What Shampoo Really Does in Your Shower — Tip #9
The foundation of great hair starts with your scalp🧴
Before we get started with today’s issue, be aware that on January 16th, OpenAI announced that they will begin rolling out ads during ChatGPT sessions on its Free and Go versions. I saw this coming, which is why Tip #6 focused on how to use AI without falling victim to its persuasion machine aiming at your wallet. Feel free to refresh your memory👇
Now, back to the main program. When I was a kid, I used to shower and shampoo my hair daily. Little did I know about how much damage I was causing to my hair: stripping natural oils, causing dryness and weakening it. I am amazed at how many daily habits go unexplained and that’s why Don’t Panic was born!
Later in life, I had a chance to talk with a hair care doctor while helping him building the website for his clinic. During a casual chat, he helped me understand several mistakes I was doing with my hair. In the spirit of this newsletter, we’ll tackle one aspect at a time. Today, we start with: why do we use shampoo in the first place? 🧴
The primary goal of shampoo is to treat your scalp, and secondarily, your hair. Here are some key benefits:
Cleansing of scalp and hair: Removes dirt, oil, sweat, dead skin cells, and environmental pollutants from scalp and hair.
Prevents buildup: Helps maintain scalp health by cleansing away buildup that can cause irritation or dandruff.
Prepares for conditioning: Prepares hair for conditioning (we will talk about it in the future) and styling by making it clean and manageable.
Additional benefits: Some shampoos also provide additional benefits like moisturizing, strengthening, color protection, or treating specific scalp conditions.
Buildup, oil, and sweat accumulate in the hair follicles, not on your hair strands! This was my first big misconception. The key to haircare is to take care of your scalp first, and that’s exactly what shampoo is designed to do. So, next time you shampoo, be sure to apply it to your scalp and massage it in, rather than just on your hair strands. Most people apply it on the top of their head and then proceed in circular motions from there. If you have visited a hair salon, you may have seen them applying it this way
Your weekly tip: Apply shampoo on the scalp, not on the hair. Massage it into your scalp for 30-60s, then rinse thoroughly. This is enough to clean also the dirt that deposit on your hair strands without causing excess dryness.
Don’t forget to forward this tip to a friend, maybe someone bald 👴 who might be underestimating the importance of shampooing their scalp just because they no longer have hair 🙏
See you next week, until then…
Don’t Panic 😱
You’d need to pay me a LOT of money to get me to wash my hair daily! 😂
What about conditioning though? I’m personally convinced it’s a scam. Haven’t used conditioner in 12+ years and my hair is just as healthy 🤷
I always used to believe that the entire hair length has to be shampoo-ed 🤣