Shampoo for REALLY oily hair

[dawncayden]

I have to wash my hair everyday, if I don't I have to wear a hat cuz it looks so bad. I haven't found anything that keeps it clean/clean looking for longer then a day.
I've heard grapefruit is good.

[dawncayden]

forgot to sub

[Caneel]

I also have an extremely oily scalp and need to wash once a day. (There is no way I could go more than 24 hours) I have tried salon products as well as the cheapy stuff and so far, Neutrogena, which is around $5, seems to work the best.

[hottmama]

Have you tried baking soda? I don't have oily hair but if I use BS it sucks every drop of oil from my hair and scalp (which is why I don't use it regularly!)

[Spastica]

I used to have the same problem, otherwise I'd be scratching the bejeezus out of my head if I didn't shampoo daily.

It sounds odd, but overshampooing leads to more oily hair - it's the same with your face. Your skin/scalp overcompensates for what you keep stripping away. You have to wean your hair/skin off harsh detergents and either use less detergent cleansers or use more gentle cleansers. It takes time, but it works.

I can actually skip days of shampooing/cleansing my hair with something now. I don't have any crazy scabs on my head and it's not a big oily mess near the roots either.

[PumpkinSeeds]

What spastica said. I have really oily hair and what worked was shampooing it less often. I can now shampoo my hair only twice a week and it looks fine. Work up to it over a couple of months. First force yourself to go 36 hours without washing it and do that for a couple of weeks. Then move up to 48 hours etc.

[dawncayden]

Thanks for the reply's so far.
I've successfully gone 2 days without washing it. But now that I'm working in an office I need to look presentable, which means I can't wear a hat or anything. A nice bandana thing doesn't work either...I have a wierd shaped head and it never stays on
My mom has the same hair type and she exclusively uses natural shampoo's but still has to wash it everyday.
Out of cost reasons, I don't buy the natural shampoo, so I'm using the drugstore types :
I'd like to try something like baking soda...I'll see how that goes.

[A Mothers Love]

powder is good & use a blow dryer on your hair when it looks oily. The warm/hot air drys up the oil & blows the powder away too

[PumpkinSeeds]

If you work up slowly your hair won't look greasy. I promise. I can go four days now and my hair doesn't look very oily at all.

When I say that my hair is oily, I mean that I have used dawn dishsoap on it before to get all the oil out. Truly, that's when I began to realize it was all the washing that was making it oily.

Start with adding a extra 12 hours between washes and working up. Do it for a a couple of weeks before adding more time between washes.

[Poddi]

You can train your scalp to be less oily. A lot of the time your hair is oily because of too much washing with harsh shampoo. My DH used to wash everyday and is oily by evening. He started switching to gentler shampoos. Then he started skipping a day. It took a while but I think his scalp has adjusted. Now he's mostly doing conditioner-only wash, every couple days. He only uses shampoo once every week or two. His hair doesn't look oily at all.

I stretched my washing schedule to every 3 days and I'm happy about it. I use shampoo bars and they're quite gentle.

[orangefoot]

I have oily everything but stopping using detergents on my hair and face has really made a difference to my 'oiliness'. I use Baking soda on my hair every other day and very rarely use shampoo unless I have put Dax wax on my hair to make it lie down!

I did try the BS a year or so ago but didn't stick with it becuase I didn't like the feel of my hair. At that time it was cut in a short-ish style but not washing it made it look droopy. I shaved my hair at the beginning of the year and started on the bs in earnest then. Now I am growing it out and the bs is still really working for me although I now wash it every other day where when I had about 1/4" hair I did it less often.

I would suggest going shorter (although maybe not shaving!) if you feel that the bs isn't working with the length of hair you have now and combine that with easing yourself off the shampoos.

Half the battle is getting used to your hair feeling different and that not being a bad thing.