Should We Skip Shampoo?

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It’s Q&A Day at 10almonds!

Have a question or a request? We love to hear from you!

In cases where we’ve already covered something, we might link to what we wrote before, but will always be happy to revisit any of our topics again in the future too—there’s always more to say!

As ever: if the question/request can be answered briefly, we’ll do it here in our Q&A Thursday edition. If not, we’ll make a main feature of it shortly afterwards!

So, no question/request too big or small 😎

❝What’s the science on “no poo”? Is it really better for hair? There are so many mixed reports out there.❞

First, for any unfamiliar: this is not about constipation; rather, it is about skipping shampoo, and either:

  • Using an alternative cleaning agent, such as vinegar and/or sodium bicarbonate
  • Using nothing at all, just conditioner when wet and brushing when dry

Let’s examine why the trend became a thing: the thinking went “shampoo does not exist in nature, and most of our body is more or less self-cleaning; shampoos remove oils from hair, and the body has to produce more sebum to compensate, resulting in a rapid cycle of dry and greasy hair”.

Now let’s fact-check each of those:

  • shampoo does not exist in nature: true (except in the sense that everything that exists can be argued to exist in nature, since nature encompasses everything—but the point is that shampoo is a purely artificial human invention)
  • most of our body is more or less self-cleaning: true, but our hair is not, for the same reason our nails are not: they’re not really a living part of the overall organism that is our body, so much as a keratinous protrusion of neatly stacked and hardened dead cells from our body. Dead things are not self-cleaning.
  • shampoos remove oils from hair: true; that is what they were invented for and they do it well
  • the body has to produce more sebum to compensate, resulting in a rapid cycle of dry and greasy hair: false; or at least, there is no evidence for this.

Our hair’s natural oils are great at protecting it, and also great at getting dirt stuck in it. For the former reason we want the oil there; for the latter reason, we don’t.

So the trick becomes: how to remove the oil (and thus the dirt stuck in it) and then put clean oil back (but not too much, because we don’t want it greasy, just, shiny and not dry)?

The popular answer is: shampoo to clean the hair, conditioner to put an appropriate amount of oil* back.

*these days, mostly not actually oil, but rather silicon-based substitutes, that do the same job of protecting hair and keeping it shiny and not brittle, without attracting so much dirt. Remember also that silicon is inert and very body safe; its molecules are simply too large to be absorbed, which is why it gets used in hair products, some skin products, and lube.

See also: Water-based Lubricant vs Silicon-based Lubricant – Which is Healthier?

If you go “no poo”, then what will happen is either you dry your hair out much worse by using vinegar or (even worse) bicarbonate of soda, or you just have oil (and any dirt stuck in it) in your hair for the life of the hair. As in, each individual strand of hair has a lifespan, and when it falls out, the dirt will go with it. But until that day, it’s staying with you, oil and dirt and all.

If you use a conditioner after using those “more natural” harsh cleaners* that aren’t shampoo, then you’ll undo a lot of the damage done, and you’ll probably be fine.

*in fact, if you’re going to skip shampoo, then instead of vinegar or bicarbonate of soda, dish soap from your kitchen may actually do less damage, because at least it’s pH-balanced. However, please don’t use that either.

If you’re going to err one way or the other with regard to pH though, erring on the side of slightly acidic is much better than slightly alkaline.

More on pH: Journal of Trichology | The Shampoo pH can Affect the Hair: Myth or Reality?

If you use nothing, then brushing a lot will mitigate some of the accumulation of dirt, but honestly, it’s never going to be clean until you clean it.

Our recommendation

When your hair seems dirty, and not before, wash it with a simple shampoo (most have far too many unnecessary ingredients; it just needs a simple detergent, and the rest is basically for marketing; to make it foam completely unnecessarily but people like foam, to make it thicker so it feels more substantial, to make it smell nice, to make it a color that gives us confidence it has ingredients in it, etc).

