We would be out of business long before we ever started if real natural soap damaged hair! This is a common myth *eh-um* marketing misinformation tool… perpetuated by detergent-based shampoo companies. Still aren’t convinced by the thousands of testimonials of how real soap has helped all hair types (hair-dressers included)? Then read this article to bust that lye-ing myth: https://perma-earth.com/why-lye-soap/
Before the 20th Century, people used soap bars to wash themselves – including their hair. The Victorian women had beautiful, long, flowing locks of hair, even in old age.
How did these women get such long, flowing locks of hair without all of the “innovative” modern hair care concoctions? Which never seem to follow through with their grand claims?
It was soap they used to cleanse – pure, plain soap. Castile (olive oil) soap or lard (pig fat) soap were mainly used to cleanse the body and hair. They also conditioned their hair with plain oils or animal fats.
Articles in magazines and books were written about how to properly wash one’s huge mane with a soap bar. It was recommended to wash once per week, but more often was ideal. Most of the time it involved an hour or more of washing the hair section-by-section. Since modern plumbing was not available to most, it took women much longer to wash their incredibly long, thick hair. With today’s plumbing, experienced users of shampoo bar soaps now only need at least 5 minutes to wash their hair!
If you are interested in learning about how to wash your hair with our shampoo soap bars, click here.
Now, this isn’t to say that soap was the only factor contributing to those waterfalls of hairy waves. These people were also restricted to eat locally and in-season without all the modern-day conveniences. This means that a lot of meats and fats and other fresh seasonal foods were consumed. These natural and densely nutritious foods further nourished their hair and scalp.
So, don’t expect to grow locks like your great-great-great grandmother simply from using soap. You haven’t lived like a Victorian for one reason. Plus, consider the common practice of using chemical detergents on one’s hair and skin from birth!
Detergents Vs. Soaps
Detergent Shampoos
Detergents are synthetically made “surfactants” (cleansers activated by water) that act like soap, but actually strip the hair and skin of everything good and kill the microbiome of your skin and hair (and so do naturally-derived surfactants). Foaming agents, waxes, silicones, sulfates, emulsifiers, esters, and other additives are often thrown into these chemical cocktails to make them work like original soap with a lot less effort… And your hair becomes dependent upon these chemicals instead of your natural microbiome.
Detergents also affect the sulfide bonds in your hair (whether or not they are “sulfate-free”), this weakens the sulfide bonds and causes your hair to go flat, or lack body and curl. This causes you to need more haircare products to fix what the detergents broke!
We cover the process of your hair’s transition from drugstore shampoos, click here to learn more!
“99% of us have been using detergents as shampoos all of our lives.” Even if the shampoo was claimed to be “natural” or “organic”, just research ALL of the ingredients you couldn’t pronounce. Spoiler alert: “naturally-derived surfactants” are another word for detergents! We encourage you to challenge us if you think what you have been using is truly not a surfactant or detergent…
It would take another article to list and define all of the surfactants and detergents companies use. Because there are literally hundreds of different chemicals are commonly used . They are often cleverly hidden in online listings or with additional natural-sounding names such as “cleanser derived from plants” or they are omitted completely from sight!!
Don’t worry – it’s easy to become a conscious consumer with a computer at your fingertips 24/7. Type the confusing-sounding ingredients into your search engine and see what pops up. Or highlight the word on your device, tap and hold it, and select “web search” from the pop-up options.
Shampoo Soaps
It’s easy to know if a shampoo is truly natural or not – it needs to be 100% pure soap.
Saponified fats or “Sodium (fat or oil)-ate” are the common ingredients naming what soap is. Make sure no other surfactants or detergents are mixed in though!
Unfortunately, liquid soap will never hold as much moisture and nutrients as cold process soap bars do. This is just for reasons of chemistry. Pure and true liquid soap does not and will never hold a candle to cold process soap bars in hair care for 3 main reasons:
- Liquid soap is only stable if it has less than HALF the moisturizing super-fats as cold process soap!
- Liquid soap-making requires many hours of high heat, destroying a lot of vitamins and nutrients!
- Liquid soap does not lather like bar soap, which makes hair-washing extremely difficult.
If you are interested in more details, read our Why We Don’t Make Liquid Soap article.
Even if you don’t stick with our shampoos, try to use only natural soap bars – for your hair’s sake!
Hair Benefits
These are based on hundreds of real customer reports and reviews. Take a look at our individual shampoo soap listing reviews and our testimonials compilation.
