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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 during old age.
How did these women get such long, flowing locks of hair without all of the “innovative” modern haircare concoctions – which never seem to follow through with their grandiose claims?
It was soap they used to cleanse – pure, plain soap. Most of the time castile (olive oil) soap or lard (pig fat) soap was used to cleanse the body and hair. They also conditioned their hair with plain oils or animal fats.
There were articles in magazines and books written about how to properly wash one’s huge mane with a soap bar – recommended once per week minimum, 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 – unlike today. Thankfully, experienced users of shampoo bar soaps now might only need 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 wait just a second, this isn’t to say that soap was the only factor contributing to those waterfalls of hairy waves – these women were also forced to eat mostly local 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, further nourishing their hair and scalp.
So, don’t expect to be able 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 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 detoxing from your hair’s addiction to 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-dervied 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 an additional article to list and define all of the surfactants and detergents companies use – 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 expanded pop up options.
Shampoo Soaps
On the same note, it’s quite easy to determine 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 moisturization and nutrients as cold process soap bars do – 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 superfats as cold process soap!
- Liquid soapmaking 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.
So even if you don’t stick with our shampoo soap bars, try to stick with only natural soap bars – for your hair’s sake!
Hair Benefits
These are based on hundreds of real customer reports and reviews. You may take a look for yourself on our shampoo soap listing reviews and our testimonials.
Hair Growth
Customers report new hair growth as soon as 1 month of using shampoo soap bars exclusively and consistently.
Many customers report markedly faster hair growth after only a few months. We even receive “complaints” of customers needing to dye their roots more often!
Body & Texture
Customers report improvements in hair body and texture!
Because their hair had been stripped with detergents all of their life, they never knew how much natural body and texture their hair really had until they started 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!
Since shampoo soaps are so much more nourishing and moisturizing than detergents are, your hair’s integrity and strength is kept in tact for much longer. Which leads us to our next benefit…
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 nourishing fats, oils, and butters than detergents do.
We also include about 25% raw grassfed buttermilk in all of our shampoo soaps – nothing like the powdered milk or extracts in other shampoo soaps.
Colored Hair
Customers who use shampoo soap bars report longer times between full permanent dye treatments.
Customers with light blonde or grey hair also report less issues with brassy tones.
However, we don’t recommend using shampoo soap bars with semi-permanent dyes. Since shampoo soap needs more massaging during the lathering process, this 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 haircare products they used before.
Since detergents are the cause of so many cosmetic hair issues: lack of body, lack of definition, lack of texture, lack of color, etc. Many people find they don’t need as many care products as before.
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 eliminate plastic from your life and future generations – for good.
Less Transport
When you’re able to condense a oddly-shaped 12 oz plastic bottle of liquid shampoo into a 4 oz rectangular solid soap bar – the transportation implications are massive.
This ultimately results in reducing transportation waste by at least 2/3, maybe more if you purchase directly from the soapmaker. That means 2/3 less gas being used and 2/3 less trucks on the highways.
Then consider all of the other haircare products eliminated from being transported due to the hair benefits of shampoo soap!
Less Products
If you are consuming less haircare products due to the hair benefits of shampoo soap – you are cutting 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 eliminate 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%-100% of our ingredients are local. Many of our ingredients are certified organic.
All of these factors combined 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.
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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