My apartment had no hot water for two days and it had been quite a while since I'd been able to wash my hair. I grabbed an old toothbrush and used it to apply potato starch to my roots all over, let it set for 10-15 minutes, brushed it out, and was good to go until I got water back. So yes, STARCH.
I'll confess I'm a bit befuddled. I spent time living in a place where the hot water gets shut off for a month at a time each summer so the systems can be repaired. We just heated water on the stove. 🤷♀
About flaxseed gel, that's a granny's recipe for hair gel in all of Latin America, together with lime juice to tame flyaways. My grandmother used to put flaxseed gel on her hair and she was born in the early 1900s. Maybe there's no information in English but there might be in Spanish. She used to make it daily, leaving flaxseeds soaking overnight.
My grandmother (born 1912) would boil flaxseed and strain the gel and keep it in the fridge for a while and just used it all up setting her pincurls before any mold could happen, I have no idea where she learned it, she seemed to assume it was something everyone knew, she would tell me stories about young girls in her day trying to keep hair tamed using sugar water too but if you used too much it was obviously crunchy and crystalline.
I always love when you go into the intersection of science and history of products- and the exoticism used to sell said products. I took a look at the tea and it looks tasty as heck, but I wanted to drop a small reminder in the comments for anyone taking prescription medications to check for medication interactions when they try any new tea, no matter the source. Doubly so if it's something they intend to drink regularly. Some really common (and delicious) tea blend ingredients can interact significantly with prescription meds.
but this is true for almost everything we eat and drink. grapefruit juice for example lowers the amount of certain medications. Some antibiotics may not be taken with milk or milk products. Most teas are not a problem, unless you drink a lot of them. But it's allways a good idea to check the part of the medication description were contraindications and possible interactions are listed. Even you doc cannot have all of then in their head every time, they are only human, too.
Thank you for addressing the shampoo bar issue!! I'm a cold process soap maker, and people ask me why I don't carry shampoo bars. It's always a long explanation of how soap is not the same as shampoo 🤣
Yeah, I feel like a lot of people don't know how soap works any more 😅At least I've seen plenty of people confuse soap with shampoo. It's funny, I'm actually more used to things being the other way round than mentioned in the video: people/companies advertising "hair soap" but it's actually solid shampoo. Which is just as annoying to me because I want actual soap! CP soap (not the store-bought kind stripped of glycerine or with lots of additives) is the best for my hair and hands. Nothing makes me hair as shiny and hydrated a routine of prewash oil over night, a wash with a nice bar of cp soap and a light vinegar rinse. I've done this for years, until I got bored 😄I have wavy, low-porosity hair though. Only downside is travel, because I'm dependent on the water quality. But when it works, soapy foam just feels so... luxurious? Well, that was my ode to cp soap, I guess 😅 Side note: Although people have been making soap for centuries (as mentioned in the video, lye from wood ash was a thing), I'm glad that today we know the science behind soap making and know exactly how much lye we need with which oils/fats, so we can make sure the soap is not that stripping.
@@craftlete wow, I need to try CP soap the way you are talking about and give it another try. I would love to break away from my commercial products plus Dr. Bronners that I have been using (very rarely.)
@@craftlete it's confusing on both sides. People always think solid equals soap and liquid equals non-soap, no matter what they write on top, unless they learn to read ingredients list and method of fabrication. I guess some people still call everything "soap" as long as it makes foam, like my mother-in-law calls soap also dishwashing liquid and floor cleaning stuff! BTW she was her hair with the dishwashing liquid in her kitchen sink... I also always look for real good quality unscented soap for my skin. I don't care if it's alkaline. It just stays on my skin for 10 seconds or less, it kills bacteria and it rinses out very well. Any other kind of detergent, liquid or solid, which is not real soap gives me a nasty feeling of film that never rinses away and it's irritating for my sensitive skin. I would use soap on my scalp, too, but there is no way to wash scalp without touching the hair stems! I tried to wash my hair with soap but it was awful and I hate the smell of vinegar, so I stick to SLS-free gentle shampoo, but I noticed that making a disinfecting massage with few drops of pure lavender oil on my scalp before washing reduces any itching (I get that from polluted air) and requires much less shampoo. Unfortunately the water hardness cannot be changed much.
My haircare routine is rather historical; on Wednesdays, I power my hair with cornstarch and baking soda. When it looks good and 18th century, I'll run a comb through it, braid it and brush the heck out of it the next day. On Sundays, I use a "hair wash" that's boiling water and some herbs, mostly rosemary and sage. I'll rinse my hair when this is cooled until all the used powder is out. Hair washes similar to this can be found in "The American Frugal Housewife" by Mrs. Child (I think that's where I found it. Or maybe in Ruth Goodman's "How to be a Victorian"). In between, I comb (to get the dead hair and skin out) and brush with a boar bristle brush (to distribute Human Lanolin) twice a day. It has served me well over the last year, because I couldn't/can't afford good-quality shampoo.
There is a saponin-producing plant that’s common in much of Europe, though it wasn’t introduced to Great Britain until the 18th century: horse chestnuts. Sally Pointer has a great video on the various uses of conkers (horse chestnuts).
Another pretty common plant was soapwort. which was also easier to use the horse chestnut... and was in season when the chestnut was not ripe yet, and it was less aggressiv then soap, why it wad used for delicate fabrics and for sensitive, dry skin.
Yes my mother makes soap bars from them, the first time she tried it she was sceptical if it would work but after cutting a bunch of them and having that oil less feel on her hands she just went for it without even doubting it would work!
I'm just taking a guess on the vetch. Vetch is a part of the Fabaceae or bean family. Seeds of this family usually contain high amounts of protein compared to other plants. As we've all learned from the rice water craze, adding protein to our hair treatments will usually give you exactly what the Trotula claims "soft and smooth and fine [hair]." Again, this is just a guess off the top of my head.
This was really interesting! When I first tried dry shampoo I was really annoyed that it didn't leave my hair feeling like I had washed it with shampoo. Realizing it's actually hair powder instead of shampoo makes so much sense!
The National Museum in Ireland might be of help for finding hair gel sources. They did at some point find a bog-body that has, I believe a resin based, hair gel on it, which was imported from modern day Spain.
The Amish still use lye to make soap. Here in CA you can still find Chloroglaum pomeridianum growing wild. The bulb is used as a soap. Before the hyped up once-a-week-cleansing-shampoos became a thing, we use a vinegar rinse every two weeks. Works great for my curly hair. Grandma used to blend together a raw egg and avocado for a hair mask. Great points about the use of flax seed!
@@blackmist5351 no worries! It's good to know what the audience likes, so that if I do decide it's worth talking for 20 minutes I can do so without worrying.
@@SnappyDragon Your rambles never feel as long as they are. I actually had to check at the end of this video to see if you'd run over Studio V's optimistic assessment. 😛
The most ridiculous haircare ads, in my opinion, are always those that claim they can make your hair grow faster. This is a super interesting video! I always love your haircare and hairstyle videos!
One job I applied to was for an online cosmetics shop. They wanted me to write a sample about how their wonder hair products, containing an ancient Japanese ingredient Heian era courtiers used do make their hair gorgeous, etc. This ingredient is the leftover water from soaking rice. The brief research I did to write that sample were all very recent articles, mostly by beauty companies, also talking about Heian courtiers. I failed to find compelling reasons why people should buy products with this water rather than make their own. These articles also strongly implied people of all hair textures should use this wonder product, despite Heian courtiers favoring a specific look.
I mean, to be fair, the reason people should buy it rather than make their own is just.... its annoying to have to make your own hair product. I know these things get vastly overhyped and overpriced, but there's something to be said for paying for convenience, especially when most people DIY about 0% of their hair care products these days.
@@fiveminutefridays also we forget that not everyone made it from scratch all the time way back when. Sure some products take five minutes over an open fire Or to whisk up in a bowl. But we are prone to forget that most women didn't have the time to rear children, brew, bake, work in the fields, sew, weave, clean and all the rest. There's such a layering of privilege when it comes to the care and maintenance of hair, and especially long hair, that I have profound doubt over the alleged ubiquity of long feminine hair in ancient to early modern times. Especially for poor married women, or at least poor working women. I'm a modern single parent and I work full time and I barely have time to do more than the absolute basics now
Did you come across the shop that was selling rice haircare products from a very remote mountainous region in China? The ladies there have very long, beautiful hair. The company also tries to benefit their endangered historical lifestyle and give back to the group since they borrowed the formulas I think? I think they buy the special rice from them too.
My Grandmother and mother taught me to use cornstarch with a powder fluff on my roots and a spritz of perfume on the hair brush when i was a teenager. Generational knowledge passed down. I was really confused when "dry shampoo" started becoming popular. I thought everyone knew this trick.
You are one of the few creators I don't skip the sponsored piece for. I trust you've done your due diligence and Pique isn't supporting dangerous organizations, unlike many cooperations and conglomerates. Not many have the integrity you have, and your viewers are made all the better for it.
I grew up in the Appalachian Mountains in North Carolina. My great grandmother taught me a little about the plants that grow here. The one that I use the most of is soap wort or soap root. You can't find it until it blooms unless you know what it looks like in all phases of its growth cycle. It has beautiful light pinkish blue blooms and smells heavenly. I only wash my hair twice a week unless I've been sweating or in my garden. I tried transplanting the soap root but I've had no luck so far. How to use:. Wash the dirt from the plant then pound in a mortar and pestle until foamy. It doesn't produce a lather like shampoos on the market. You simply rub it in starting at the scalp. I leave it in about 5 to 10 minutes then rinse. It does not strip your hair of oils, but it does give it a gentle cleaning. I can dry it for winter use but that's just the flowers and not the stem or root. It leaves a wonderful light scent behind. I will literally make my husband stop on the side of the road just so I can pick flowers. They aren't flowers if you know how to use them.
V, one of my absolute favorite things about your videos is the recurring theme of our modern society looking down on historical societies and seeing them as inferior. Thank you so much for continuing to unpack our modern assumptions and for explaining that humans didn't always have the same standards. It was so exciting to hear someone talk about how older sources used to be considered better!
well, both ways of thinking are fallaciouse. Something is not better because its new, but it is also not better because its old. It greatly depends what topic we are talking about. Soap is around for millenia now, so many old recipes were actually really good. But when it comes to luxury items, especcially make-up or medicine there were some nasty ingredients used in the past, and the methods to find out if something works or the core ideas about our bodies were so flawed, that you are pretty lucky if a treatment from the past that is not allready transfered into a more modern version actually works, or that your make-up does not eat your face away.
@@hannajung7512 Right, and I never said I thought older was unequivocally better, either. I'm just glad people are starting to unpack these assumptions and realize that not *everything* old is automatically gross.
@@MMHay16 maybe my perspective is scewed on this. I am from Germany, and while Germany is farther left when it comes to social and financial politics the overall attitude is actually very conservative. It is actually very hard to convince people here to try something new, the most common advertisement method here is "based on a generation of expertise", "based on thousand year old tradition" etc. Even our support for our current social politics though further left then the USA's is actually kind of a function of this conservativism, as well as certain aspects of environmental protection as these things were developed in the "2. Reich" under the last "Kaiser" of Germany, more then 100 years ago. So I have this reflexive need to point out that old also does not mean better, when someone points out that not all new things are better then the old methods. (Heck, we have a huge issue with people thinking Homeopathy works, because has been so popular for so long)
When I was using flaxseed hair gel to style my medieval hairstyles, it didn't tend to last long. My hair is porous enough that it really soaked up the product, so I didn't tend to have much to keep left over. and my hair was nowhere near as long as a medieval lady's. So, even if they did use it, I expect it was something made specifically for that days' usage.