Then, after rinsing, enjoy a nice conditioner. Again there are usually a lot of unnecessary ingredients, but an argument can be made this time for some being more relevant as unlike with the shampoo, many ingredients are going to remain on your hair after rinsing.

Between washes, if you have long hair, consider putting some hair-friendly oil (such as argan oil or coconut oil) on the tips daily, to avoid split ends.

And if you have tight curly hair, then this advice goes double for you, because it takes a lot longer for natural oils to get from your scalp to the ends of your hair. For those of us with straight hair, it pretty much zips straight on down there within a day or two; not so if you have beautiful 4C curls to take care of!

For more on taking care of hair gently, check out:

Gentler Hair Care Options, According To Science

Take care!

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  • Without Medicare Part B’s Shield, Patient’s Family Owes $81,000 for a Single Air-Ambulance Flight

    10almonds is reader-supported. We may, at no cost to you, receive a portion of sales if you purchase a product through a link in this article.

    Without Medicare Part B’s Shield, Patient’s Family Owes $81,000 for a Single Air-Ambulance Flight

    Debra Prichard was a retired factory worker who was careful with her money, including what she spent on medical care, said her daughter, Alicia Wieberg. “She was the kind of person who didn’t go to the doctor for anything.”

    That ended last year, when the rural Tennessee resident suffered a devastating stroke and several aneurysms. She twice was rushed from her local hospital to Vanderbilt University Medical Center in Nashville, 79 miles away, where she was treated by brain specialists. She died Oct. 31 at age 70.

    One of Prichard’s trips to the Nashville hospital was via helicopter ambulance. Wieberg said she had heard such flights could be pricey, but she didn’t realize how extraordinary the charge would be — or how her mother’s skimping on Medicare coverage could leave the family on the hook.

    Then the bill came.

    The Patient: Debra Prichard, who had Medicare Part A insurance before she died.

    Medical Service: An air-ambulance flight to Vanderbilt University Medical Center.

    Service Provider: Med-Trans Corp., a medical transportation service that is part of Global Medical Response, an industry giant backed by private equity investors. The larger company operates in all 50 states and says it has a total of 498 helicopters and airplanes.

    Total Bill: $81,739.40, none of which was covered by insurance.

    What Gives: Sky-high bills from air-ambulance providers have sparked complaints and federal action in recent years.

    For patients with private insurance coverage, the No Surprises Act, which went into effect in 2022, bars air-ambulance companies from billing people more than they would pay if the service were considered “in-network” with their health insurers. For patients with public coverage, such as Medicare or Medicaid, the government sets payment rates at much lower levels than the companies charge.

    But Prichard had opted out of the portion of Medicare that covers ambulance services.

    That meant when the bill arrived less than two weeks after her death, her estate was expected to pay the full air-ambulance fee of nearly $82,000. The main assets are 12 acres of land and her home in Decherd, Tennessee, where she lived for 48 years and raised two children. The bill for a single helicopter ride could eat up roughly a third of the estate’s value, said Wieberg, who is executor.

    The family’s predicament stems from the complicated nature of Medicare coverage.

    Prichard was enrolled only in Medicare Part A, which is free to most Americans 65 or older. That section of the federal insurance program covers inpatient care, and it paid most of her hospital bills, her daughter said.

    But Prichard declined other Medicare coverage, including Part B, which handles such things as doctor visits, outpatient treatment, and ambulance rides. Her daughter suspects she skipped that coverage to avoid the premiums most recipients pay, which currently are about $175 a month.

    Loren Adler, a health economist for the Brookings Institution who studies ambulance bills, estimated the maximum charge that Medicare would have allowed for Prichard’s flight would have been less than $10,000 if she’d signed up for Part B. The patient’s share of that would have been less than $2,000. Her estate might have owed nothing if she’d also purchased supplemental “Medigap” coverage, as many Medicare members do to cover things like coinsurance, he said.

    Nicole Michel, a spokesperson for Global Medical Response, the ambulance provider, agreed with Adler’s estimate that Medicare would have limited the charge for the flight to less than $10,000. But she said the federal program’s payment rates don’t cover the cost of providing air-ambulance services.

