This might sound cranky at first, but I wonder.
In water fasting, we like to never add anything to the body when fasting, eg drink distilled water, take no additives or food supplements, don't put lotions on skin. But shouldn't we equally not take anything away? And what do we take away?
Answer = the oil in our hair, each time we shampoo it, and the oil on our body when we wash it. I wonder what that lovely clean skin feeling would be like if we didn't wash?
I have been looking into people who do not wash their body or hair. The results are quite surprising. After a while, they develop a natural equilibrium, and their body or hair does not smell, and hair can look great, but first it has to go through a greasy stage because it is so used to trying to replace the natural oils that we wash away regularly with petrochemical products, and it takes time for the production process to get back to normal.
Here are some more results, in addition to the thread with the Daily Mail article I posted recently. I'll put a quote or two below each link:
The Long Hair Care Forum - "Woman goes 11 years without washing hair"
EVERYONE has heard the rumour - don't wash your hair and it will start to clean itself after a few days.
For the past couple of weeks one of TV's best-known faces, Andrew Marr, has put the theory to the test and now he says his hair is fluffy and odour-free.
He reckons that this is because he is not drowning his locks in chemicals which, in turn, means he isn't stripping away the natural oils and therefore his scalp isn't having to compensate by producing excess grease.
Alison Palmer
I was intrigued when I saw a TV show about people whose hair "self-cleaned" because they didn't wash it. I was an 18-year-old student at the time and it seemed a good time to try. With very long hair which took an age to dry, it would be one less thing to worry about.
After a week it became really greasy. I kept it in a French plait, persevered, and after six weeks it was back to normal. No one even noticed.
Now I describe it with the expression "water off a duck's back". Because each strand ia coated in oil - not the sort which builds up because of chemicals, but natural oils - dirt or grime can be brushed off daily with a natural bristle brush. I trim my hair myself and don't even wet it unless I want to style it. When I go swimming, I let it dry then brush the chlorine out. I did have a bit of colour put in in February this year but I didn't have to go through the six weeks' greasy period again because my hair was so protected with oil.
Penny Weynberg
Nature Moms "The No Shampoo Alternative - no Poo"
You’re thinking you could never do without shampoo, that your hair would be a big oily mess — but it’s quite the opposite. It's a supply and demand relationship, much like nursing a baby. The more your baby wants to nurse, the more milk your body produces. If you suddenly stopped nursing your baby there would be a lot of excess milk, engorgement, etc., for a while until your body returned to a state of balance.
The oily secretions of our body are very much the same. The more we strip away the natural oils, the more demand we are creating and the more oils our bodies will make. So if you stop using the surfactants cold turkey, your body will still be overproducing oil and there will be a lot of oil until your body reaches a balance again
Christi Colvin
It's worth looking at the above links to see all the comments, I have only put a few brief points here.
Then I googled hair and omega 3, and hair and dha which are the things our bodies seem to be lacking in today's diet, see this post that got an RRR. As you can see from the first two links, omega 3 appears to be required for good hair, and I believe DHA as well. The third link shows that a lack of DHA seems to result in Parkinsons disease and Alzheimer's disease. This forces the vegan or vegetarian to take supplements with their diet to stay healthy, or eat occasional meat or oily fish.
So I am now wondering that if our bodies were no burdened with the task of replenishing our scalp and body oils so frequently because we wash them away with chemicals, perhaps not doing this would help our DHA levels get back to normal? I wonder if people who wash their hair less frequently have higher DHA levels? Is what we are taking away from our bodies the problem, rather than some deficiency in our eating?
By the way, you will find people out there who say this is completely the wrong thing to do, and if we don't wash our hair we will get terrible scalp diseases and all sorts of bad things. However they are mostly trichologists and salon owners. I guess it is in their financial interests to say that, just as doctors say we need medicine.
I may give this a try, and get my DHA levels tested sometime.
Hi M,
It is fascinating, for me too. It will be a while before I know if my theory is correct. Right now, it feels slightly uncomfortable, but it is bothering me less. Maybe I have gotten used to it, maybe my skin and hair is improving. Too soon to tell yet.
It seems we may also be deficient in vitamin B12, particularly if we are vegetarian or vegan. That puzzled me too. It somehow just seems, well... wrong that we need B12 supplements or get it from animals. I mean, where do they get it from? They don't eat meat or take supplements. Anyway I did a bit of googling and found this...
http://www.healthmad.com/Nutrition/Why-Vegans-Shouldnt-Wash-Their-Vegetables....
- below is an extract:
"But how did the B12 get into the animals you might wonder? Simple, animals ingest B12 when they eat vegetables.
I guess that you're pretty confused now. After all vegans do nothing but eat vegetables. So how is it animals do get B12 from vegetables, but vegans don't?
The answer is simply that animals don't wash their vegetables. B12 is produced by bacteria that live in soil. Soil is on the leaves of vegetables animals eat and so enters their digestive tract.
It was in this way that humans first developed a need for B12. Man originally didn't wash vegetables so for many years there was plenty of B12 to go around.
But over the years washing vegetables became more common. And so eating meat or other animal products became a necessity. In fact eating meat might have become an evolutionary success factor simply because we started washing vegetables.
So is it possible to turn back the clock? Is it safe to eat unwashed vegetables? Sadly no. Washing vegetables has become a necessity because of the increased use of pesticides. Before you can safely eat vegetables the pesticides need to be removed thus making washing necessary.
An additional danger is contamination of produce with bacteria such as e-coli from contaminated water, manure or through improper handling. This of course is a bit frustrating for vegans since e-coli is a by-product of animal-husbandry.
Organic farming reduces these risks, but if you do want to start eating unwashed vegetables you should try and get some information about the source. Do they really not use pesticides? Is the fertilizer they use vegan or does it come from animal by-products? Is there any chance of e-coli contamination from other farms in the area? Where does the water come from? How are the vegetables transported? The best option might be to visit the farm in person and check it out.
Or you can keep things in your own hand and grow your own vegetable garden. In your own garden you can guarantee the soil contains no toxic elements."
So here we are again, back to basics, and everything works properly. Another quote, this time from http://www.vegsoc.org/info/b12.html:
"Human faeces can contain significant B12. A study has shown that a group of Iranian vegans obtained adequate B12 from unwashed vegetables which had been fertilised with human manure. Faecal contamination of vegetables and other plant foods can make a significant contribution to dietary needs, particularly in areas where hygiene standards may be low. This may be responsible for the lack of anaemia due to B12 deficiency in vegan communities in developing countries."
Humanure! But if done properly as per http://www.jenkinspublishing.com/humanure.html
- there is no contamination. In fact here's another quote from "dave the knave" taken from http://www.jenkinspublishing.com/messages/messages/4/1062.html?1138673248:
Studies have shown that a common component of soil
is made by bacterial action on animal wastes"B12"
and that a deficiency of B12 is only found in the
so called developed world where humanure and other
manures are considered waste to be gotten rid of
rather than a resource to be used as fertilizer..
Those countries which flush these resources away
have wide spread B12 deficiencies and rely on
supplements,but anyone who is at least a little
connected via a garden or some houseplants will
touch the soil and be fortified..
So for me, it's go out into the garden. Get my vitamin D from the sun, B12 from the soil, and don't wash away the DHA.