The Great Wash Debate

Welcome to the Great Wash Debate, unraveling the myths of hair care. That's what we're going to do today, people. But first, I want to— my name is Tami. Sorry, I didn't announce that. And I want to tell you, I, I'm still utterly blown away that I look in the mirror and I see a beautiful woman. I, I love my hair. I love my skin. I love my eyes. I love myself. It wasn't always like this. This, this is not always how life was for me. It was September 1972. Was my first day of third grade. And I remember walking into the room and I saw this young boy. Oh my goodness, he was so cute. Brown curly hair, dark brown eyes, adorable. I looked at him and I thought, ooh, we're gonna get married one day. And I sat down and we had class and whatnot. And then, you know, we go out for our first recess and my so-called future husband and his two friends start bullying me and being mean to me and calling me names and telling me I'm ugly and telling me I'm an idiot and telling me like, oh my goodness, it was horrible, horrible. They called me so many names. The one that I remember the most was Tamara Tomato. Tamara's my legal name, and I was recovering from a sunburn first day of third grade because, you know, I have this pale skin and all I do is go black and white, black and white with polka dots. But they also called me skinny, stupid idiot, pale face, slimy, greasy girl because I had like greasy hair back then. Um, it was horrible, absolutely horrible, and it really It really destroyed how I looked at myself for a long time, and because of that, I spent many years trying to figure it out. Um, you know, blue eyeshadow, not a good look on this girl. No, but I tried it back in the 1980s or early '80s, junior high, high school. I tried everything when it came to makeup. I have learned the keys to being able to understand and to know what I need personally for me, my hair type, my face shape, my skin tone, all of that, all of that I figured out. I'm a cosmetologist, so a lot of that was college education, figuring it out, but a lot of it was personal research, I'll tell you that. And so— I now know the most important things for you to know about yourself so that you can look your personal best and feel your personal best. So important, really is. So today, We're going to talk about shampoos and conditioners. All right. There's a lot of myths about washing hair, and I'll tell you a few of them today. Number 1, you need to wash your hair every day. Skipping daily hair washing can be quite beneficial for many people, and there are several good reasons to consider stretching out the time between shampoos. This is important, you guys. Preserving natural oils in your scalp and on your hair, preventing dryness and irritation, enhancing your hair health, maintaining hair color— like, I do red in mine and that likes to leak out pretty quick. So yeah, I— my red color stays because of this practice. Saving time and energy, you'll get better styling results with your hair, and there's environmental considerations. Wow, that was a long word to say— considerations. Incorporating these practices depends on your hair type, lifestyle, and personal preferences. Some might find a happy medium with washing every other day, while others might stretch it to washing once a week. It's all about finding what makes— excuse me— your hair feel and look its best. And today I'm going to focus on preserving natural oils. I want to talk about natural oils. Um, when I was younger, I had overactive sebaceous glands, and I truly believe it's because very harsh products were used on my hair, and my hair was washed every day. It's just, you know, back in the day, that's what they did. So yeah. So natural oil production in the hair is called— the oil itself is called sebum, and it's secreted through your sebaceous glands that are like right beside, like right underneath and beside your, your hair follicle. And they offer a lot of benefits to your hair health and appearance. A couple of those are it naturally moisturizes your scalp, and a lot of people seem to forget that our scalp is made of skin and it needs moisture. It needs to be nourished, just like the skin on our face and the skin on our body. It's exposed to the elements and it needs help. So it having the natural oils on it helps it a lot. And having that natural oil also helps protect your hair from the elements. So what happens is like, this is your hair strand, okay? And the— let's say the root is down here and the sebum is coming from here, and the sebum kind of works its way down the hair root. It goes around it and around it, and if you're washing it every day, it probably maybe gets to here. So the longer you let your hair sit and the more