    “Our patient advocacy team is actively engaged with Ms. Wieberg’s attorney to determine if there was any other applicable medical coverage on the date of service that we could bill to,” Michel wrote in an email to KFF Health News. “If not, we are fully committed to working with Ms. Wieberg, as we do with all our patients, to find an equitable solution.”

    The Resolution: In mid-February, Wieberg said the company had not offered to reduce the bill.

    Wieberg said she and the attorney handling her mother’s estate both contacted the company, seeking a reduction in the bill. She said she also contacted Medicare officials, filled out a form on the No Surprises Act website, and filed a complaint with Tennessee regulators who oversee ambulance services. She said she was notified Feb. 12 that the company filed a legal claim against the estate for the entire amount.

    Wieberg said other health care providers, including ground ambulance services and the Vanderbilt hospital, wound up waiving several thousand dollars in unpaid fees for services they provided to Prichard that are normally covered by Medicare Part B.

    But as it stands, Prichard’s estate owes about $81,740 to the air-ambulance company.

    More from Bill of the Month

    The Takeaway: People who are eligible for Medicare are encouraged to sign up for Part B, unless they have private health insurance through an employer or spouse.

    “If someone with Medicare finds that they are having difficulty paying the Medicare Part B premiums, there are resources available to help compare Medicare coverage choices and learn about options to help pay for Medicare costs,” Meena Seshamani, director of the federal Center for Medicare, said in an email to KFF Health News.

    She noted that every state offers free counseling to help people navigate Medicare.

    In Tennessee, that counseling is offered by the State Health Insurance Assistance Program. Its director, Lori Galbreath, told KFF Health News she wishes more seniors would discuss their health coverage options with trained counselors like hers.

    “Every Medicare recipient’s experience is different,” she said. “We can look at their different situations and give them an unbiased view of what their next best steps could be.”

    Counselors advise that many people with modest incomes enroll in a Medicare Savings Program, which can cover their Part B premiums. In 2023, Tennessee residents could qualify for such assistance if they made less than $1,660 monthly as a single person or $2,239 as a married couple. Many people also could obtain help with other out-of-pocket expenses, such as copays for medical services.

    Wieberg, who lives in Missouri, has been preparing the family home for sale.

    She said the struggle over her mother’s air-ambulance bill makes her wonder why Medicare is split into pieces, with free coverage for inpatient care under Part A, but premiums for coverage of other crucial services under Part B.

    “Anybody past the age of 70 is likely going to need both,” she said. “And so why make it a decision of what you can afford or not afford, or what you think you’re going to use or not use?”

    Bill of the Month is a crowdsourced investigation by KFF Health News and NPR that dissects and explains medical bills. Do you have an interesting medical bill you want to share with us? Tell us about it!

    KFF Health News is a national newsroom that produces in-depth journalism about health issues and is one of the core operating programs at KFF—an independent source of health policy research, polling, and journalism. Learn more about KFF.

    Subscribe to KFF Health News’ free Morning Briefing.

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  • Getting COMFY – by Jordan Gross

    10almonds is reader-supported. We may, at no cost to you, receive a portion of sales if you purchase a product through a link in this article.

    It’s easy to see how good “morning people” seem to have it; it’s harder, it seems, to become one.

    And, if we’re forced by circumstance to be the morning person we’re not? We all-too-easily find ourselves greeting each coming day without the joy that, in an ideal world, we might.

    So, is it possible to learn this power? Jordan Gross has it mapped out for it us…

    The “COMFY” of the title is indeed an acronym, and it stands for:

    • Calm
    • Openness
    • Movement
    • Funny
    • You

    There’s a chapter explaining each in detail, and they’re bookended with other chapters explaining more about the whys and the hows.

    As you might expect, the key to a good morning starts the night before, but there’s also a formula to follow. Of course, you can change it up, mix and match if you like… but this book provides a base framework to build from, which is something that can make a huge difference!

