30 Days of Clean Hair

October 13th marks my one year anniversary since starting radiation. I can hardly believe it. But since radiation I have noticed some dramatic changes to my hair. It's dry. Immensely dry. It doesn't curl anymore. I actually have straight hair now, which is something I have always wanted, but now that I have it, I miss my curly hair. Go figure right? And lastly it is just dull. I have a lot of hair with some volume, but for the most part it just goes flat against my forehead. So, if I ever wanted my hair to do anything helpful for me at all, it was time to break out the curling irons, the hair products, and combs.

I run in a circle where I monitor "healthy clean" lifestyle blogs and on the side, just normal "to each his own" type blogs. I tend to mix and match people's clean eating and lifestyle with the regular joe schmoe type attitude. Matt and I love eating healthy but not at the expense of foregoing a hamburger and soda every once in awhile. I started seeing on Pinterest something called the "No Poo" method and did a lot of research. This is what I found:

No Poo Method has actually been around for a long time. People wash their hair with baking soda to clean and then "condition" with apple cider vinegar. Many people have modified the No poo method to fit their needs. It is not PH Balanced, but I have heard nothing but wonderful things about the results. So, why am I interested? Basically in my research I found a lot of cancer patients testimonials mixed in with the facts. Cancer doesn't change the texture, but the treatment did. Radiation dried out my hair, naturally, since I had brain cancer and that is where it was blasted. On top of changing my hair color periodically, blow-drying it, using pastes and pomades, my hair has reached its tolerance level.

When I was on the East Coast this summer, the humidity restored some of my natural hair. I barely had to use a curling iron while there and could just sleep with wet hair, to get the picture above. The outcome was amazing and I felt like I had my natural "before surgery, before cancer" hair back. The minute I stepped off the plane to dry, desperately needing some rain Southern California, my hair resumed its flat, dry state. Leaving me with the picture below.

So, What am I doing? For 30 days I am washing my hair with Baking Soda. I am on day four now, and seeing some slight waves come back to my hair. I found in my research that Apple Cider Vinegar is good for restoring shine. While my hair is dull, it is dull because it lacks moisture. Instead I am doing a Coconut oil mask once a week, and using coconut milk to condition my hair. I found that I can do the mask first and then wash it out with the baking soda. Also, you can go three or four days without washing your hair. It's part of the process of restoring natural oils to your hair. But please still shower and be clean. I don't want to be responsible for dirty people in my life.

I will return to shampoo and conditioner after this process. I am still waiting to see if it even works. But if you want to give it a shot, it will be hard. I want to use hair products all the time. I want to blow-dry and straighten my hair. But now I can experiment with braids and cute pony's instead of damaging my hair constantly.

So there you have it. It's the start of a small journey to see if this is worth the hassle. Which, it is already proving to do so. Look for the halfway mark post in 11 days!