This was very informative, and I also appreciate the way you criticize bad sourcing and inaccuracy. Guess work is fine for filling in gaps, but there's a huge problem with people presenting guesswork as fact, when it should be presented as it is. But a lot of times, when people criticize this, they act like the guesswork itself is like... the worst crime a human can commit. Guesswork can be very helpful! We just need to acknowledge that it's not the same as verified evidence.
I think it was a Chinese shampoo commercial, but these two girls were having a competition to see who the real lost princess was and they were judged by how soft their hair was after doing all these physical activities. It was bizarrely funny.
Learning about the pH of soap and its effect on hair suddenly explains a LOT about the frequent unhappiness of my many, many cis dude body hair follicles. 😱
Ground cuttlefish bone was used as a pounce to prepare parchment for writing and dry ink afterward! It doesn’t surprise me at all that it would cross use cases like that.
I use baby powder in my hair to help me go longer between washes! After applying it, massaging it in, and waiting a few minutes for the powder to grab on to the excess oil, I can brush my hair with a wet comb or giving it a quick, light rinse with some water to get rid of any white cast. I have a naturally oily scalp so this really helps me reduce my shampoo usage.
Thinking of vinegar rinses; I was recommended cider vinegar to help with chickenpox spots (got it at 18!!), and put maybe 1/4 pint in the bathwater instead of dabbing it all over. My hair didn't complain, and positively revelled in it when I was away at university (in a much harder water area than I grew up in).
Vetch has compounds which mimic saponins (foaming chemicals). It was probably common in the area the person wrote the book. Other saponin heavy herbs include Soapwort, horse chestnuts, yucca (root) liquorice, ginsing, feungreek, alfalfa.
I'm a hobby bath/body crafter, and soapmaking is part of my skillset. The number of fellow soapmakers who claim that soap is best for hair (and teeth!) would surprise you. Whenever someone pops up asking how to make shampoo bars, a couple of us will point out that syndet (synthetic detergent) bars formulated for the hair are the way to go... and we're drowned out and belittled by the "I USE SOAP FOR MY HAIR AND IT'S NEVER BEEN HEALTHIER SYNTHETIC IS BAD HOW DARE YOU SUGGEST ANYTHING NOT SOOOAAAAPPPP" people. I myself use both liquid and solid shampoo, depending on my hair needs, and bars from a small business are my go-to. My soap is not allowed to touch a single strand of my hair, it's damaged enough from years of bleaching and coloring!
Ahahahahah don't get me started on the idea that "synthetic" everything is bad for you! I like my "synthetic" pain management and my "synthetic" insulated walls, thank you very much.
Yup, I got pulled down that path myself, though at least the forum I was on at the time was better than most about being realistic about what soap is and is not good for… trying soap on my hair was a BAD decision. lol Even with acid rinses it just was gross.
I got caught in this trap when I started letting my curls do their thing. The combined power of soap and acid rinses gave me such bad psoriasis it took months to clear up. Never again.
I made the mistake of using "natural" soap (the Neutrogena clear orange-y glycerine hand soap bar) on my hair once because I didn't have enough shampoo. I thought it would be fine. My hair literally stuck together after rinsing all the soap out. I had to borrow some of my flatmate's shampoo to fix it. Never again.
@@elleclegg2886 Lol yes. I was desperate for unscented shampoo that didn't make me breakout on my scalp. I tried Dr Bonners unscented soap. It took a long time to get out of my hair. It looked like I hadn't washed it in months
When I think of crazy hair ads, I immediately think of Herbal Essences and their 'pleasurable' shower experiences from the 90s (?). Remember their "yes... yes... YES!"
Medieval people mostly used the exact same methods to increase "shelf live" of their food as we do. The main difference is, that modern packaging allows for germ free isolated storage. This was a real hassle to do in the past. vegetables and fish were often pickled or salted for storage. fish and meat could be dryed, and so were fruits like apples. Having pottery that got sealed with wax or tar allowed the air tight storage and protected the food from pests. Fruits, vegetables and meat could also be "canned". Though the storage was in pottery or in glas, not litteral cans (those were developed during the napolean era to help the french war efforts) But since all these methods are extremly vulnerable to human error and the seals not as reliable as modern packaging it was not uncommon that at the end of a winter food got sparse. Of course they also used smoking to make especcially meat and fish more long-lasting, bacon is not a new invention. Another interesting preservation method was used for water: silver bottles/jugs. Silver (and many other metals release ions into the water, which stunneds bacteria growth. Poorer people somtimes used tin instead (which we know today is not a great idea, as tin can be toxic if it accumulates enough in the body) Several winter holiday traditions were influenced by the ability to preserve food, or lack there of. The chrismas feasts and tje excesses at new years have their origine in the fact that at a certain time in winter people had to decide how many animals they can healthily bring through the winter, and a lot of food was at the brink of spoiling. So they slaughtered all the animals that were more then they could provide for and held big feasts to eat as much as they. The lent is not by accident exact during the time at which food got often so sparse, that it was mostly reserved for children, pregnant people and the old and sick, and ends at the time when the first animals have their young, birds lay their eggs, the first herbs and edible plants were growing and during which the first slaughter of access of animal offspring took place... again celebrated with a feast or two. This is of course all in Europe, while the methods were roughly the same, access to certain recourses and seasonal cycles greatly influenced which methods were used and with which success. Notable is to say, that some roots were also stored just by burying them in the earth in the house. Especcially potatoes can be stored for very, very long this way (up to a year when the conditions are ideal, which is almost impossibly long for food not canned with modern methods)
@@SnappyDragon yeah, but the gel if it is what I think it is can be made on a day by day basis, just by having the dried flax seed sit in water over night on a approximatly 50:50 basis and then strain it. A lot of cosmetics were prepared like that: cooked or mixed just in time or the evening prior. We should not forget people had a lot more time back then. the average medieval person worked about 4-5 hours a day max. A that allready involves preparing food, cloths etc. So naturally they had not this high a need for cosmetics that were ready to use.
Memory unlock. Long time ago, Mom started favoring one of her daycare kids (generally more kind, extra snacks, other small things). When I asked why, she told me to look at that girl's hair. Either her parents were going through a hard time or just being cheap (ie: hair products -> vain -> waste of money -> refuse to buy shampoo) because that was what hair looked like when you washed it with regular soap. The tangles were so bad...
I do medieval-inspired hair care (cleaning my hair by combing it with a reproduction double-sided medieval comb and keeping it braided), and I have tried flax seed gel. I'm skeptical about it having been used during the middle ages. The times I have used flax seed gel, it got mostly scraped off the next time I combed my hair and gummed up the fine tooth side of my comb. Trying to rinse it off my comb turned my comb into a tacky mess. I was able to wash the gel off of my comb, but considering that archaeologists have found lice eggs in the sebum buildup on extant medieval combs, I don't think that medieval women were washing their combs on a regular basis.
V, you have really helped me feel so much more at ease about my hair and how I rake care of it. I have long, curly hair with lots of different kinds of curls and a tendency to frizz five seconds after I get out of the shower (I wish I had those gorgeous fairy tale curls, but alas . . . ). The best thing for it is to wash it once a week (sometimes less), condition well, let it dry slowly, use product to encourage the curl, braid it loosely at night to keep the pillow from frizzing it up, and use dry conditioner (sparingly) when some areas look a little fuzzy.
I always find hair care to be so interesting. The most natural products I used, was one summer I used lemon juice as a natural lightener (my dad used to use peroxide, but I already had a bunch of near expiry lemon juice), and coconut oil as conditioner. A little goes a long way with coconut oil, but one of my friends with more of a 3B type of hair found it worked well. I have wavy hair that needs a delicate balance, of yes conditioner, but not enough to make my hair so heavy it just looks straight and wet, but starch can really help. And for those with dark hair, once I tried mixing cocoa powder in with corn starch so it wouldn't have that grey-white look, and it wasn't perfect, but it helped when my hair gets darker in winter.
Wonderful video! Very informative and entertaining as always. One thing though, at 1:08 I believe one of the portraits you use is mislabeled. The One on the far left is not of a maid, but of of Marie Antoinette by Louise Élisabeth Vigée-Le Brun, 1783. One of the major causes for scandal when this portrait was first exhibited was the similarity of the queen to portrayals of maids. How funny even today people still mistake her for such!😁
I recently read The Medieval Kitchen: A Social History with Recipes by Hannele Klemettilä, and it was excellent. In it, she talks about various methods of preserving food. Nothing about hair or cosmetics, though, since it's a book about food. I've made several of the recipes from the book, and they've tasted great!
I usually use corn starch as dry shampoo and a powder brush. Works really well :) Also, I freeze my flax seed gel in ice cube trays, I have convenient portions available that way - works for me, I don't use it that often.
A few years ago I could not wash my hair for 2 weeks and bought dry shampoo in a spray can. It was actually made from shredded cuttlefish and cheap perfume. I used a lot of the product, because I have a lot of hair. Then you are supposed to brush it out with a hairbrush. It was really hard to get out. It took forever, my scalp was itchy, and the smell was, well, cheap perfume. I would rather use my homemade hair tonic if I get into a similar situation again (Recepy: alcohol, fesh leaves of stinging nettle, rosmary and birch.🌿 Soak for 2 weeks and strain). Use: massage scalp with it, then comb your hair. takes away grease, dandruff and itching, dirt comes out with the combing, so clean the comb. Before WW I my granny who grew up in Germany used eggyolks or beer 🍺for washing fine hair. When she washed my hair as a kid, we already used shampoo, but afterwards we always had a rinse of chamomille🌼 tea 🫖with a little lemon🍋 juice or vinegar in it. Gave me lovely shiny hair!
Glad to see another of your investigative videos to go with my after brunch coffee. Loads of plants have sapinoids and I have grown soapwort since I was an historicaly interested teen and my growing herbs sparked my mother into a market garden stall . It grows wild accross Europe and beyond. Recently while looking to change the colour of wool yarn bought in a charity shop I found Sally Pointers video on dying with Horse Chestnut that included their sapponic aspect , so even in ones 70s there is more to learn. I henna my hair thanks to reading Travels with my Aunt at an impressional age, probably ought to become modernly grey ! Because of the henna I wash my hair with dilute Eccover washing up liquid which I've used for 30 years because it is mild ,cheap and easy to buy. I've used urine as a vinegar equall to adjust the ph when in South Wales because there was alcaline water there, here I have no lime scale in my kettle. I suspect water quality is something so basic that people forget it affects their laundry and bathing water.
Water quality affects everything! It's usually pretty okay here, but every now and again I'd have a client whose water was just ruining all attempts to take good care of their hair.
I appreciate your longer videos, actually. It's nice knowing I can just settle into watching something engaging that will allow me to drink a whole cup of tea without having to choose another video after a few minutes.
I use to make and sell soap regularly. Yes I used sodium hydroxide ie lye. I would also use grape seed extract as a preservative in some of the soaps that had herbs and grains added to it. It helped preserve the product enough not to mold when I was selling it at outdoor crafts shows in my very humid area. I don't know if they used it in the middle ages. BTW I never use my soap to wash my hair. I was taught early on (from my brother's example) of what soap could do to the hair.