Hair Growth
Customers report new hair growth as soon as 1 month of using shampoo soap bars exclusively and consistently. Consistent use is considered to be washing daily or every other day.
Many customers report markedly faster hair growth after only a few months. Which means more frequent visits to your salon for hair cuts!
Body & Texture
Customers report improvements in hair body and texture!
Most people only know their hair after being stripped with detergents all their life. They don’t know how much natural body and texture their hair really has until they start using shampoo soap.
Detergents stifle many beautiful genetic expressions of hair that shampoo soaps allow to develop.
Less Split-Ends
Another plus to using shampoo soaps is not needing as many hair cuts due to lack of split ends!
Shampoo soaps are so much more nourishing and moisturizing than detergents are. Your hair’s strength and integrity is kept in tact for much longer. Which leads us to our next advantage…
More Moisture
Since shampoo soap doesn’t strip the hair like detergents, hair is much more moisturized and strengthened.
Soap provides literally hundreds of times the amount of naturally nourishing ingredients than regular shampoos.
We use about 25% raw grass-fed buttermilk in all of our shampoo soaps! This is nothing like the powdered milk or extracts in other shampoo soaps.
Colored Hair
Shampoo soap bar users report more time between full permanent dye treatments – unless their roots grow faster! We even get “complaints” of customers dye their roots more often due to faster hair growth. But yet, their older dyed hair retains the permanent color longer.
Customers with light blonde or gray hair also report less issues with brassy tones!
We don’t recommend using shampoo soap bars with semi-permanent dyes. Shampoo soap needs more massaging during the lathering process. This more vigorous washing method can rub the semi-permanent dyes off of the hair shafts faster.
Less Products
We’re so happy to hear when a customer says they’ve eliminated most of the hair products they used before.
Detergents are the cause of so many cosmetic hair issues. These issues include lack of body, lack of definition, lack of texture, lack of color, etc. Most people don’t need as many care products after getting rid of detergents from their hair routine.
This also reduces your exposure to more chemicals.
Environmental Benefits
No Plastic
This one is pretty obvious, but it can’t never be understated. The early 21st century is swimming in plastic: polluting our ecosystems at alarming rates and wrecking havoc upon our health. Using shampoo soaps is another way to get rid of plastic from your life and future generations – for good.
Less Transport
Imagine an oddly shaped 12 oz plastic bottle of liquid shampoo condensing into a 4 oz rectangular solid soap bar. Then imagine how much less effort it would be to transport the same amount of cleansing power is! The transportation implications are massive when switching from liquid to bar.
This ultimately results in reducing transportation waste by at least 66%, or more if you buy directly from the manufacturer. That means 66% less gas being used and 66% less trucks on the highways.
Then consider all the other hair products eliminated from being transported due to the hair benefits of shampoo soaps! That leads us to our next point.
Less Products
You consume less hair products due to the benefits of shampoo soap. And if you consume less products, you cut out a lot of waste.
From transportation wastes, to plastic waste, to the wastes of manufacturing and sourcing production. All of those are eliminated when you stop using the unnecessary products.
Did you know the beauty-care industry is considered by some economic circles to be the top-grossing in the world? That’s a LOT of stuff being produced and consumed!
Local & Natural Ingredients
90%-100% of our ingredients are completely natural. 50%-99% of our ingredients are local. Many of our ingredients are certified organic.
All of these factors can make a gigantic environmental impact – imagine if everyone used locally produced body care!
You can read more about our ingredients here and more about lard vs. tallow here.
If you can think of any other benefits and reasons why to use shampoo soap bars, or if you have any questions or concerns – please let us know! We’re always happy to help.
Does the PH of the soap bars damage hair?
Simply put, we would be out of business long before we ever started if real natural soap damaged hair! This is a common myth (eh-um *marketing misinformation tool*) perpetuated by detergent-based shampoo companies. If you are still not convinced by the thousands of testimonials of how real soap has helped our hair summarized above (from hairdressers too!), then you may want to read this article that busts that myth you are asking about: https://perma-earth.com/why-lye-soap/
Can you use shampoo bars on hair with extensions?
Hi Abbey! We have not heard of anyone having an issue with using our shampoo soaps on extensions. When we get more specific feedback we will try to remember to update this response. Thanks for your question!
I am so grateful for the work you do! I have been using the shampoo bar/conditioner bar for another a month and a half. My hair STOPPED falling out after the first week! I am not using any other products ever. Thank you!
Hi Hannah! We are so happy to hear this, thank you for your feedback, I will share this with the team 🙂
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