you brush it, the, the more that oil is going to nourish your hair. I used to always joke with my ex-mother-in-law when we go camping. She, she had short hair, so it wasn't that big, but we did highlight her hair. And this is back in the day of pulling it through a cap, bleaching the crap out of it, and, you know, craziness. But she would go the entire weekend without washing her hair. And I told her, I said, that's good for it. Brush it, comb it, pull that oil right through to your ends. This is like the best deep conditioning you can do for your hair is with your natural oils. And it's true. So she used to love that. She was like, oh, I don't have to. Hahaha. It was funny. But understanding and appreciating your hair's natural oil production is key to optimizing your hair care routine. So instead of fighting against these oils, work with them. It can lead to healthier, more vibrant hair. And let's be honest, isn't life too short for bad hair days? Overwashing your hair can kind of be like overcalling the ex. Both can strip away all the good stuff. So don't do it. Don't do it. Stretch it out. So another one, another myth is that the more shampoo you— the more shampoo you use, the cleaner the hair. Not necessarily. Okay, so I don't like shampoos with sulfates. Sulfates are made to produce bubbles. All right. And when, when sulfates are in there, they will produce bubbles. That's the human factor. We love to see the bubbles. The bubbles aren't what clean your hair. The bubbles are more like a decorative thing. Okay. And the sulfate goes into your hair and it swells your hair up and can cause damage. All right, so a lot of products have sulfates in them to give it that human bubbly experience, but it's not doing anything good for your hair. It's— as it is, as soon as we get our hair wet, your hair is a pH of 4.5 to 5.5. And as soon as you get it wet, uh, water is a pH of 7 naturally, so it's going to swell your hair up anyways. You don't need it to swell up any more than that with the sulfates. You just don't need that. And so get a sulfate-free shampoo. You only need like a nickel size at the most. You need to emulsify it in your hands first. Mm-hmm. And you need to concentrate. Sorry, I'm gonna take my glasses off and show you. You need to concentrate on your scalp and your roots. Okay. So don't worry, you know, if you have like super long hair, don't worry about down here, just up here, scalp and roots. And depending on how long you go between shampoos— oh, there goes my hair. Is that right? Yeah. Okay. Depending on how long you go between shampoos, you might not get any bubbles that first shampoo. Okay, if you're doing 2 shampoos like I, I wash my hair every 3 to 4 days, so I generally do 2 shampoos because I do use product in my hair. My hair gets oily. I need 2 shampoos. And so I do 2, and the second shampoo sometimes doesn't get me very many bubbles, but I'm okay with that because my hair is clean when I'm done. And I do not— I shampoo here, okay? And you know, my hair is shorter now. It was longer at one time in my life, but once I'm done shampooing here, I'm not pulling it through to the ends. You know, when you— I did it again. When you rinse your hair out, all that shampoo that's on your scalp and your ends is running through the rest of your hair. So unless you have like a ton, a ton, a ton of hairspray and product on your ends, on your long ends, you don't need to put shampoo through to your ends. Okay. Sorry, that's my little pet peeve. So for most hair types, this guideline works well, though there are circumstances where people have very thick or long hair and may find that they need a slightly larger amount to fully cover their scalp and roots. Remember, it's just your scalp and your roots, though. It's not all the way to the ends. The key to is adjust, is to adjust based on personal need without overdoing it, ensuring the hair stays clean, healthy, and vibrant. Okay. I'm not gonna tell that joke. Oh, maybe I will. Why do multitaskers use only a nickel-sized amount of shampoo? because when you've got 101 things to do, who has the time for rinse and repeat? It's kind of a— yeah, it's all right. Okay. So the next myth, I'm going to grab a drink here before my throat gives out on me. Expensive products always work better. Now, It depends. It really does. Ingredient efficiency is crucial for, for targeting specific hair needs and ensuring that your hair gets the right kind of care. So you need to consider your hair type and any specific issues like oiliness, dryness, color-treated hair, or damage. You have to know not only your type of hair, but your current hair circumstance. Okay. So my, my type of hair, I've got fine hair, but I've got a lot of it. It's