    Bottom line: it’s a highly enjoyable book to read, and also provides genuine powerful help to bring us the brighter happier mornings we deserve—the set-up to the perfect day!

    Click here to check out “Getting COMFY” and perk up your mornings—you deserve it!

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  • Adult Children of Emotionally Immature Parents – by Dr. Lindsay Gibson

    10almonds is reader-supported. We may, at no cost to you, receive a portion of sales if you purchase a product through a link in this article.

    Not everyone had the best of parents, and the harm done can last well beyond childhood. This book looks at healing that.

    Dr. Gibson talks about four main kinds of “difficult” parents, though of course they can overlap:

    1. The emotional parent, with their unpredictable outbursts
    2. The driven parent, with their projected perfectionism
    3. The passive parent, with their disinterest and unreliability
    4. The rejecting parent, with their unavailability and insults

    For all of them, it’s common that nothing we could do was ever good enough, and that leaves a deep scar. To add to it, the unfavorable dynamic often persists in adult life, assuming everyone involved is still alive and in contact.

    So, what to do about it? Dr. Gibson advocates for first getting a good understanding of what wasn’t right/normal/healthy, because it’s easy for a lot of us to normalize the only thing we’ve ever known. Then, beyond merely noting that no child deserved that lack of compassion, moving on to pick up the broken pieces one by one, and address each in turn.

    The style of the book is anecdote-heavy (case studies, either anonymized or synthesized per common patterns) in a way that will probably be all-too-relatable to a lot of readers (assuming that if you buy this book, it’s for a reason), science-moderate (references peppered into the text; three pages of bibliography), and practicality-dense—that is to say, there are lots of clear usable examples, there are self-assessment questionnaires, there are worksheets for now making progress forward, and so forth.

    Bottom line: if one or more of the parent types above strikes a chord with you, there’s a good chance you could benefit from this book.

    Click here to check out Adult Children of Emotionally Immature Parents, and rebuild yourself!

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Related Posts

  • Natural Tips for Falling Asleep
  • Spiced Fruit & Nut Chutney

    10almonds is reader-supported. We may, at no cost to you, receive a portion of sales if you purchase a product through a link in this article.

    ‘Tis the season to make the chutney that will then be aged chutney when you want it later! And unlike supermarket varieties with their ingredients list that goes “Sugar, spirit vinegar, inverted glucose-fructose syrup,” this one has an array of health-giving fruits and nuts (just omit the nuts if you or someone you may want to give this to has an allergy), and really nothing bad in here at all. And of course, tasty healthful spices!

    You will need

    • 2 red onions, chopped
    • 1½ cups dried apricots, chopped
    • 1½ cups dried figs, chopped
    • 1 cup raisins
    • ½ cup apple cider vinegar
    • ½ cup slivered almonds
    • ½ lime, chopped and deseeded
    • ¼ bulb garlic, chopped
    • 1 hot pepper, chopped (your choice what kind; omit if you don’t like heat at all; multiply if you want more heat)
    • 2 tablespoons honey or maple syrup (omit for a less sweet chutney; there is sweetness in the dried fruits already, after all)
    • 1 tbsp freshly grated ginger
    • 2 tsp sweet cinnamon
    • 1 tsp nutmeg
    • 1 tsp black pepper
    • ½ teaspoon allspice
    • ½ MSG or 1 tsp low-sodium salt
    • Extra virgin olive oil

    Method

    (we suggest you read everything at least once before doing anything)

    1) Heat some oil in a heavy-based pan that will be large enough for all ingredients to go into eventually. Fry the onions on a gentle heat for around 15 minutes. We don’t need to caramelize them yet (this will happen with time), but we do want them soft and sweet already.

    2) Add the ginger, garlic, and chili, and stir in well.

    3) When the onions start to brown, add the fruit and stir well to mix thoroughly.

    4) Add the honey or maple syrup (if using), and the vinegar; add the remaining spices/seasonings, so everything is in there now except the almonds.