I have a new challenge for marketers : Make a decent, gentle shampoo for folks like your brother and find a way to market it so more men start using good haircare!
@@SnappyDragon that would be a good thing. Mind you, he was about 13/14 when this happened and Mom's hairdresser read him the riot act. He had beautiful thick, blonde, curly hair and had turned it into straw.
I have not used shampoo in 11 years. I clean my hair once every 7-8 days with baking soda and rince it with white vinegar. 1 tablespoon diluted in 1 cup of water. (15ml for 250ml). I also add rosemary essential oil with both, since my hair had thinned a lot (due to genetics, not the baking soda and vinegar), and it has greatly helped my lost hair to re-grow. My daughter is almost 10 yo, she never had shampoo in her hair, and they are now mid-thigh length, her goal is to get them to her knees. I sometime use my no-poo on her hair, but most of the time, it's only her bath water.
My favourite shampoo ad was from an indie company who proudly proclaimed their product had no chemicals. They never did respond to my query of what exactly they were selling then
I love my aerosol dry shampoo, but I regularly raid the kitchen at my mom's for cornstarch if if forget mine. I do pin curls regularly, and it's a good way to stretch the time between
When I was a kid (mid/late 1960's), my Dad (for some reason) was really into cosmetic history and plausibility and bought a book on making skin care products at home. One of the first chapters in it stated that most "theraputic" skin moisturisers were a scam. The reason for this was that *YOU HAD TO PUT THEM ON *EVERY* DAY in order for them to be CONTINUOUSLY EFFECTIVE*. Even the containers say "apply daily for best results". Here's the other thing - in order to *hydrate* your skin, you apply water. Not oil, or fats. Applied oils and fats hold internal water in, but it does NOT help external water penetrate the skin. (simple science experiment - place a piece of dried skin (or dried fruit - it's the same principle) in two seperate bowls - one contains water, the other oil. Come back the next day and I'll bet you that *only* the bowl with water in it has the skin that is rehydrated and soft).
Maybe I don't understand what you mean but having to keep using the product for you to continue to get results doesn't make it a scam. Yes if I don't do my skincare routine it doesn't work but you could also say that medication and you wouldn't say the pill is a scam because you have to take it every day. That's just how these things work.
Ummmm.... The skin produces natural oil to keep it supple... If you put leather in water (or un tanned skin) and then let it dry it crackles. If you rub fat into it it stays supple. Our skin is not a fruit peel it is a living organ (the largest of all our organs). The book you are citing sounds like it was written by someone without basic understanding of biology.
@@SnappyDragon true but we kinda need that to survive. Every cell in the entire body needs water but the skin is kinda there to make sure water from the environment doesn't get into our blood (humid air doesn't increase your blood volume). The fats we produce on the skin is part of how it protects us from basically everything in the air that kinda needs to enter the body filtered one way or another. Human physiology is pretty amazing when you realise how delicate every system is.
About cleaning techniques, the "Dictionnaire universel des drogues et des simples" by Nicolas Lemery proposes the use of several herbs, including but not limited to lemongrass (but also several substitutes) as a way to prevent and treat lice by applying it to the scalp and hair. So, in theory, some people in the XVIIth and XVIIIth century probably had hair smelling of fresh herbs.
I don't wash my hair super frequently anyways, so I've actually found using regular soap on my hair is usually fine-- though sometimes cheaper soap does leave a residue. But I've actually even seen good results using just baking soda and water, no vinegar rinse afterward-- if anything, the chemical shock of a vinegar rinse following such an alkaline wash hurt my scalp more than the baking soda itself. I do the baking soda thing at most once a month and usually less, but for whatever reason, that works for my skin & hair chemistry.
It makes sense to me that washing with soap or an alkali would be less of an issue when done very infrequently, since the hair has a lot of natural oils in it to "buffer" from overcleansing.
I mostly use baking soda/water for washing my hair (plus tea tree oil for the eeeeetching & & peppermint oil to balance the scent), but I do need a rinse afterward. I learned that it doesn't have to be vinegar, just something acidic to restore the proper pH. Personally, I can smell vinegar or even apple cider vinegar for a week after I use it, no matter how well I rinse it (anything vinegar is the absolute WORST according to my nose), so I use diluted lemon juice (often with another oil or two to help balance the tea tree smell even more). I've been doing this for.... erm.... 17 or so years now, & I've had multiple hair stylists rave over how healthy my hair is (especially those who knew what a state it was in before). I do have to use different (non-clarifying) shampoos for a few weeks when I perm or dye my hair (naturally just this side of stick-straight, but VERY dense & relatively fine texture), just to make sure I don't destroy whatever treatment I've done before it's had time to really take. My hair is crazy resistant to any sort of perms/dyes, so I try to give them their best shot before I go back to my miser- THRIFTY ways. LOL
I'm not sure if hair gel would fall under food as much as cosmetics, which leaned more into the art supply approach to chemistry, historically. My first instinct would be to see if it can be dried and powdered, then reconstituted with a few drops of water. Simple, accessible, effective, used for just about anything that could reasonably be preserved that way. It would also be stable across seasons, as it can neither freeze nor evaporate in this state. If you are not keeping your gel too long and you live somewhere not too hot or cold, a quick and easy preservation technique would be to float a layer of oil on the top, starving the gel below of oxygen. You'll still get anaerobic bacteria like botulism, but if you're not eating your hair gel, and regularly cleaning the container, making a fresh batch of gel... No more dangerous than touching the ground with a bleeding papercut at that time. Going one step scarier, the way you prevented ink, a high water-content solution with organic compounds, of growing mold was to add elements that made it acidic enough to denature hardened bird feathers, and corrode even modern stainless steel within less than three months. Imagine a pickling liquid so strong, it turns cucumbers into green, forbidden smoothies. Since you mentioned some acidity is good for hair... You could add an acid to your hair gel, provided the gel matrix isn't affected by it. The last preservation option I can think of seems impractical: add so much sugar or honey that it becomes antimicrobial. You can preserve fruit this way: concentrating the sugars slows down mold growth in jams, packing apricots in pure sugar gets you dried, sweetened apricots. It's also a relatively common practice in veterinary medicine to pack open wounds with sugar to prevent infection without risking antibiotic resistance. That being said, it would be so high in sugar, it would probably dry out the hair, sugar and honey were not historically accessible or affordable the way flaxseed was, and it would mess with the properties of the gel.
I wash my hair only with vinegar rinse. We have so much lime in our tap water and my hair is extremely sensitive, so it's always sticky and rough even while it's still wet! After I use the rinse, the hair becomes smooth. Sometimes I use a shampoo before, but most times I only use the rinse.
Awesome and informative video! So for weirdest shampoo ad I’ve seen this might not be it but it was the first thing that comes to mind and has always stayed with me- the Herbal Essence commercials where the woman getting her hair washed is acting like she’s having an o- gasm. They kept that gimmick for a long time but the very first commercial they did like that I remember being most scandalous lol
That reminds me of a comic I've seen around the internet where a woman discovers the joys of normal, non-performative bathing rather than "bathing for the male gaze" 🤣
I'm an ag engineer, so my expert knowledge on vetch only covers the fact that it is a nitrogen fixing legume that can be used as a cover crop to improve soil health.
The thing that gets me the most about "they must have used gel, there are no hair ties in the paintings" idea is I braid my hair and never use hair ties, but it stays in plaits, partly because of texture but mostly because I braid it like cordage/plied yarn (each strand is twisted opposite the direction of the braid so that they "lock" instead of untwisting) plus a little bit of what I call "vegan bear grease" (because my ancestors used not-vegan bear grease to keep their hair in check). I figure not everyone would be able to go all day without needing to touch-up the end of their braids (I can't always), but I'd be willing to bet most folx could have braids without using either ties or a cosmetic that is supposed to be widespread yet seemingly never mentioned and only need a little upkeep through the day (and honestly, it seems like most folx I know using hair ties take them out at some point and at least re-do the ends if they're in for extended periods).
In regards to the preservation of flaxseed gel... What happens when you dehydrate it? Will it rehydrate easily? I can't help but feeling that the easiest thing to do would be to spread a thin layer on a flat surface, scrape off the dried residue, and mix up as needed, assuming that's reasonable. Sadly, I don't have any flaxseeds to test with right now. But if you dry it, powder it, and put it in a jar/bottle, it should be at least as shelf-stable as most grains/seeds, and probably more stable than flaxseeds themselves, given how short the shelf life of the oils involved can be.
Oooh, that's possible for sure! I know some of the makeup recipes call for drying out the substance and rehydrating a small amount with rosewater for each use . . .
Huh. I knew about the pomade and powder routine but I wasn't aware hair powder was much older. Learned something new! Btw. I love your videos about historical hair care and the way you look at how and why things actually worked they way they did
I used a non-aerosol dry shampoo these days. I have neurodivergent issues with frequent hair washing. It doesn't feel the same as clean washed, but it feels okay. Now I need to find one for my darker hair.
This video was epic! I began experimenting with making my own dry shampoo over lockdown with a mix of cornstarch and cinnamon (because it smells nice and I had brown hair at the time.) I used food colouring and a mortar and pestle to combine it with cornstarch to try and get a better colour match when I had colourful hair. It worked pretty great but I could never get to grips on the best way of applying it. I tried everything from a big fluffy makeup brush to just sprinkling it on, but honestly the only thing that really worked was putting the powder into a square of muslin, then tying it up with string and dabbing it on my head. The finer particles come through the cloth but it doesn't go everywhere. You do have to store it in a container with a lid though because obviously powder comes through the weave a bit and it would go everywhere if you tried to travel with just the cornstarch tied in muslin 😂 I put mine in an old jam jar. Although truth be known I don't use it anymore because I have a routine where I wash my hair every ten or so days and have stopped needing dry shampoo to tide me over.
So when I made my own dry shampoo powder blend because I had pink dyed hair, from corn starch, pink mica and ground up dried rose petals, that was very close to an actual historical product? Nice!
really great to learn about dry shampoo alternatives to the bottle, especially since I've read some concerning things about aerosolized ones for cat health (I'm not sure about the truth of that statement, but for now I apply it in a separate room from her) and it means that once those are done, I can use kitchen stuff when my hair oil needs abosrbing
In scandinavia we have something called såpa, it usually translates to soap when I try to find an english word for it but its different. It's usually green and in liquid form when you buy it, has a distinct smell and makes the water cloudy when you add it in. I think it comes frome pine or something like that. I don't know the history of it or how long it's been used but it's very common both for cleaning and (at least in my family) foot baths bc it makes the skin very smooth and soft. There's also a "soap flower" (såpnejlika in swedish) Saponaria officinalis and you can crush the petals and roots to make soap.
Always worth watching! I feel privileged when the people I watch are doing their best to research the history - it's something I wouldn't even know how to begin - hat long-history gives me such a new understanding of not only the topic at hand but shifts how I understand other data being presented about other matters. I can only say thank you for the time you spend bring us interesting content.