color treated and it's bleached. Like, I got bleach in the front, so I do need different products. I use different conditioners on my hair for my weekly deep conditioning type of thing, but I don't do it weekly. I maybe do it monthly. I don't know. I, I'm— some people do that a lot more often than I do. With shorter hair, it's easier, though, because you get it cut off sooner. So yeah. But I tend to use more of a mask in my blonde because I, I need to do some bond repair in my blonde. That is very important, ladies. If, if you get your hair lightened, whether they call it a lightener or a bleach, or I don't know what other names they're using nowadays. It's still going in and pulling a lot of color out of your hair. It's swelling your hair up, it's damaging your hair. You need to do something to repair it. So I use like a bond repair treatment. I also use a mask on it. Just depends, just depends. So anyways, um, so that, that's like my hair my hair itself, other than texture, which I'll talk about in the next video. So your hair itself and the circumstances your hair is under. All right. Those two things are what you need to know when you're trying to, to, to determine the products to use on your hair. Just like a mystery novel. In a plain wrapper. The best shampoo might not come dressed in a flashy bottle. Sometimes the real plot twist is finding salon-quality hair care without the high price tag. It's— yeah, it's a thing. Like I say, JCPenney— I worked at JCPenney and They, they might not have the most educated stylists about all the products there, because they have a lot of different product lines. Thankfully, I had worked with quite a few of them before I worked there, so I was able to sell them with the education people needed. Your best bet is to go to a smaller salon to get educated about products that you think you want to use. Yeah. So why are shampoo and conditioner bottles the same size? I don't get it. I'm like, really? In our family, we've all got shorter hair, so we use— our shampoo runs out way before conditioner, and then they sell them together in a package deal. I'm like, so frustrating. But basically what I've learned is they do this for practical and for marketing reasons. There's— when they have them in the same size bottles, there, there's aesthetic and branding consistency. They say that it's consumer convenience. I don't know that I believe that, but okay, if you guys wanna believe that. And then there's manufacturing efficiency, which makes sense. You know, when they're manufacturing, they want all the bottles to be the same size. It's easier to set everything, blah, blah, blah. It's a marketing strategy and it's a perceived value thing. So yeah, it is what it is. It's one of my big frustrations in life, but the standardization tends to dominate for its branding and production benefits. I don't know, maybe they enjoy equal shelf presence as much as we enjoy happy hour. I don't know. I just don't know. It's crazy. Um, yeah. So if you, if your family has longer hair, like everybody has longer or thicker hair and stuff, they probably will go through more conditioner than shampoo, the opposite of us. So the key is to find your opposite family and then co-op shop together. Yeah, yeah, if you use the shampoo, same products, you know, there's that obstacle too. So now the next one is about double washing. Okay, um, or like washing hair twice in one session. All these bottles will say, you know, shampoo, rinse, repeat. Shampoo, rinse, repeat. Shampoo, rinse, repeat. That was what we did back in the 1900s. It's definitely not highly recommended anymore, uh, because of education, knowledge, all these things. The only reason you would wash your hair a second time is if you have heavy product buildup, if you have very oily hair, if you're washing it like every 2 to 5 days, 7 days, whatever, if you're doing a pretreatment cleansing, if you have had heavy perspiration from working out or mowing the lawn or whatever, and if you're living in a very polluted environment. So double washing isn't necessary for everyone or for every wash. It's best used selectively based on your hair's exposure to products, oils, and dirt. Overwashing can strip your hair of its natural oils, so it's important to consider your hair's health and needs when deciding how often and when to implement a double wash. So choosing the right products— like I said, it's important to know your hair type. Your scalp condition is very important to know, too. So if you, you know, look at your scalp like this, and if you see any flakes, you've got a dry scalp. If you don't see any flakes or anything, but it's shiny, then you got oily. If you don't see shiny and don't see flakes, It's normal. Mine is