Advice for making LS as Shampoo?

[asatish1888]

Hi, everyone my name is Asha! I have a question regarding liquid soap. I have been thinking about making myself some shampoo with Olive Oil. I have heard that LS soap can be quite harsh on your hair. I even have first hand experience with this knowledge. I made a gallon batch of LS with the intention of using it as dish liquid. It cleans really well but isn't harsh on my hands (have a bad habit of washing dishes without gloves). That's why I thought it would be ok to wash my hair with it. I have really thick, curly ethnic hair to boot. I soon realized how stupid that was. My hair was soooo stripped of it's natural oils... I might as well of had of big ol' ball of steel wool on my head! I've already figured out that the high amount of CO is what ruined my hair... so I won't be doing that anytime soon!

Does anybody have any ideas on formulating a recipe that is not too stripping on the hair? I still would like to add CO. I love it! It is one main oils I am able to get locally in bulk amounts for a decent price (I get it at Costco! The quality is AMAZING!). Does anyone have a recommended limit on using CO in a shampoo recipe? I know that description is long-winded but any tips and advice would be VERY appreciated!

Thank You!

P.S: My recipe that I used at the time had in 95.8% of CO, 4.2% of Castor with a 5% lye excess.

 

[toxikon]

Hey and welcome! The main issue with using lye-based soaps for hair is the high pH of 9-11ish. There's really no way to significantly lower that number, so it'll always be high.

Skin pH bounces back quickly and it's alive and always shedding so soap doesn't do much damage to it. Hair, on the other hand, isn't the same and damage can accumulate over time.

I'd personally never use lye soaps on my hair no matter how gentle they feel on my hands.

You could look into some syndet recipes Instead!

 

[Susie]

I used soap for shampoo for quite a while, then I noticed that my hair had developed a straw texture. I went to get my hair "trimmed", and the friend that cut my hair (she was a professional cosmetologist, but she was my friend first) said that it was so damaged that there was no saving it. She thought I had damaged it with trying to straighten it. I told her that I only washed, conditioned, and let it dry naturally. So we figured out it was the soap. It cost me 16 inches of hair, (she would have cut more off had I let her), and another haircut as soon as I had healthy hair to cover my head. I now use only commercial shampoo and conditioner, and my hair looks fine.

I am not saying you will have the same results. But many of us have, and it you were planning on giving it away, I wouldn't...seriously wouldn't.

 

[shunt2011]

I had the same issue as Susie though my hair was shorter. Totally messed up my hair until it grew out and just kept having it trimmed. My mom is a licensed cosmetologist and she kind of warned me but I didn't listen. Now, lesson learned. My husband doesn't have a whole lot of hair and does use my bar soap to wash his a couple times a week. The rest of the time he uses commercial shampoo.

 

[DeeAnna]

What Susie and Shari said is my experience too. The damage doesn't seem obvious for awhile, so I got away with using soap on my hair for about a year. Then the damage was unmistakable.

Another tidbit -- my husband has collar length hair. Now that I know what to look for, I can tell when he's been washing his hair with lye-based soap rather than using the synthetic detergent based shampoo bar I make. In just a few days of using soap, his hair gets visibly less shiny and loses some of its gentle wave, although it's still soft to the touch and manageable.

 

[lsg]

If you want to make your own shampoo, you might try using surfactants. Swiftcrafty Monkey blog has great advice and formulas for making shampoo. I have made our family's shampoo for several years.

http://swiftcraftymonkey.blogspot.com/2010/05/shampoo-instructions-for-making-shampoo.html

 

[Obsidian]

I had the same issue as the other, lost all my hair to damage from using soap. I was sing a very gentle recipe and it took two years for the damage to accumulate but when it happened, it was bad. Ended up having to buzz my head.

 

[earlene]

After a month of using a shampoo bar that I now only love as a body bar as it is very luxurious on the skin, my hair began to look and feel like straw and I quit using it on my hair. I did not cut it all off and do continue to let it grow because I love my long hair, in spite of the fact that it breaks much more easily than it ever has before. But it doesn't look as good as it used to and someday I will go the route of so many old women and cut my hair for convenience. If I were still young, I probably would just cut it all off and start over, but I am quite old and stubborn, so I keep it long and watch as it fills my hairbrush, wondering if I will be bald soon. (I also tried a LS made with KOH, which had lanolin in it and gave up on it after a few washes for much the same reasons. I don't remember atm which came first, but I think it was the bar soap.)

Seeing so many here who have had this experience, really is a very harsh warning of what can happen. But will you be different? I don't know. Does one's hair type matter? Maybe, but I really don't know. My hair was fine blonde turned wiry white, with a bit of natural wave and quite quite long (below my waist). I used to be able to do a French braid that stayed neat, but now with so many broken lengths of hair throughout my hair, even regular braids tend to become untidy looking in a matter of a couple of hours. Does lye soap do this to all hair types? I think I did read of at least one or two members here who have a more positive experience with lye shampoo, but I don't know what hair types that they had/have.

 

[Saranac]

Same with me. Soap as a shampoo is a cunning consort; it often tricks one into believing good things are happening. . . until it's too late. It took me about 2 months to realize that soap was destroying my hair and that the "adjustment period" was nothing more than a myth. At the time, my DH had short hair, and the soap worked great for him as he was having it cut rather often. But once he started growing it out, I asked him to stop using it and switch to regular ol' shampoo (and he actually listens to me!).

Definitely check out the link lsg posted above, as well as https://itsallinmyhands.com/2013/04/20/how-to-formulate-a-detergent/ ; both offer great information about formulating shampoo.