An odd thing: I don't find water to be hydrating....I drink it and still feel thirsty and my tongue will stick to my mouth like I've not had anything at all to drink in a full day, regardless of the amount, but i drink tea and I feel like I drank something. My hair (aside from bangs/fringe) is well able to go almost 20 days between washes because I don't brush it often and keep it up. If I used starch (I keep cornstarch in the bathroom), I could probably go longer. The oddest commercials....the older Herbal Essences commercials....from when they first came out...any of them....for a few years, where it was all floral orgasms...and often men looking in askance at the bathroom.
I have been trying to figure out why my new dry shampoo formula quit working as well. I realized with this batch I forgot the starch😁. And also I left out the oil it had before. I still have been going several months between shampoos, and my hair is healthy and styles well. I used to do an additional oil treatment and dry powder, and now I spritz with rice water instead. That does add a starch, so maybe I only need to add the oil treatment back or add a portion of oil back to my powder.
Thank You for another interesting hair care video :) I love using starch as a dry shampoo and the convenience of shampoo bars, but misleading marketing is a pain in the backside. I got caught in the washing-with-soap-rinsing-with-vinegar thing about 7-8 years ago. It felt wonderful for about a month, and then my hair turned to straw 😭. Lesson learned - RESEARCH THY INGREDIENTS!!! Sodium coco sulphate and SLS ( the most popular surfactants in shampoo bars) are fine for short term use, might be a bit too drying in the long run. Sodium Cocoyl Isethionate, Cocamidopropyl Betaine and Sodium Lauryl SulfoAcetate are the surfactants that work the best for my hair and skin. Still like a very diluted vinegar or hibiscus tea rinse. Just a little bit of oil on the ends and lengths of hair afterwards (never liked using rinse out conditioners), heat protectant if blow-drying is necessary. Various plant saponins work very well, but are inconvenient to use during a busy workday (extra hassle of preparing an infusion or taking forever to rinse out the powder from long hair). I strongly prefer the smell of reetha (Sapindus mucorosi) over shikakai (Acacia concinna). Sidr (Zizyphus jujuba) is lovely, if You can find it. Still have to try horse chestnut and English ivy.
Apologies in advance for the wall of text. Medieval food preservation methods were salting, honeying, pickling, smoking, drying, and confits (potting, basically smothering the cooked meat or fish in fat to occlude air, only suitable shortterm). I can't see how you'd preserve flax seed gel via any of these methods. It's OK for sizing because you immediately dry it. In winter you might be OK. They definitely used cold rooms (literally the coldest driest area in a structure) or cellars, and sometimes buried containers in the snow for preservation (although medieval warm period, so only a northern European option). Preserving things in alcohol came in along with distillation in the late medieval period, but I think making flax gel with whiskey might be its own problem.
Sounds like there really would not be a way of keeping it from spoiling! Other commenters suggested it would be made fresh for every use, which seems likely if it was used for hair.
I have the Sally Pointer book and I see no mention of flaxseed hair gel. Speaking of which, thanks for reminding me to pack it with my apothecary display for my next event!
I admire your commitment to primary sources. Do you have a video with the actual products you use? I'm searching for things to replace Deva with, but so far none of the solid products are working well for me and I want to reduce my use of plastic bottles.
I try not to give out my actual haircare routine because I don't want people to assume something will work for them because it works for me (common problem as a hairstylist). I know Tree Naturals does good shampoo and conditioner bars for curlier and drier textures, though!
@@SnappyDragon Any shampoo or conditioner bars you'd recommend for fine thin hair? Or maybe a video about which bars are actually shampoo and which are actually soap?
@@ChrisFixedKitty I'm working on an IG post about the history of soap and shampoo bars. I recommend checking a site like INCIDecoder to see if there is some other ingredient in the bar to do cleansing-- if not, probably soap.
It's funny that you discuss dry shampoo and hair powder. I'm a fellow curly-haired individual, though my curls are far looser and more wave-like, and I've found that even without dry shampoo, my hair simply thrives on one or two washes a week. My hairdresser recommended me keratin products a while back, and they've made my hair super silky.
My hair also does best with weekly washing, but sometimes for certain styles it's good to have a bit of extra fluff or grip in the roots. I never use dry shampoo/hair powder for cleaning, just texture.
I love the long videos! I really prefer things in the 20-40 minute range, and curate my subscriptions based on that. Your long videos are great, and so informative! Your research and knowledge base really shows.
Thanks! I do love doing longer videos, but they take a lot more work, so I'm trying to strike a balance between what I can keep up, and my desire to deliver full research papers every time I post 🤣
Fascinating as always! Go you on nailing those who attempt to make iron-clad arguments on scanty evidence! As an aside, dry shampoos never worked well for me. As a fellow curly person (though in my middle age most of it's down to waves) I never let a brush anywhere near my head for the same reasons you have in a prior video! So it's kind of difficult to distribute it well. I don't wash my hair every day, but I do have to get it wet because I wake up with the worst bedhead anyone has ever seen since I'm a very restless sleeper and that's about the only way to fix curly hair bedhead. 😂
I usually puff it sparingly into my roots and shake with my fingers, but I don't use it often-- only if I want absolute maximum floof, or I overdid the hair oil earlier in the week.
I have very hard water and for most of my life had a very oily scalp/hair so vinegar rises have a staple for me since I was a kid. I do have some crunchy relatives that make their own products so Castile soap is a big one for them.
This video was awesome. Thank you for being a curly hair individual and making waves (haha pun intended). I would love to see you do a collaboration with Abby Cox.
If I've got someone in my life who can't use shampoos or at least we haven't found one that doesn't cause a reaction. Any suggestions on how often to do the vinegar rinse. Also thanks for the pique commercial and option for "sudden onset brain fog"
Is baking soda a safe alternative to starch in a "dry shampoo" diy recipe? How would it's chemistry react with hair's and oil/dirt? Sorry if this has been asked and answ😊
Hi, Here's one for the Mighty Algorithm. Strange hair care adds? I don't know... I can't recall one. I probably never saw one, as I really don't pay that much attention to them. I am curious about bar shampoos (that are shampoos) and conditioners (that are conditioners). How would one know the difference? Sarcastic and sassy. Great video. Yours, Ann
12:54 **sips scalding tea** y u p can confirm we're all thinking it. Dunno if it's the same person or a more local DEI officer because I can't find her og post, but at least in my kingdom a very recent ex DEI officer got elevated to Pelican (highest level of prestige for Service) and she got I think the most applause of the whole event.
I was looking for an egg based hair mask recipe my sister made and used on me with great results years ago and one of the search results i got was a hack to put mayonaise in your hair for a number of benefits. Logically, i can see how a mix of oil, egg, and vinegar would do wonders for the hair and scalp. That said, i'll be dead in the dirt before i let mayonaise anywhere near my hair. I don't have many limits but that's one. The possibility of historical flax seed hair gel is interesting. I handspin and i've been testing out tow flax top, which is a bit diffcult because of the un-grippy shape of the fibers, and one short bit of chain-plied dry-spun linen yarn was able to tie back all my hair into a bun with basically no knot and stay that way for hours. Unspun flax fibers have a stickiness that activates when wet, and many spinners note that flax gets gummy in higher humidity and recommend wetting the flax (by dipping fingers in water or even the traditional way, by licking it) as you spin it to make the fibers stick together for a stronger and less hairy single. So I do wonder if it was more than just flaxseed going into hairdressing and specifically holding the hair into shape. Flax fibers even look like blonde hair already
@snappydragon, I have cowlicks and the hair of these cowlicks takes so long, if ever, to grow out. I just want them long enough to put into a braid so I don't look like a demon with a birth defect. What would help my cowlicks grow faster?
You mentioned that shampoo is a different molecule from soap, and that most ‘shampoo’ bars are actually soap and not using real shampoo, and thus can damage the hair. Is there a way to find this out before I buy them? What should people be looking for to know if it’s good and won’t do more harm to our hair and scalp? I’m trying to transition to shampoo bars, but I want to know I’m getting something that won’t damage my hair first.
My cosmatology teacher spent 20 minutes of theory last week explaining why you shouldn't wash your hair more than twice a month or once a week if nessicary because it strips oil from your hair and can make you hair more brittle and it's most likely you don't have oily hair you just wash it to often
with preserving the flaxseed gel, I don't know whethert salinity disrupts the gel structure, but it's pretty reliable as a preservative and certainly common in that role historically.
As a fellow curly I'm afraid of dry shampoos because they need to be brushed out, which will leave me looking like Darth Vader. Any suggestions to reform curls without getting them soaking wet again?
I don't brush, I just spray gently into the roots and shake my hair out with my fingers. Removing the quantity of dry shampoo I used for that intro was another story 😵
My apartment had no hot water for two days and it had been quite a while since I'd been able to wash my hair. I grabbed an old toothbrush and used it to apply potato starch to my roots all over, let it set for 10-15 minutes, brushed it out, and was good to go until I got water back. So yes, STARCH.
I've been there! So frustrating. What a good idea to get through it 🎉
Yes! Never thought of a toothbrush - I put the starch in old stockings and tap that bundle on my roots. Very effective. :)
I've always just seen people use makeup brushes. Specifically a medium sized fluffy powder brush.
I'll confess I'm a bit befuddled. I spent time living in a place where the hot water gets shut off for a month at a time each summer so the systems can be repaired. We just heated water on the stove. 🤷♀
@@VeretenoVids I do that too usually, but I was in a real hurry this time and didn't have time to heat for a full hairwash! These things, they happen.
About flaxseed gel, that's a granny's recipe for hair gel in all of Latin America, together with lime juice to tame flyaways. My grandmother used to put flaxseed gel on her hair and she was born in the early 1900s. Maybe there's no information in English but there might be in Spanish. She used to make it daily, leaving flaxseeds soaking overnight.
The lime juice sounds like a great addition! Little bit of acidity to smooth down the hair cuticle.
My grandmother (born 1912) would boil flaxseed and strain the gel and keep it in the fridge for a while and just used it all up setting her pincurls before any mold could happen, I have no idea where she learned it, she seemed to assume it was something everyone knew, she would tell me stories about young girls in her day trying to keep hair tamed using sugar water too but if you used too much it was obviously crunchy and crystalline.
I always love when you go into the intersection of science and history of products- and the exoticism used to sell said products.
I took a look at the tea and it looks tasty as heck, but I wanted to drop a small reminder in the comments for anyone taking prescription medications to check for medication interactions when they try any new tea, no matter the source. Doubly so if it's something they intend to drink regularly.
Some really common (and delicious) tea blend ingredients can interact significantly with prescription meds.
Yup, always good to be aware of your medication interactions!
but this is true for almost everything we eat and drink. grapefruit juice for example lowers the amount of certain medications. Some antibiotics may not be taken with milk or milk products.
Most teas are not a problem, unless you drink a lot of them. But it's allways a good idea to check the part of the medication description were contraindications and possible interactions are listed. Even you doc cannot have all of then in their head every time, they are only human, too.
Thank you for addressing the shampoo bar issue!! I'm a cold process soap maker, and people ask me why I don't carry shampoo bars. It's always a long explanation of how soap is not the same as shampoo 🤣
Yeah, I feel like a lot of people don't know how soap works any more 😅At least I've seen plenty of people confuse soap with shampoo.
