challenge promised that by six weeks or possibly earlier my hair’s natural oils would naturally balance making it look better, easier to manage and save me the expense of Shampoo and like products forever, all I had to do was wash it with nothing but water during my daily shower for six weeks.
The first few days weren’t as bad as I was expecting my hair got oily but not quite as bad as it usually gets form not washing it for a few days, it seemed to get better in the following weeks to the point where it felt to me as it was actually quite balanced, sort of like it would feel after using Conditioner but you can tell it’s natural and doesn’t feel like that because of the chemicals you’ve just washed through, ok I’ll put it a little more bluntly, it feels oily but not on a bad level, I assume it was the naturally balanced level but it’s impossible to know when the only thing you can compare it to was artificial. My hair was no longer fluffy, it sat where I wanted it to sit (for the most part), somehow it made it easier to hide my receding hairline a little and I didn’t feel I urgently needed a haircut when I normally would have. Could it be that this is how my hair is supposed to be? At about seven weeks in I washed my hair with nothing but water a little more vigorously than I had been and found that for the first time the amount of hair that fell out wash about equal to what fell out daily when using Shampoo, was my hair not falling out as much either?
Being that this is a gradual process over six weeks it’s hard to notice any change from day to day of course you could tell over the long run there was but how much of a difference remained a question. I decided that reversing the process you probably highlight the results much faster, thats right a few days ago I decided I would wash my hair with Shampoo again and see what happens. Well after washing again after all that hard work the results were instant, my hair definitely felt clean, squeaky clean actually as if life all in it had been washed out, after drying it it quickly returned to it’s annoying fluffy pre-challenge state. I had my answer, I preferred my hair in it’s natural state than stripped of all it should be by chemicals with names which now logically could only be the work of the devil.
My hairs recovery from that fateful wash seems a bit more violent than the first time around, it is at yuck oily, but it is already getting better. It seems that the challenge is too much for some many have given up, maybe they needed more than six weeks or maybe they just couldn’t handle the worst of their “eeewwwww” stage, maybe others even do actually have better hair when they use Shampoo. I know my case and I’m not going back to Ammonium lauryl sulfate, Guar hydroxypropyltrimonium chloride or Dimethicone anytime soon. Especially now that I don’t have to fork out for my average of 3 bottles of $3 Shampoo each year. I’ll be rich from the savings in no time.
Tell me what you think about the Challenge. Will you be taking it up?
[tags]Counter Culture, Shampoo, Conditioner, Consumerism[/tags]
on May 19th, 2007 at 7:53 am #
on May 19th, 2007 at 10:26 am #
on May 19th, 2007 at 4:54 pm #
on May 20th, 2007 at 11:16 pm #
