We hear you: You exercise daily and you're too sweaty to go 3 days without washing your hair. But is sweat actually a dirty thing that you should fear? Or is it healthy to ignore sweat and skip a day (or two)?
first, Let's talk about sweat ON YOUR HAIR.
Nothing feels quite as nice as freshly washed hair. You feel confident to show your hair off to the world, as the wind gracefully blows through your tresses without greasy oils peeking through, right?
The fact is that sweat and grease are not 100% the same thing, and they're not always connected. So if you have greasy hair, it's most likely not due to your exercise or even being hot in the summer months.
Here are some facts for you:
Sweat is 99% water. It's clear and odourless (until it gets combined with bacteria) and it even contains natural salts (sodium chloride). You've tasted it before, that "salty flavour" you've experienced when a drop of sweat runs down into your mouth (yum!).
The oils on your scalp are produced by your sebaceous glands. These oils are precious! They protect your scalp and travel down your hair, acting as heat-protectants that also make your hair shiny.
When these oils and sweat combine, they can give off that familiar "scalp smell". But in actuality it takes quite a bit of this cocktail to produce an odour, and quite a bit of time in order for it to be unpleasant or unhealthy. In fact, the worse your dietary habits, the more your sweat will smell because there are more toxins released this way!
However, sweat is not a bad word, nor is it "dirty". Sweat is just the body's way of balancing our body temperature and the best way to remove toxins from the body. Sweat can easily be washed off using just water, since it's water-based (remember, it's 99% water). But it's not something you need to fear or be grossed out with.
If your scalp is oily, it's typically not due to sweat.
Since you don't sweat oil, exercise is not entirely the culprit for a greasy scalp. When you exercise, your scalp circulation is increased and your sweat can combine with the oils already on your scalp, emulsifying them into a different, stickier sensation.
EXTENDING YOUR WASH DAYS IS A GOOD THING.
If you're experiencing greasy hair and you feel the need to wash it daily, extending your wash days is the best thing you can do. Washing your hair daily can make the scalp dry and encourage it to produce more oils as it tries to protect itself from bacteria.
Washing less often may take a bit of time for your scalp to get used to as it works to calm down the production of oils it was used to make, but extending to 2 days is quite easy, and extending to 3 days is not that difficult! It just takes patience and following a few other tips so that this can work for you as well.
Here are some blog posts that will help you learn more about this topic:
Read this -> Why is my hair so greasy
Read this -> Wash your scalp not your hair
ORGANIZING YOUR EXERCISE ROUTINE TO COMPLEMENT HAIR WASHING ROUTINE.
Even if you're an avid exerciser there are ways to extend the time between washing your hair. You just have to organize your routine in such a way that it complements both your exercise goals as well as your hair goals.
As you know, for an exercise routine to be effective you need 3 things:
Cardio workouts – for heart health and stamina
Weight training – to build and support muscle strength
Rest time – to allow your body to heal between workouts
This is what you would typically do to make your exercise routine pair up beautifully with an extended hair-washing routine:
So on day (1) you work your butt off with cardio. You sweat buckets. You get all smelly. And then you rush home and have a shower – including washing your hair. Hurray!
This is DAY ONE.
On day (2) you do some weight training. You focus on your legs, for example, and you push those weights and sweat a bit. So you're going to go home and have a quick body wash and a hair rinse using only water. You can also do a nice gentle hair tea rinse to soothe your scalp. You can basically do this using any kind of tea, but we especially recommend using fresh rosemary and making a tea, pouring it on the scalp and leaving it in there as you rinse your body out. [HERE] is how to prepare it.
At night, be sure to massage your scalp again! This is such a great way for your scalp to get used to being soothed, unclogged, and motivated for circulation every single day, so you're basically tricking it into thinking you're giving it attention all the time and not being neglected. Sounds corny maybe, but it WORKS.
On day (3) you rest. Maybe do a little stretching, Yoga, or meditation, and you go on about your day. There's no need to wash your hair here, and there shouldn't be a need to wash your body either because it's not "dirty". You may have transpired a bit at night as your body regulates its temperature up or down, or you lifted some heavy boxes around the house.
At night, you will massage your scalp gently (see our quick YouTube Shorts [HERE] to learn the proper way to do these!)
Then your day (4) will become your day (1) again and you start over.
What if you are a daily jogger, cyclist, outdoor worker, or exercise extensively every SINGLE day?
If you are someone who sweats A LOT daily, then you will need to have showers daily to rid your body of odour because sweat will mix with the body's natural oil production and cause odour, but I repeat – you DO NOT need to wash your hair daily as sweat is mostly water. Scalp massages nightly will help you, and then when you wash your body, a simple water rinse is all you need.
In this case, you will still benefit from washing your hair less often, just in a different way:
Day (1) you work/cycle/run and sweat. You go home and have a cleansing body shower but do not wash your hair. Instead, you can try a tea rinse (again, [HERE]) and massage your scalp at night. Your sweat will be gone and most of your natural scalp oils will remain but they will be protecting your scalp from bacteria, while the nighttime massage will help to release them, getting them ready for the next day's work/cycle/run.
Day (2) you work/cycle/run and sweat, and then shower, washing your scalp as you normally would. If you would like to try – and depending on your hair type – you can instead do a "scalp only wash" by diluting your shampoo portion 50/50 with water and aiming at the scalp only. Shampoo bars are a great way of half-washing or "partial washing" and we have a whole blog post on this topic [HERE].
The tradition of having a daily shower – and the mentality that it's needed.
Many of us have erroneously grown up being told we need a daily shower to be "clean". From the time we were babies, we've been taught to have nightly baths to "calm down" before bedtime, as this would help us sleep better.
Washing our skin (and scalp) daily is a fairly new tradition. Our grandparents did not do this practice, as water was scarce and expensive to heat. As the cosmetics industry grew, so did the advertising and its marketing efforts to make us believe that we needed daily showers, daily hair products and a lot more washing to have that "perfect hair". A scam.
Showering daily hurts our bodies. It has been proven ineffective and hurts us in the long run. Washing using soap and harsh shampoos strips away the body's natural oils – the most protective cover for our largest organ: the skin.
The skin has its own microbiome – kind of like the gut flora, but covering it all over. Washing it actually disrupts it. Learn more about the skin's microbiome [HERE] - a blog post well worth reading and learning from!
What about cultural reasons for requiring a daily shower/cleanse?
We cannot ethically recommend best practices that may go against religious and/or cultural reasons. We also know that many of these practices include daily cleanses with mostly water, and we believe these to be excellent alternatives to cleansing the hair and skin daily, while retaining the body's natural protective oils. Many of these cleanses also include gorgeous herbal teas and plants with natural saponins (natural 'cleansers') – such as Shikakai and yucca extracts. Stay tuned for the release of our natural cleansers! (wink wink!).
in conclusion:
Everyone's lifestyle is different, as are everyone's hair type and hair needs. You must find what works best for you. Our motto continues to be "less is best" as we support less cleansing and a such, less draining and flushing of harmful ingredients down the drain. Our OBLOOM products have been derived with naturality in mind, and the support of our fragile eco-system. Why not give them a try?
What do you think? Do you wash your hair every single time after you workout? Have you learned a method that works specifically for you? We'd love to hear your opinion!