It's funny, I'm actually more used to things being the other way round than mentioned in the video: people/companies advertising "hair soap" but it's actually solid shampoo. Which is just as annoying to me because I want actual soap! CP soap (not the store-bought kind stripped of glycerine or with lots of additives) is the best for my hair and hands. Nothing makes me hair as shiny and hydrated a routine of prewash oil over night, a wash with a nice bar of cp soap and a light vinegar rinse. I've done this for years, until I got bored 😄I have wavy, low-porosity hair though. Only downside is travel, because I'm dependent on the water quality. But when it works, soapy foam just feels so... luxurious?
Well, that was my ode to cp soap, I guess 😅
Side note: Although people have been making soap for centuries (as mentioned in the video, lye from wood ash was a thing), I'm glad that today we know the science behind soap making and know exactly how much lye we need with which oils/fats, so we can make sure the soap is not that stripping.
@@craftlete wow, I need to try CP soap the way you are talking about and give it another try. I would love to break away from my commercial products plus Dr. Bronners that I have been using (very rarely.)
@@craftlete it's confusing on both sides.
People always think solid equals soap and liquid equals non-soap, no matter what they write on top, unless they learn to read ingredients list and method of fabrication.
I guess some people still call everything "soap" as long as it makes foam, like my mother-in-law calls soap also dishwashing liquid and floor cleaning stuff! BTW she was her hair with the dishwashing liquid in her kitchen sink...
I also always look for real good quality unscented soap for my skin. I don't care if it's alkaline. It just stays on my skin for 10 seconds or less, it kills bacteria and it rinses out very well.
Any other kind of detergent, liquid or solid, which is not real soap gives me a nasty feeling of film that never rinses away and it's irritating for my sensitive skin.
I would use soap on my scalp, too, but there is no way to wash scalp without touching the hair stems! I tried to wash my hair with soap but it was awful and I hate the smell of vinegar, so I stick to SLS-free gentle shampoo, but I noticed that making a disinfecting massage with few drops of pure lavender oil on my scalp before washing reduces any itching (I get that from polluted air) and requires much less shampoo.
Unfortunately the water hardness cannot be changed much.
My haircare routine is rather historical; on Wednesdays, I power my hair with cornstarch and baking soda. When it looks good and 18th century, I'll run a comb through it, braid it and brush the heck out of it the next day. On Sundays, I use a "hair wash" that's boiling water and some herbs, mostly rosemary and sage. I'll rinse my hair when this is cooled until all the used powder is out. Hair washes similar to this can be found in "The American Frugal Housewife" by Mrs. Child (I think that's where I found it. Or maybe in Ruth Goodman's "How to be a Victorian"). In between, I comb (to get the dead hair and skin out) and brush with a boar bristle brush (to distribute Human Lanolin) twice a day. It has served me well over the last year, because I couldn't/can't afford good-quality shampoo.
There is a saponin-producing plant that’s common in much of Europe, though it wasn’t introduced to Great Britain until the 18th century: horse chestnuts. Sally Pointer has a great video on the various uses of conkers (horse chestnuts).
Ooh, looking forward to watching it!
The British Isles did have soapwort, though. Less prolific, but still used for gentle cleaning today.
Is _that_ what conkers are?! Lol, that's one of those things I always say I should look up and never remember to. Thank you for mentioning that!
Another pretty common plant was soapwort. which was also easier to use the horse chestnut... and was in season when the chestnut was not ripe yet, and it was less aggressiv then soap, why it wad used for delicate fabrics and for sensitive, dry skin.
Yes my mother makes soap bars from them, the first time she tried it she was sceptical if it would work but after cutting a bunch of them and having that oil less feel on her hands she just went for it without even doubting it would work!
I'm just taking a guess on the vetch. Vetch is a part of the Fabaceae or bean family. Seeds of this family usually contain high amounts of protein compared to other plants. As we've all learned from the rice water craze, adding protein to our hair treatments will usually give you exactly what the Trotula claims "soft and smooth and fine [hair]." Again, this is just a guess off the top of my head.
This was really interesting! When I first tried dry shampoo I was really annoyed that it didn't leave my hair feeling like I had washed it with shampoo. Realizing it's actually hair powder instead of shampoo makes so much sense!
It's super useful! . . . it just isn't "shampoo" 🤣
The National Museum in Ireland might be of help for finding hair gel sources. They did at some point find a bog-body that has, I believe a resin based, hair gel on it, which was imported from modern day Spain.
Ooh, I'll check that out!
The Amish still use lye to make soap. Here in CA you can still find Chloroglaum pomeridianum growing wild. The bulb is used as a soap. Before the hyped up once-a-week-cleansing-shampoos became a thing, we use a vinegar rinse every two weeks. Works great for my curly hair. Grandma used to blend together a raw egg and avocado for a hair mask. Great points about the use of flax seed!
Everyone who makes soap uses lye. You cannot have soap (true soap, not synthetic detergent bars) without lye.
I think it's so interesting when you use your hair stylist expertise in your videos 😊
Given how much time I spent getting it, it might as well be of some use!
"I was trying to make this one shorter!" at the 18:05 mark (it's okay, we are all _here for it_ and love it.) 🤣
Don't make them shorter!! We love the long ones 🥰
Mostly I'm trying to make them slightly shorter so I don't exhaust myself on them as much 😅
@@SnappyDragon oh that's fair, my bad!
@@blackmist5351 no worries! It's good to know what the audience likes, so that if I do decide it's worth talking for 20 minutes I can do so without worrying.
@@SnappyDragon Your rambles never feel as long as they are. I actually had to check at the end of this video to see if you'd run over Studio V's optimistic assessment. 😛
The most ridiculous haircare ads, in my opinion, are always those that claim they can make your hair grow faster. This is a super interesting video! I always love your haircare and hairstyle videos!
Just about nothing will make a healthy person's hair grow faster; it does what it does. But my goodness the marketers love to pretend they can!
And don't get me started on the subliminal 'grow your hair 10cm over night ' audios .....
One job I applied to was for an online cosmetics shop. They wanted me to write a sample about how their wonder hair products, containing an ancient Japanese ingredient Heian era courtiers used do make their hair gorgeous, etc. This ingredient is the leftover water from soaking rice. The brief research I did to write that sample were all very recent articles, mostly by beauty companies, also talking about Heian courtiers.
I failed to find compelling reasons why people should buy products with this water rather than make their own. These articles also strongly implied people of all hair textures should use this wonder product, despite Heian courtiers favoring a specific look.
I mean, to be fair, the reason people should buy it rather than make their own is just.... its annoying to have to make your own hair product. I know these things get vastly overhyped and overpriced, but there's something to be said for paying for convenience, especially when most people DIY about 0% of their hair care products these days.
Rice water is nice, but its basically hydrolised starch and hydrolised proteins. Almost all Shampoos contein one source of those these days.
@@fiveminutefridays also we forget that not everyone made it from scratch all the time way back when. Sure some products take five minutes over an open fire
Or to whisk up in a bowl. But we are prone to forget that most women didn't have the time to rear children, brew, bake, work in the fields, sew, weave, clean and all the rest. There's such a layering of privilege when it comes to the care and maintenance of hair, and especially long hair, that I have profound doubt over the alleged ubiquity of long feminine hair in ancient to early modern times. Especially for poor married women, or at least poor working women. I'm a modern single parent and I work full time and I barely have time to do more than the absolute basics now
Did you come across the shop that was selling rice haircare products from a very remote mountainous region in China? The ladies there have very long, beautiful hair. The company also tries to benefit their endangered historical lifestyle and give back to the group since they borrowed the formulas I think? I think they buy the special rice from them too.
@@KKIcons It was Black owned English language e-shop, so I doubt it
My Grandmother and mother taught me to use cornstarch with a powder fluff on my roots and a spritz of perfume on the hair brush when i was a teenager. Generational knowledge passed down. I was really confused when "dry shampoo" started becoming popular. I thought everyone knew this trick.
Dude that's genius! I am totally going to try that now
You are one of the few creators I don't skip the sponsored piece for. I trust you've done your due diligence and Pique isn't supporting dangerous organizations, unlike many cooperations and conglomerates. Not many have the integrity you have, and your viewers are made all the better for it.
I grew up in the Appalachian Mountains in North Carolina. My great grandmother taught me a little about the plants that grow here. The one that I use the most of is soap wort or soap root. You can't find it until it blooms unless you know what it looks like in all phases of its growth cycle. It has beautiful light pinkish blue blooms and smells heavenly. I only wash my hair twice a week unless I've been sweating or in my garden. I tried transplanting the soap root but I've had no luck so far.
How to use:. Wash the dirt from the plant then pound in a mortar and pestle until foamy. It doesn't produce a lather like shampoos on the market. You simply rub it in starting at the scalp. I leave it in about 5 to 10 minutes then rinse. It does not strip your hair of oils, but it does give it a gentle cleaning. I can dry it for winter use but that's just the flowers and not the stem or root. It leaves a wonderful light scent behind. I will literally make my husband stop on the side of the road just so I can pick flowers. They aren't flowers if you know how to use them.
V, one of my absolute favorite things about your videos is the recurring theme of our modern society looking down on historical societies and seeing them as inferior. Thank you so much for continuing to unpack our modern assumptions and for explaining that humans didn't always have the same standards. It was so exciting to hear someone talk about how older sources used to be considered better!
Credit fully goes to the We're Not So Different podcast for making me aware of that!
well, both ways of thinking are fallaciouse. Something is not better because its new, but it is also not better because its old. It greatly depends what topic we are talking about.
Soap is around for millenia now, so many old recipes were actually really good.
But when it comes to luxury items, especcially make-up or medicine there were some nasty ingredients used in the past, and the methods to find out if something works or the core ideas about our bodies were so flawed, that you are pretty lucky if a treatment from the past that is not allready transfered into a more modern version actually works, or that your make-up does not eat your face away.
@@hannajung7512 Right, and I never said I thought older was unequivocally better, either. I'm just glad people are starting to unpack these assumptions and realize that not *everything* old is automatically gross.
@@SnappyDragon Oooh, thank you! I have been looking for a new podcast!
@@MMHay16 maybe my perspective is scewed on this. I am from Germany, and while Germany is farther left when it comes to social and financial politics the overall attitude is actually very conservative. It is actually very hard to convince people here to try something new, the most common advertisement method here is "based on a generation of expertise", "based on thousand year old tradition" etc.
Even our support for our current social politics though further left then the USA's is actually kind of a function of this conservativism, as well as certain aspects of environmental protection as these things were developed in the "2. Reich" under the last "Kaiser" of Germany, more then 100 years ago.
So I have this reflexive need to point out that old also does not mean better, when someone points out that not all new things are better then the old methods.
(Heck, we have a huge issue with people thinking Homeopathy works, because has been so popular for so long)
When I was using flaxseed hair gel to style my medieval hairstyles, it didn't tend to last long. My hair is porous enough that it really soaked up the product, so I didn't tend to have much to keep left over. and my hair was nowhere near as long as a medieval lady's. So, even if they did use it, I expect it was something made specifically for that days' usage.
That's definitely possible!
This was very informative, and I also appreciate the way you criticize bad sourcing and inaccuracy. Guess work is fine for filling in gaps, but there's a huge problem with people presenting guesswork as fact, when it should be presented as it is. But a lot of times, when people criticize this, they act like the guesswork itself is like... the worst crime a human can commit. Guesswork can be very helpful! We just need to acknowledge that it's not the same as verified evidence.
Exactly! There's nothing wrong with saying "we can't prove this, but it's possible so we're gonna try it" especially in for-fun recreations.
