Bath Geek’s Coconut-Free Hair Regimen

I get a lot of questions on coconut-free shampoo. While I am not yet able to provide actual shampoo, yes, you can use coconut-free soap in a pinch. Because of that, I currently recommend the following regimen for hair care if you are allergic to coconut:

1. Use dry shampoo as much as possible (there is a lot on the market that will suffice and quite a lot of it is coconut free). At least try to give yourself a day in between wet washes.
2. When you have to wash your hair, use liquid coconut-free soap, or lather up with a bar of soap and use the lather. This is preferable to using the soap directly on your hair. I would not recommend doing this more than 2-3 times a week because alkaline soap (all soap is alkaline) is really drying to hair, and there is only so much I can do to lower the pH of soap before it stops being soap.
3. After you wash your hair, use a leave-in conditioner of some kind (or rub some argan oil onto your hair) to repair and protect it.

I am still working on coconut-free shampoo, but finding a source of coconut-free detergent molecules is proving to be very difficult. (Boy, do I wish I had actually gone into materials science in college like I meant to.) In the meantime, I hope this helps!

[ Photo by Matthew Tkocz on Unsplash ]