    5) Cook gently for another 30 minutes while stirring. At some point it’ll become thick and sticky; add a little water as necessary. You don’t want to drown it, but you do want it to stay moist. It’ll probably take only a few tablespoons of added water in total, but add them one at a time and stir in before judging whether more is needed. By the end of the 30 minutes, it should be more solid, to the point it can stand up by itself.

    6) Add the almonds, stir to combine, and leave to cool. Put it in jars until you need it (or perhaps give it as gifts).

    Alternative method: if you don’t want to be standing at a stove stirring for about an hour in total, you can use a slow cooker / crock pot instead. Put the same ingredients in the same order, but don’t stir them, just leave them in layers (this is because of the pattern of heat distribution; it’ll be hotter at the bottom, so the things that need to be more cooked should be there, and the design means they won’t burn) for about two hours, then stir well to mix thoroughly, and leave it for another hour or two, before turning it off to let it cool. Put it in jars until you need it (or perhaps give it as gifts).

    Enjoy!

    Want to learn more?

    For those interested in some of the science of what we have going on today:

    Take care!

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  • Synergistic Brain-Training

    10almonds is reader-supported. We may, at no cost to you, receive a portion of sales if you purchase a product through a link in this article.

    Let The Games Begin (But It Matters What Kind)

    Exercise is good for brain health; we’ve written about this before, for example:

    How To Reduce Your Alzheimer’s Risk ← there are many advices here, but exercise, especially cardiovascular exercise in this case, is an important item on the list!

    Today it’s Psychology Sunday though, and we’re going to talk about looking after brain health by means of brain-training, via games.

    “Brain-training” gets a lot of hype and flak:

    • Hype: do sudoku every day and soon you will have an IQ of 200 and still have a sharp wit at the age of 120
    • Flak: brain-training is usually training only one kind of cognitive function, with limited transferability to the rest of life

    The reality is somewhere between the two. Brain training really does improve not just outwardly measurable cognitive function, but also internally measurable improvements visible on brain scans, for example:

    But what about the transferability?

    Let us play

    This is where game-based brain-training comes in. And, the more complex the game, the better the benefits, because there is more chance of applicability to life, e.g:

    • Sudoku: very limited applicability
    • Crosswords: language faculties
    • Chess: spatial reasoning, critical path analysis, planning, memory, focus (also unlike the previous two, chess tends to be social for most people, and also involve a lot of reading, if one is keen)
    • Computer games: wildly varied depending on the game. While an arcade-style “shoot-em-up” may do little for the brain, there is a lot of potential for a lot of much more relevant brain-training in other kinds of games: it could be planning, problem-solving, social dynamics, economics, things that mirror the day-to-day challenges of running a household, even, or a business.
      • It’s not that the skills are useful, by the way. Playing “Stardew Valley” will not qualify you to run a real farm, nor will playing “Civilization” qualify you to run a country. But the brain functions used and trained? Those are important.

    It becomes easily explicable, then, why these two research reviews with very similar titles got very different results:

    The first review found that game-based brain-training had negligible actual use. The “games” they looked at? BrainGymmer, BrainHQ, CogMed, CogniFit, Dakim, Lumosity, and MyBrainTrainer. In other words, made-for-purpose brain-trainers, not actual computer games per se.

    The second reviewfound that game-based training was very beneficial. The games they looked at? They didn’t name them, but based on the descriptions, they were actual multiplayer online turn-based computer games, not made-for-purpose brain-trainers.

    To summarize the above in few words: multiplayer online turn-based computer games outperform made-for-purpose brain-trainers for cognitive improvement.

    Bringing synergy

    However, before you order that expensive gaming-chair for marathon gaming sessions (research suggests a tail-off in usefulness after about an hour of continuous gaming per session, by the way), be aware that cognitive training and (physical) exercise training combined, performed close in time to each other or simultaneously, perform better than the sum of either alone:

    Comparing the effect of cognitive vs. exercise training on brain MRI outcomes in healthy older adults: A systematic review

    See also:

    Simultaneous training was the most efficacious approach for cognition, followed by sequential combinations and cognitive training alone, and significantly better than physical exercise.