I think it was a Chinese shampoo commercial, but these two girls were having a competition to see who the real lost princess was and they were judged by how soft their hair was after doing all these physical activities. It was bizarrely funny.
Learning about the pH of soap and its effect on hair suddenly explains a LOT about the frequent unhappiness of my many, many cis dude body hair follicles. 😱
🤣🤣🤣 You're not wrong though! I don't even use soap as body wash, I use a bar with the same stuff as in my shampoo bar.
That makes a lot of sense
Ground cuttlefish bone was used as a pounce to prepare parchment for writing and dry ink afterward! It doesn’t surprise me at all that it would cross use cases like that.
I wonder what it was about cuttlefish specifically that made it useful!
I use baby powder in my hair to help me go longer between washes! After applying it, massaging it in, and waiting a few minutes for the powder to grab on to the excess oil, I can brush my hair with a wet comb or giving it a quick, light rinse with some water to get rid of any white cast. I have a naturally oily scalp so this really helps me reduce my shampoo usage.
I use cornstarch with a little baking soda to absorb smell, and use cider vinegar to brush out.
Thinking of vinegar rinses; I was recommended cider vinegar to help with chickenpox spots (got it at 18!!), and put maybe 1/4 pint in the bathwater instead of dabbing it all over. My hair didn't complain, and positively revelled in it when I was away at university (in a much harder water area than I grew up in).
Vinegar rinse are great for hard water and dandruff
Don't forget your shingles shots at 50!
I am actually soaking in an apple cider vinegar bath right now. It's great!
Vetch has compounds which mimic saponins (foaming chemicals). It was probably common in the area the person wrote the book. Other saponin heavy herbs include Soapwort, horse chestnuts, yucca (root) liquorice, ginsing, feungreek, alfalfa.
I'm a hobby bath/body crafter, and soapmaking is part of my skillset. The number of fellow soapmakers who claim that soap is best for hair (and teeth!) would surprise you. Whenever someone pops up asking how to make shampoo bars, a couple of us will point out that syndet (synthetic detergent) bars formulated for the hair are the way to go... and we're drowned out and belittled by the "I USE SOAP FOR MY HAIR AND IT'S NEVER BEEN HEALTHIER SYNTHETIC IS BAD HOW DARE YOU SUGGEST ANYTHING NOT SOOOAAAAPPPP" people. I myself use both liquid and solid shampoo, depending on my hair needs, and bars from a small business are my go-to. My soap is not allowed to touch a single strand of my hair, it's damaged enough from years of bleaching and coloring!
Ahahahahah don't get me started on the idea that "synthetic" everything is bad for you! I like my "synthetic" pain management and my "synthetic" insulated walls, thank you very much.
Yup, I got pulled down that path myself, though at least the forum I was on at the time was better than most about being realistic about what soap is and is not good for… trying soap on my hair was a BAD decision. lol Even with acid rinses it just was gross.
I got caught in this trap when I started letting my curls do their thing. The combined power of soap and acid rinses gave me such bad psoriasis it took months to clear up. Never again.
I made the mistake of using "natural" soap (the Neutrogena clear orange-y glycerine hand soap bar) on my hair once because I didn't have enough shampoo. I thought it would be fine.
My hair literally stuck together after rinsing all the soap out. I had to borrow some of my flatmate's shampoo to fix it. Never again.
@@elleclegg2886 Lol yes. I was desperate for unscented shampoo that didn't make me breakout on my scalp. I tried Dr Bonners unscented soap. It took a long time to get out of my hair. It looked like I hadn't washed it in months
When I think of crazy hair ads, I immediately think of Herbal Essences and their 'pleasurable' shower experiences from the 90s (?). Remember their "yes... yes... YES!"
I am *quite* glad I was not watching TV while those were happening!
Medieval people mostly used the exact same methods to increase "shelf live" of their food as we do. The main difference is, that modern packaging allows for germ free isolated storage. This was a real hassle to do in the past.
vegetables and fish were often pickled or salted for storage.
fish and meat could be dryed,
and so were fruits like apples.
Having pottery that got sealed with wax or tar allowed the air tight storage and protected the food from pests.
Fruits, vegetables and meat could also be "canned". Though the storage was in pottery or in glas, not litteral cans (those were developed during the napolean era to help the french war efforts)
But since all these methods are extremly vulnerable to human error and the seals not as reliable as modern packaging it was not uncommon that at the end of a winter food got sparse.
Of course they also used smoking to make especcially meat and fish more long-lasting, bacon is not a new invention.
Another interesting preservation method was used for water: silver bottles/jugs. Silver (and many other metals release ions into the water, which stunneds bacteria growth. Poorer people somtimes used tin instead (which we know today is not a great idea, as tin can be toxic if it accumulates enough in the body)
Several winter holiday traditions were influenced by the ability to preserve food, or lack there of. The chrismas feasts and tje excesses at new years have their origine in the fact that at a certain time in winter people had to decide how many animals they can healthily bring through the winter, and a lot of food was at the brink of spoiling. So they slaughtered all the animals that were more then they could provide for and held big feasts to eat as much as they. The lent is not by accident exact during the time at which food got often so sparse, that it was mostly reserved for children, pregnant people and the old and sick, and ends at the time when the first animals have their young, birds lay their eggs, the first herbs and edible plants were growing and during which the first slaughter of access of animal offspring took place... again celebrated with a feast or two.
This is of course all in Europe, while the methods were roughly the same, access to certain recourses and seasonal cycles greatly influenced which methods were used and with which success.
Notable is to say, that some roots were also stored just by burying them in the earth in the house. Especcially potatoes can be stored for very, very long this way (up to a year when the conditions are ideal, which is almost impossibly long for food not canned with modern methods)
It sounds like most of these wouldn't be suitable for flaxseed gel, since even in a sealed container it would spoil quickly once someone opened it.
@@SnappyDragon yeah, but the gel if it is what I think it is can be made on a day by day basis, just by having the dried flax seed sit in water over night on a approximatly 50:50 basis and then strain it.
A lot of cosmetics were prepared like that: cooked or mixed just in time or the evening prior.
We should not forget people had a lot more time back then. the average medieval person worked about 4-5 hours a day max. A that allready involves preparing food, cloths etc. So naturally they had not this high a need for cosmetics that were ready to use.
Memory unlock. Long time ago, Mom started favoring one of her daycare kids (generally more kind, extra snacks, other small things). When I asked why, she told me to look at that girl's hair. Either her parents were going through a hard time or just being cheap (ie: hair products -> vain -> waste of money -> refuse to buy shampoo) because that was what hair looked like when you washed it with regular soap. The tangles were so bad...
That's amazingly observant of your mom!
I do medieval-inspired hair care (cleaning my hair by combing it with a reproduction double-sided medieval comb and keeping it braided), and I have tried flax seed gel. I'm skeptical about it having been used during the middle ages. The times I have used flax seed gel, it got mostly scraped off the next time I combed my hair and gummed up the fine tooth side of my comb. Trying to rinse it off my comb turned my comb into a tacky mess. I was able to wash the gel off of my comb, but considering that archaeologists have found lice eggs in the sebum buildup on extant medieval combs, I don't think that medieval women were washing their combs on a regular basis.
Oh wow!
V, you have really helped me feel so much more at ease about my hair and how I rake care of it. I have long, curly hair with lots of different kinds of curls and a tendency to frizz five seconds after I get out of the shower (I wish I had those gorgeous fairy tale curls, but alas . . . ). The best thing for it is to wash it once a week (sometimes less), condition well, let it dry slowly, use product to encourage the curl, braid it loosely at night to keep the pillow from frizzing it up, and use dry conditioner (sparingly) when some areas look a little fuzzy.
I always find hair care to be so interesting. The most natural products I used, was one summer I used lemon juice as a natural lightener (my dad used to use peroxide, but I already had a bunch of near expiry lemon juice), and coconut oil as conditioner. A little goes a long way with coconut oil, but one of my friends with more of a 3B type of hair found it worked well. I have wavy hair that needs a delicate balance, of yes conditioner, but not enough to make my hair so heavy it just looks straight and wet, but starch can really help. And for those with dark hair, once I tried mixing cocoa powder in with corn starch so it wouldn't have that grey-white look, and it wasn't perfect, but it helped when my hair gets darker in winter.
Wonderful video! Very informative and entertaining as always. One thing though, at 1:08 I believe one of the portraits you use is mislabeled. The One on the far left is not of a maid, but of of Marie Antoinette by Louise Élisabeth Vigée-Le Brun, 1783. One of the major causes for scandal when this portrait was first exhibited was the similarity of the queen to portrayals of maids. How funny even today people still mistake her for such!😁
I recently read The Medieval Kitchen: A Social History with Recipes by Hannele Klemettilä, and it was excellent. In it, she talks about various methods of preserving food. Nothing about hair or cosmetics, though, since it's a book about food. I've made several of the recipes from the book, and they've tasted great!
I usually use corn starch as dry shampoo and a powder brush. Works really well :) Also, I freeze my flax seed gel in ice cube trays, I have convenient portions available that way - works for me, I don't use it that often.
Cornstarch baby powders are wonderful! They even have like cucumber or lavander scented ones. Ive used it in my hair a few times
It's also a really common ingredient in face powders!
Related, we have hellishly hard water. I've started rinsing my hair with vinegar after shampooing, and it's better then any conditioner ive tried!
It's super great for hard water!
A few years ago I could not wash my hair for 2 weeks and bought dry shampoo in a spray can. It was actually made from shredded cuttlefish and cheap perfume. I used a lot of the product, because I have a lot of hair. Then you are supposed to brush it out with a hairbrush. It was really hard to get out. It took forever, my scalp was itchy, and the smell was, well, cheap perfume. I would rather use my homemade hair tonic if I get into a similar situation again
(Recepy: alcohol, fesh leaves of stinging nettle, rosmary and birch.🌿 Soak for 2 weeks and strain).
Use: massage scalp with it, then comb your hair. takes away grease, dandruff and itching, dirt comes out with the combing, so clean the comb.
Before WW I my granny who grew up in Germany used eggyolks or beer 🍺for washing fine hair. When she washed my hair as a kid, we already used shampoo, but afterwards we always had a rinse of chamomille🌼 tea 🫖with a little lemon🍋 juice or vinegar in it. Gave me lovely shiny hair!
Glad to see another of your investigative videos to go with my after brunch coffee. Loads of plants have sapinoids and I have grown soapwort since I was an historicaly interested teen and my growing herbs sparked my mother into a market garden stall . It grows wild accross Europe and beyond. Recently while looking to change the colour of wool yarn bought in a charity shop I found Sally Pointers video on dying with Horse Chestnut that included their sapponic aspect , so even in ones 70s there is more to learn. I henna my hair thanks to reading Travels with my Aunt at an impressional age, probably ought to become modernly grey ! Because of the henna I wash my hair with dilute Eccover washing up liquid which I've used for 30 years because it is mild ,cheap and easy to buy. I've used urine as a vinegar equall to adjust the ph when in South Wales because there was alcaline water there, here I have no lime scale in my kettle. I suspect water quality is something so basic that people forget it affects their laundry and bathing water.
Water quality affects everything! It's usually pretty okay here, but every now and again I'd have a client whose water was just ruining all attempts to take good care of their hair.
