Why use shampoo?

To wash out the excess oil, dirt, and hair products….and of course to make your hair smell yummy and look great.

It really does it significantly better than just lots of water?

Like KE said, it’s designed to strip your hair of dirt and oils. For some people, that’s also an excuse not to use it, since it can dry hair out.

Shampoo in my opinion, is pretty necessary, but often, people need it way less than daily.

It definitely works better than water.

Regular soap can leave your hair dry and brittle. Shampoo helps protect the hair and keep it looking pretty (and smelling nice, too).

It’s the bubbles that do the job of really “cleaning.” Soap (or anything that lathers, really) will work better than just water when it comes to getting foreign stuff (dirt, oil) out of anything, including your hair. Shampoo companies add a bunch of other things that I assume make it more mild and more suited to cleaning hair than other soaps you could use.

It also adds a little bit of fragrance to your hair, ensuring you smell nice =)

Water does an okay job of washing away loose surface grim and dirt. The problem is that the oils our body produces naturally are like a safe haven for nasty stuff. So while water may wash away loose particles, the average person can still be pretty dirty because of all the crap stuck to them by oils. All soaps really do is form a chemical bond between water and oils (which normally do not mix together), thus allowing the oils (and whatever is stuck in them) to be washed away with much greater ease.

It’s the detergent in shampoo that makes it work better than water. Detergents are not necessarily foamy, but the lather and cleaning power you get in today’s off the shelf shampoos comes from sodium lauryl sulfate and its derivatives.

I don’t have any proof, but I suspect that we use a separate product specifically for our hair because shampoo companies have good ad campaigns. I’ve used products in the past (bar soaps) that are labeled “for body and hair” and the results have been just fine. I wonder when shampoos became a common commodity?

a link to answer my own question

It’s a business now. I can make my own shampoo, I just haven’t because I’m using up the stuff I have.
You can use Castile soap, or Apple Cider Vinegar with essential oils. I read a recipe tonight that contained egg, but I don’t remember what else was in it.

its not important. Humans are not made to have to wash their hair. Did God make shampoo as a natural resource for us? No. Look at cats and dogs, yes they can be dirty(can be washed off with water) but are they oily? No. Thats because their skin produces just enough oil for their coat and skin to be healthy. The only reason our hair gets oily is because we strip our hair of our natural oils when we wash our hair. Therefore our scalp produces lots of oil to counteract the lack of oil in our scalp. We don’t need shampoo, and if we didnt use it there would be no such thing as damage and split ends. I use shampoo though

Don’t, if you don’t want to. I use another method to wash my hair – a mixture of warm baking soda in water – instead, and find my hair’s healthier, even though I started only recently. Much cheaper, too.