    Our findings suggest that simultaneously and sequentially combined interventions are efficacious for promoting cognitive alongside physical health in older adults, and therefore should be preferred over implementation of single-domain training

    ~ Dr. Hanna Malmberg Gavelin et al.

    Source: Combined physical and cognitive training for older adults with and without cognitive impairment: A systematic review and network meta-analysis of randomized controlled trials

    Take care!

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  • Cold Weather Health Risks

    10almonds is reader-supported. We may, at no cost to you, receive a portion of sales if you purchase a product through a link in this article.

    Many Are Cold; Few Are Frozen

    Many of those of us in the Northern Hemisphere are getting hit with a cold spell around now. How severe that may be depends on more precisely where we are, but it’s affecting a lot of people. So, with apologies to our readers in Australia, we’re going to do a special on that today.

    Acute cold is, for most people, good for the health:

    A Cold Shower A Day Keeps The Doctor Away?

    Persistent cold, not so much. Let’s look at the risks, and what can be done about them…

    Hypothermia

    It kills. Don’t let it kill you or your loved ones.

    And, this is really important: it doesn’t care whether you’re on a mountain or not.

    In other words: a lot of people understand (correctly!) that hypothermia is a big risk to hikers, climbers, and the like. But if the heating goes out in your house and the temperature drops for long enough before the heating is fixed, you can get hypothermia there too just the same if you’re not careful.

    How cold is too cold? It doesn’t even have to be sub-zero. According to the CDC, temperatures of 4℃ (40℉) can be low enough to cause hypothermia if other factors combine:

    CDC | Prevent Hypothermia & Frostbite you can also see the list of symptoms to watch out for, there!

    Skin health

    Not generally an existential risk, but we may as well stay healthy as not!

    Cold air often means dry air, so use a moisturizer with an oil base (if you don’t care for fancy beauty products, ordinary coconut oil is top-tier).

    Bonus if you do it after a warming bath/shower!

    Heart health

    Cold has a vasconstricting effect; that is to say, it causes the body’s vasculature to shrink, increasing localized blood pressure. If it’s a cold shower as above, that can be very invigorating. If it’s a week of sub-zero temperatures, it can become a problem.

    ❝Shoveling a little snow off your sidewalk may not seem like hard work. However, […] combined with the fact that the exposure to cold air can constrict blood vessels throughout the body, you’re asking your heart to do a lot more work in conditions that are diminishing the heart’s ability to function at its best.❞

    Source: Snow shoveling, cold temperatures combine for perfect storm of heart health hazards

    If you have a heart condition, please do not shovel snow. Let someone else do it, or stay put.

    And if you are normally able to exercise safely? Unless you’re sure your heart is in good order, exercising in the warmth, not the cold, seems to be the best bet.

    See also: Heart Attack: His & Hers (Be Prepared!)can you remember which symptoms are for which sex? If not, now’s a good time to refresh that knowledge.

    Immune health

    We recently discussed how cold weather indirectly increases the risk of respiratory viral infection:

    The Cold Truth About Respiratory Infections

    So, now’s the time to be extra on-guard about that.

    See also: Beyond Supplements: The Real Immune-Boosters!

    Balance

    Icy weather increases the risk of falling. If you think “having a fall” is something that happens to other/older people, please remember that there’s a first time for everything. Some tips:

    • Walk across icy patches with small steps in a flat-footed fashion like a penguin.
      • It may not be glamorous, but neither is going A-over-T and breaking (or even just spraining) things.
    • Use a handrail if available, even if you don’t think you need to.

    You can also check out our previous article about falling (avoiding falling, minimizing the damage of falling, etc):

    Fall Special: Some Fall-Themed Advice

    Take care!

    Don’t Forget…

    Did you arrive here from our newsletter? Don’t forget to return to the email to continue learning!

    Learn to Age Gracefully

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