I appreciate your longer videos, actually. It's nice knowing I can just settle into watching something engaging that will allow me to drink a whole cup of tea without having to choose another video after a few minutes.
I use to make and sell soap regularly. Yes I used sodium hydroxide ie lye. I would also use grape seed extract as a preservative in some of the soaps that had herbs and grains added to it. It helped preserve the product enough not to mold when I was selling it at outdoor crafts shows in my very humid area. I don't know if they used it in the middle ages. BTW I never use my soap to wash my hair. I was taught early on (from my brother's example) of what soap could do to the hair.
I have a new challenge for marketers : Make a decent, gentle shampoo for folks like your brother and find a way to market it so more men start using good haircare!
@@SnappyDragon that would be a good thing. Mind you, he was about 13/14 when this happened and Mom's hairdresser read him the riot act. He had beautiful thick, blonde, curly hair and had turned it into straw.
I have not used shampoo in 11 years. I clean my hair once every 7-8 days with baking soda and rince it with white vinegar. 1 tablespoon diluted in 1 cup of water. (15ml for 250ml). I also add rosemary essential oil with both, since my hair had thinned a lot (due to genetics, not the baking soda and vinegar), and it has greatly helped my lost hair to re-grow. My daughter is almost 10 yo, she never had shampoo in her hair, and they are now mid-thigh length, her goal is to get them to her knees. I sometime use my no-poo on her hair, but most of the time, it's only her bath water.
My favourite shampoo ad was from an indie company who proudly proclaimed their product had no chemicals. They never did respond to my query of what exactly they were selling then
Literally everything is chemicals, so I also have questions
Every time I use my dry shampoo (mainly rice starch), I consider myself History Bounding. 😏
Easiest historybounding ever :D
I love my aerosol dry shampoo, but I regularly raid the kitchen at my mom's for cornstarch if if forget mine. I do pin curls regularly, and it's a good way to stretch the time between
When I was a kid (mid/late 1960's), my Dad (for some reason) was really into cosmetic history and plausibility and bought a book on making skin care products at home. One of the first chapters in it stated that most "theraputic" skin moisturisers were a scam. The reason for this was that *YOU HAD TO PUT THEM ON *EVERY* DAY in order for them to be CONTINUOUSLY EFFECTIVE*. Even the containers say "apply daily for best results". Here's the other thing - in order to *hydrate* your skin, you apply water. Not oil, or fats. Applied oils and fats hold internal water in, but it does NOT help external water penetrate the skin. (simple science experiment - place a piece of dried skin (or dried fruit - it's the same principle) in two seperate bowls - one contains water, the other oil. Come back the next day and I'll bet you that *only* the bowl with water in it has the skin that is rehydrated and soft).
Maybe I don't understand what you mean but having to keep using the product for you to continue to get results doesn't make it a scam. Yes if I don't do my skincare routine it doesn't work but you could also say that medication and you wouldn't say the pill is a scam because you have to take it every day. That's just how these things work.
Ummmm.... The skin produces natural oil to keep it supple... If you put leather in water (or un tanned skin) and then let it dry it crackles. If you rub fat into it it stays supple. Our skin is not a fruit peel it is a living organ (the largest of all our organs). The book you are citing sounds like it was written by someone without basic understanding of biology.
I mean. We also have to drink water every day . . .
@@SnappyDragon true but we kinda need that to survive. Every cell in the entire body needs water but the skin is kinda there to make sure water from the environment doesn't get into our blood (humid air doesn't increase your blood volume). The fats we produce on the skin is part of how it protects us from basically everything in the air that kinda needs to enter the body filtered one way or another. Human physiology is pretty amazing when you realise how delicate every system is.
About cleaning techniques, the "Dictionnaire universel des drogues et des simples" by Nicolas Lemery proposes the use of several herbs, including but not limited to lemongrass (but also several substitutes) as a way to prevent and treat lice by applying it to the scalp and hair. So, in theory, some people in the XVIIth and XVIIIth century probably had hair smelling of fresh herbs.
I don't wash my hair super frequently anyways, so I've actually found using regular soap on my hair is usually fine-- though sometimes cheaper soap does leave a residue. But I've actually even seen good results using just baking soda and water, no vinegar rinse afterward-- if anything, the chemical shock of a vinegar rinse following such an alkaline wash hurt my scalp more than the baking soda itself. I do the baking soda thing at most once a month and usually less, but for whatever reason, that works for my skin & hair chemistry.
It makes sense to me that washing with soap or an alkali would be less of an issue when done very infrequently, since the hair has a lot of natural oils in it to "buffer" from overcleansing.
I mostly use baking soda/water for washing my hair (plus tea tree oil for the eeeeetching & & peppermint oil to balance the scent), but I do need a rinse afterward. I learned that it doesn't have to be vinegar, just something acidic to restore the proper pH. Personally, I can smell vinegar or even apple cider vinegar for a week after I use it, no matter how well I rinse it (anything vinegar is the absolute WORST according to my nose), so I use diluted lemon juice (often with another oil or two to help balance the tea tree smell even more). I've been doing this for.... erm.... 17 or so years now, & I've had multiple hair stylists rave over how healthy my hair is (especially those who knew what a state it was in before).
I do have to use different (non-clarifying) shampoos for a few weeks when I perm or dye my hair (naturally just this side of stick-straight, but VERY dense & relatively fine texture), just to make sure I don't destroy whatever treatment I've done before it's had time to really take. My hair is crazy resistant to any sort of perms/dyes, so I try to give them their best shot before I go back to my miser- THRIFTY ways. LOL
I'm not sure if hair gel would fall under food as much as cosmetics, which leaned more into the art supply approach to chemistry, historically.
My first instinct would be to see if it can be dried and powdered, then reconstituted with a few drops of water. Simple, accessible, effective, used for just about anything that could reasonably be preserved that way. It would also be stable across seasons, as it can neither freeze nor evaporate in this state.
If you are not keeping your gel too long and you live somewhere not too hot or cold, a quick and easy preservation technique would be to float a layer of oil on the top, starving the gel below of oxygen. You'll still get anaerobic bacteria like botulism, but if you're not eating your hair gel, and regularly cleaning the container, making a fresh batch of gel... No more dangerous than touching the ground with a bleeding papercut at that time.
Going one step scarier, the way you prevented ink, a high water-content solution with organic compounds, of growing mold was to add elements that made it acidic enough to denature hardened bird feathers, and corrode even modern stainless steel within less than three months. Imagine a pickling liquid so strong, it turns cucumbers into green, forbidden smoothies. Since you mentioned some acidity is good for hair... You could add an acid to your hair gel, provided the gel matrix isn't affected by it.
The last preservation option I can think of seems impractical: add so much sugar or honey that it becomes antimicrobial. You can preserve fruit this way: concentrating the sugars slows down mold growth in jams, packing apricots in pure sugar gets you dried, sweetened apricots. It's also a relatively common practice in veterinary medicine to pack open wounds with sugar to prevent infection without risking antibiotic resistance. That being said, it would be so high in sugar, it would probably dry out the hair, sugar and honey were not historically accessible or affordable the way flaxseed was, and it would mess with the properties of the gel.
I wash my hair only with vinegar rinse. We have so much lime in our tap water and my hair is extremely sensitive, so it's always sticky and rough even while it's still wet! After I use the rinse, the hair becomes smooth. Sometimes I use a shampoo before, but most times I only use the rinse.
Awesome and informative video!
So for weirdest shampoo ad I’ve seen this might not be it but it was the first thing that comes to mind and has always stayed with me- the Herbal Essence commercials where the woman getting her hair washed is acting like she’s having an o- gasm. They kept that gimmick for a long time but the very first commercial they did like that I remember being most scandalous lol
That reminds me of a comic I've seen around the internet where a woman discovers the joys of normal, non-performative bathing rather than "bathing for the male gaze" 🤣
@@SnappyDragon love that
I'm an ag engineer, so my expert knowledge on vetch only covers the fact that it is a nitrogen fixing legume that can be used as a cover crop to improve soil health.
The thing that gets me the most about "they must have used gel, there are no hair ties in the paintings" idea is I braid my hair and never use hair ties, but it stays in plaits, partly because of texture but mostly because I braid it like cordage/plied yarn (each strand is twisted opposite the direction of the braid so that they "lock" instead of untwisting) plus a little bit of what I call "vegan bear grease" (because my ancestors used not-vegan bear grease to keep their hair in check). I figure not everyone would be able to go all day without needing to touch-up the end of their braids (I can't always), but I'd be willing to bet most folx could have braids without using either ties or a cosmetic that is supposed to be widespread yet seemingly never mentioned and only need a little upkeep through the day (and honestly, it seems like most folx I know using hair ties take them out at some point and at least re-do the ends if they're in for extended periods).
What about beer rinses? Very popular in my youth... how far back do they go?
In regards to the preservation of flaxseed gel... What happens when you dehydrate it? Will it rehydrate easily? I can't help but feeling that the easiest thing to do would be to spread a thin layer on a flat surface, scrape off the dried residue, and mix up as needed, assuming that's reasonable. Sadly, I don't have any flaxseeds to test with right now. But if you dry it, powder it, and put it in a jar/bottle, it should be at least as shelf-stable as most grains/seeds, and probably more stable than flaxseeds themselves, given how short the shelf life of the oils involved can be.
Oooh, that's possible for sure! I know some of the makeup recipes call for drying out the substance and rehydrating a small amount with rosewater for each use . . .
Huh. I knew about the pomade and powder routine but I wasn't aware hair powder was much older. Learned something new!
Btw. I love your videos about historical hair care and the way you look at how and why things actually worked they way they did
I used a non-aerosol dry shampoo these days. I have neurodivergent issues with frequent hair washing. It doesn't feel the same as clean washed, but it feels okay. Now I need to find one for my darker hair.
If it works, it works! I know there are hair powder recipes out there that use cloves or cocoa to darken the mix, but that's some extra steps.
This video was epic! I began experimenting with making my own dry shampoo over lockdown with a mix of cornstarch and cinnamon (because it smells nice and I had brown hair at the time.) I used food colouring and a mortar and pestle to combine it with cornstarch to try and get a better colour match when I had colourful hair. It worked pretty great but I could never get to grips on the best way of applying it. I tried everything from a big fluffy makeup brush to just sprinkling it on, but honestly the only thing that really worked was putting the powder into a square of muslin, then tying it up with string and dabbing it on my head. The finer particles come through the cloth but it doesn't go everywhere. You do have to store it in a container with a lid though because obviously powder comes through the weave a bit and it would go everywhere if you tried to travel with just the cornstarch tied in muslin 😂 I put mine in an old jam jar. Although truth be known I don't use it anymore because I have a routine where I wash my hair every ten or so days and have stopped needing dry shampoo to tide me over.
That's such a clever way of applying!
So when I made my own dry shampoo powder blend because I had pink dyed hair, from corn starch, pink mica and ground up dried rose petals, that was very close to an actual historical product? Nice!