normal, which kind of, you know, I have dry skin on my face, but on my scalp, my scalp is now normal because I've— I don't know how to explain it, but it's like you have to train your sebaceous glands, and it took a full summer of going through greasy hair hell. To get to the point that my sebaceous glands calmed down. But I can talk about that in a video someday. It was, it was quite crazy. So, uh, let me see here. So when you understand these things about your hair, your, your scalp type, well, your skin type on your scalp, your, uh, hair type, circumference, and density. This will help you to understand what you could potentially need for your hair. I will be going through more information on my videos about this stuff. I don't want to— overdo the feeding of information to you right now. I'm doing this in, in little tidbits, okay? So I want you to understand what your, what your hair circumference is and your hair, um, density. So how many squares per hair, how many hairs per square inch. And the circumference of your hair. That will tell you whether you have fine hair, medium hair, coarse hair, um, whether your hair is dense, medium, or light in, um, density. Okay. So I have a fun little thing here for you. If your hair were a season, which would it be? Okay, winter, spring, summer, or autumn? Put it in the comments which one you think your hair might be. I'll go through the descriptions here. Winter: cool, calm, and collected. Your hair might be sleek, Smooth and possibly a bit dry, needing a burst of hydration to shine. Spring: fresh, lively, and a bit unpredictable. You have curls or waves that bounce and behave differently each day. You're definitely a spring. Summer: bold and unfazed by the heat. Thick, Voluminous hair that loves or defies humidity. Could be described as a summer mane. Autumn. Warm and inviting. If your hair has gorgeous natural highlights, or perhaps it's thinning a bit but still turns heads with its color vibration and depth, you're an autumn. I am a spring because my hair actually has waves, and when I wear it curly and wavy, it's different all the time. Yeah, it's unpredictable sometimes. So we're going to go into understanding your circumference and density. Okay, so your circumference is the measurement around, like, around your hair strand. Okay. And basically you pull a hair out of your head and you compare it to a normal thread. And if your hair is thicker than that thread, you probably have coarse hair. If it's the same as that thread, you're medium. If it's smaller than that thread, you're fine. That's it. That's how you do it with a thread. And then the other way is to measure your ponytail. So my hair is actually too short to get all up into a ponytail. So all of you with longer hair will be able to do that. Just get it into ponytail and measure the circumference around the ponytail. Okay. But for those of us who don't, I go by looking at the scalp. You kind of pull the hair taut and then fluff it up a little bit. And how easy is it to see my scalp? That's what I go on. I, I've got, I've got quite a few hairs per square inch. I, and it's kind of hard to tell with my dark roots right now, too. But Yeah. Yeah. Alrighty, that's that one. So knowing both of those, you can get a better picture of your hair. So yeah, my hair is fine with high density. What's yours? Tell me what you think yours is. Okay. Now, how about a free gift? Okay, I've got a free gift for you. I put together a valuable printable resource for you. This is a little more information than what we covered here today. Um, but just send me a direct message with Measure Your Hair's Mojo, please, and I will send you a link to it. It is called Measure to Your— Measure Your Hair's Mojo: Guide to How to Determine Hair Properties at Home Using Simple Tools. So I hope you now have a better understanding of your hair type. And how to care for it with proper shampoo and conditioners. Whatever your hair type is, I encourage that you learn to embrace it and find products that can assist you in your hairstyling adventures. Don't be leery of trying new products on your hair. Just make sure that you understand what you're trying first. Join me next time as we dive into hair texture. Also, come join me in my upcoming workshop. This workshop— please just come, come. It's free, and it is going to be the bomb. It's, it's going to be fabulous. It's at www. Findyourdreamlife.com. And I will put it in the comments as well. So until next time, remember, in the world of hair care, sometimes the real root of the problem is just needing the right information. This is Tami Grgas signing off. And asking God to bless you with— to bless you with grace and abundance. I'll see you next time. Bye. Bye.