I’m a millennial, and I was one of the lucky ones who caught my great-grandmother while she was still alive. She made it to nearly a hundred, and she spent the last sixty of those years in the same house, in a microscopic little community.
One of her neighbors was a woman about forty years younger. She’d often drop by for a chat. I remember two things about her… she was stricter than my great-grandmother, and she had a thick braid all the way down to her backside.
She usually kept it hidden. Wound it around her head and put on a headscarf — it got in the way when she had work to do. The day I saw it, I was speechless.
It was a sharp contrast to my mother, who absolutely had to look like Marilyn Monroe. But the braid was a contrast to my great-grandmother too. She had short gray hair.
Today, thick braids are few and far between. Plenty of people fight frizz, dullness, thinning hair. And the hair that does shine is often a facade — silicone coating a strand that’s actually been stripped bare.
The difference isn’t genetics. It’s chemistry.
Your hair is dead. Ninety-five percent protein — the strands are literally empty shells filled with keratin. No living cells. No blood supply. No cell division, no ability to heal itself.
That’s not bad news — it’s just chemistry. And it means no bottle in the world can “repair” the hair that’s already there.
On the outside of every strand sits the cuticle — six to eight layers of overlapping keratin scales. Think roof tiles. When they lie flat, they reflect light evenly. That’s shine. Not silicone. Not serum. Just scales lying the way they’re supposed to.
On the surface of the cuticle sits a molecule called 18-MEA — a fatty acid, chemically bonded to the keratin. It’s the hair’s natural water repellent, lubricant, and shine layer. It lets the strands glide past each other instead of tangling.
SLS strips it away. Not temporarily — permanently. Once 18-MEA is gone from a strand, it doesn’t come back.
Silicone replaces it. Coats the cuticle, smooths the scales, creates artificial shine. But it’s plastic, not fat. It builds up. And it takes SLS to remove. A cycle.
My great-grandmother’s neighbor didn’t use SLS. Her 18-MEA sat right where it belonged. Her braid wasn’t a miracle. It was normal.
Your scalp produces sebum — its own oil. It glides down the strand, fills the unevenness in the cuticle, creates a smooth surface. Smooth surface, even light reflection, shine. That’s the whole secret.
SLS strips all the sebum away. The scalp overproduces. Conditioner masks it with silicone. Three products solving problems they created themselves.
The industry calls it “oily hair” and “dry hair” — as if those were hair types. They’re not. Oily hair is a scalp in panic, overproducing because SLS strips everything. Dry hair is a strand that’s been stripped of the oil it was born with. Remove the cause… and both “types” disappear.
I’ll come back to hair types in more depth in the next episodes.
Beef tallow has almost the same fatty-acid profile as human sebum — oleic acid, palmitic acid, stearic acid in nearly identical ratios. The body recognizes it. The strand doesn’t reject it.
Soap made from beef tallow cleans without stripping. The glycerin stays in the soap. The 18-MEA layer survives. And the sebum the scalp produces is allowed to do its job.
Vinegar closes the cuticle afterward. The scales lie flat. Light reflects evenly.
No silicone. No cycle. Just chemistry that fits together.
And it isn’t new. Olive soap has been used on hair for over a thousand years. Aleppo soap from the eighth century. Castile soap from Spanish monasteries in the eleventh. A vinegar rinse afterward. Same principle, same chemistry.
The only thing that’s new is SLS — and everything it ruined.
My great-grandmother’s neighbor didn’t know any of this. She didn’t call it anything. She just braided her hair and put on a headscarf.