The Vetch, depending on which part is used could either provide protein, fat, vitamins and minerals (the seeds) or antioxidants and fragrant (flower).
really great to learn about dry shampoo alternatives to the bottle, especially since I've read some concerning things about aerosolized ones for cat health (I'm not sure about the truth of that statement, but for now I apply it in a separate room from her) and it means that once those are done, I can use kitchen stuff when my hair oil needs abosrbing
In scandinavia we have something called såpa, it usually translates to soap when I try to find an english word for it but its different. It's usually green and in liquid form when you buy it, has a distinct smell and makes the water cloudy when you add it in. I think it comes frome pine or something like that. I don't know the history of it or how long it's been used but it's very common both for cleaning and (at least in my family) foot baths bc it makes the skin very smooth and soft. There's also a "soap flower" (såpnejlika in swedish) Saponaria officinalis and you can crush the petals and roots to make soap.
Always worth watching! I feel privileged when the people I watch are doing their best to research the history - it's something I wouldn't even know how to begin - hat long-history gives me such a new understanding of not only the topic at hand but shifts how I understand other data being presented about other matters. I can only say thank you for the time you spend bring us interesting content.
You're so welcome!
An odd thing: I don't find water to be hydrating....I drink it and still feel thirsty and my tongue will stick to my mouth like I've not had anything at all to drink in a full day, regardless of the amount, but i drink tea and I feel like I drank something.
My hair (aside from bangs/fringe) is well able to go almost 20 days between washes because I don't brush it often and keep it up. If I used starch (I keep cornstarch in the bathroom), I could probably go longer.
The oddest commercials....the older Herbal Essences commercials....from when they first came out...any of them....for a few years, where it was all floral orgasms...and often men looking in askance at the bathroom.
I have been trying to figure out why my new dry shampoo formula quit working as well. I realized with this batch I forgot the starch😁. And also I left out the oil it had before. I still have been going several months between shampoos, and my hair is healthy and styles well. I used to do an additional oil treatment and dry powder, and now I spritz with rice water instead. That does add a starch, so maybe I only need to add the oil treatment back or add a portion of oil back to my powder.
I really enjoy the idea that marketing does not change much.
It is very interesting to know how much of our hygiene products are so new.
Thank You for another interesting hair care video :)
I love using starch as a dry shampoo and the convenience of shampoo bars, but misleading marketing is a pain in the backside. I got caught in the washing-with-soap-rinsing-with-vinegar thing about 7-8 years ago. It felt wonderful for about a month, and then my hair turned to straw 😭. Lesson learned - RESEARCH THY INGREDIENTS!!!
Sodium coco sulphate and SLS ( the most popular surfactants in shampoo bars) are fine for short term use, might be a bit too drying in the long run.
Sodium Cocoyl Isethionate, Cocamidopropyl Betaine and Sodium Lauryl SulfoAcetate are the surfactants that work the best for my hair and skin. Still like a very diluted vinegar or hibiscus tea rinse. Just a little bit of oil on the ends and lengths of hair afterwards (never liked using rinse out conditioners), heat protectant if blow-drying is necessary.
Various plant saponins work very well, but are inconvenient to use during a busy workday (extra hassle of preparing an infusion or taking forever to rinse out the powder from long hair). I strongly prefer the smell of reetha (Sapindus mucorosi) over shikakai (Acacia concinna). Sidr (Zizyphus jujuba) is lovely, if You can find it. Still have to try horse chestnut and English ivy.
The gentler surfactants you like are the usual ones in curl-friendly shampoo bars, and I prefer them for body wash as well.
Apologies in advance for the wall of text. Medieval food preservation methods were salting, honeying, pickling, smoking, drying, and confits (potting, basically smothering the cooked meat or fish in fat to occlude air, only suitable shortterm). I can't see how you'd preserve flax seed gel via any of these methods. It's OK for sizing because you immediately dry it. In winter you might be OK. They definitely used cold rooms (literally the coldest driest area in a structure) or cellars, and sometimes buried containers in the snow for preservation (although medieval warm period, so only a northern European option).
Preserving things in alcohol came in along with distillation in the late medieval period, but I think making flax gel with whiskey might be its own problem.
Sounds like there really would not be a way of keeping it from spoiling! Other commenters suggested it would be made fresh for every use, which seems likely if it was used for hair.
You just blew my mind with your casual aside about the cyclical nature of western fashion… I WANT THIS VIDEO 😃😃😃
I gotta make it more coherent first, but it will happen!
I have the Sally Pointer book and I see no mention of flaxseed hair gel.
Speaking of which, thanks for reminding me to pack it with my apothecary display for my next event!
"don't trust marketing be anything other than marketing.."
Love the Bach Musette in the beginning! AND the rest of the vid, which I’ve seen quite a few times ☺️
I admire your commitment to primary sources. Do you have a video with the actual products you use? I'm searching for things to replace Deva with, but so far none of the solid products are working well for me and I want to reduce my use of plastic bottles.
I try not to give out my actual haircare routine because I don't want people to assume something will work for them because it works for me (common problem as a hairstylist). I know Tree Naturals does good shampoo and conditioner bars for curlier and drier textures, though!
@@SnappyDragon Thanks!
@@SnappyDragon Any shampoo or conditioner bars you'd recommend for fine thin hair? Or maybe a video about which bars are actually shampoo and which are actually soap?
@@ChrisFixedKitty I'm working on an IG post about the history of soap and shampoo bars. I recommend checking a site like INCIDecoder to see if there is some other ingredient in the bar to do cleansing-- if not, probably soap.
It's funny that you discuss dry shampoo and hair powder. I'm a fellow curly-haired individual, though my curls are far looser and more wave-like, and I've found that even without dry shampoo, my hair simply thrives on one or two washes a week. My hairdresser recommended me keratin products a while back, and they've made my hair super silky.
My hair also does best with weekly washing, but sometimes for certain styles it's good to have a bit of extra fluff or grip in the roots. I never use dry shampoo/hair powder for cleaning, just texture.
I love the long videos! I really prefer things in the 20-40 minute range, and curate my subscriptions based on that. Your long videos are great, and so informative! Your research and knowledge base really shows.
Thanks! I do love doing longer videos, but they take a lot more work, so I'm trying to strike a balance between what I can keep up, and my desire to deliver full research papers every time I post 🤣
“Stop trying to make Vetch happen!”
I’ll see myself out…
👏👏👏
Long videos are just fine with me.
Fascinating as always! Go you on nailing those who attempt to make iron-clad arguments on scanty evidence! As an aside, dry shampoos never worked well for me. As a fellow curly person (though in my middle age most of it's down to waves) I never let a brush anywhere near my head for the same reasons you have in a prior video! So it's kind of difficult to distribute it well. I don't wash my hair every day, but I do have to get it wet because I wake up with the worst bedhead anyone has ever seen since I'm a very restless sleeper and that's about the only way to fix curly hair bedhead. 😂
I usually puff it sparingly into my roots and shake with my fingers, but I don't use it often-- only if I want absolute maximum floof, or I overdid the hair oil earlier in the week.
I have very hard water and for most of my life had a very oily scalp/hair so vinegar rises have a staple for me since I was a kid.
I do have some crunchy relatives that make their own products so Castile soap is a big one for them.
This video was awesome. Thank you for being a curly hair individual and making waves (haha pun intended). I would love to see you do a collaboration with Abby Cox.
I am looking forward to the cosmetic regulations video!
If I've got someone in my life who can't use shampoos or at least we haven't found one that doesn't cause a reaction. Any suggestions on how often to do the vinegar rinse.
Also thanks for the pique commercial and option for "sudden onset brain fog"
Is baking soda a safe alternative to starch in a "dry shampoo" diy recipe?
How would it's chemistry react with hair's and oil/dirt?
Sorry if this has been asked and answ😊
Hi, Here's one for the Mighty Algorithm. Strange hair care adds? I don't know... I can't recall one. I probably never saw one, as I really don't pay that much attention to them. I am curious about bar shampoos (that are shampoos) and conditioners (that are conditioners). How would one know the difference?
Sarcastic and sassy. Great video. Yours, Ann
I would love a loooonggg video on the cyclical nature of idolizing new or old practices!!
It's coming, I just have to make it coherent 😅
12:54 **sips scalding tea** y u p can confirm we're all thinking it. Dunno if it's the same person or a more local DEI officer because I can't find her og post, but at least in my kingdom a very recent ex DEI officer got elevated to Pelican (highest level of prestige for Service) and she got I think the most applause of the whole event.
I've heard lots of good stories on a more local level, it just seems like whatever the central management structure is, is very rotten.
@@SnappyDragon almost like they need, idk, to make DEI officers be above them on the pecking order instead of underlings, just a thought lol
I was looking for an egg based hair mask recipe my sister made and used on me with great results years ago and one of the search results i got was a hack to put mayonaise in your hair for a number of benefits. Logically, i can see how a mix of oil, egg, and vinegar would do wonders for the hair and scalp. That said, i'll be dead in the dirt before i let mayonaise anywhere near my hair. I don't have many limits but that's one.
The possibility of historical flax seed hair gel is interesting. I handspin and i've been testing out tow flax top, which is a bit diffcult because of the un-grippy shape of the fibers, and one short bit of chain-plied dry-spun linen yarn was able to tie back all my hair into a bun with basically no knot and stay that way for hours. Unspun flax fibers have a stickiness that activates when wet, and many spinners note that flax gets gummy in higher humidity and recommend wetting the flax (by dipping fingers in water or even the traditional way, by licking it) as you spin it to make the fibers stick together for a stronger and less hairy single. So I do wonder if it was more than just flaxseed going into hairdressing and specifically holding the hair into shape. Flax fibers even look like blonde hair already
That's so interesting! I think there's some evidence for hairpieces being used by high-status women, and flax fibers seem like the obvious material.
I have found recipefor"shampoo" from herb saponaria officinalis,it makes sense, because this plant contains saponins.
I love this video and all your haircare videos. I would love to hear more about the use of flaxseed gel.
@snappydragon, I have cowlicks and the hair of these cowlicks takes so long, if ever, to grow out. I just want them long enough to put into a braid so I don't look like a demon with a birth defect. What would help my cowlicks grow faster?
You mentioned that shampoo is a different molecule from soap, and that most ‘shampoo’ bars are actually soap and not using real shampoo, and thus can damage the hair. Is there a way to find this out before I buy them? What should people be looking for to know if it’s good and won’t do more harm to our hair and scalp? I’m trying to transition to shampoo bars, but I want to know I’m getting something that won’t damage my hair first.
My cosmatology teacher spent 20 minutes of theory last week explaining why you shouldn't wash your hair more than twice a month or once a week if nessicary because it strips oil from your hair and can make you hair more brittle and it's most likely you don't have oily hair you just wash it to often
Yup, you want to keep a balance between making sure the skin under the hair is clean, and not over-washing the hair.
with preserving the flaxseed gel, I don't know whethert salinity disrupts the gel structure, but it's pretty reliable as a preservative and certainly common in that role historically.
Could be possible! Might not be the best for hair though, salt is quite drying.
The end bit is very funny to me given the eventual runtime being 18 minutes 😂 (I still left a like - definitely worth 18 minutes of my day)
As a fellow curly I'm afraid of dry shampoos because they need to be brushed out, which will leave me looking like Darth Vader. Any suggestions to reform curls without getting them soaking wet again?
I don't brush, I just spray gently into the roots and shake my hair out with my fingers.
Removing the quantity of dry shampoo I used for that intro was another story 😵
Best 18 minutes of my day! Thank you Miss V!
Do you have a video about Shampoo/Conditioner bars? Not gonna lie, I have tried *many* and have yet to find a Conditioner bar with enough slip.
I like your historical references for hair styles.