THE REAL WAY to do the Rice Water Hair Rinse Yao Women s Recipe

Hello. So the rice water method. Turns out we're all doing it wrong. So I've done some pretty extensive research to show you the real way to do this rinse. I'll be answering the commonly asked questions and showing you how to make the most authentically correct recipe and exactly how to use it. I'll also share some things to be wary of so you don't end up damaging your hair and I've gone the extra mile to go a little into the science behind it so you can trust me this video has got you covered. So why is this method even a thing? The first recorded use of this method was in the Heian period which was this long ago. Japanese women were known to credit their long healthy floor-length hair to rinsing their hair with the water left over from washing rice. Nowadays there are still cultures who use this method most notably the Red Yao women of China. These women know their ish so I have scoured through every bit of footage and information I could find on their method to give you the gold all in one video. But what exactly does it do? The Yao women say it keeps their hair strong, shiny, long and black and even women as old as 80 years old in their village don't have any white hairs. I've also found some articles saying it and to back this up I found a 2002 study by the NCBI who found that the starch in rice water helped heal damaged skin for people with dermatitis. The hair benefits are due to the many nutrients in rice including amino acids, minerals, antioxidants, selenium, magnesium, folic acids, vitamins B1 through to B6, C and E, niacins, vitamin K and inositol to name a few. Now inositol seems to be a pretty significant ingredient here but I'll get to that in a minute. 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Interestingly their jewelry comes from the same jewelers as Tiffany and Louis Vuitton and some of their pieces have even been featured in Vogue magazine. If you're at all interested you can get 10% off by using the code Isabella10. The link to their shop is below. Moving on. Now inositol is a carbohydrate contained in rice and I did find one study on its effects on the hair. So this study was conducted by Spring 8 which is a synchrotron radiation facility in Japan. So on the figure on the right you can see the warm colors here. This shows the inositol concentration is higher along the outer contour of the hair which is the dashed line. They state that this is the first ever quantitative visualization of the penetration and persistence of inositol, a hair protecting ingredient, into the hair. But it's important to remember that the purpose of this research may have been for commercial interests. I'm not really sure. Anyway I've left my sources below so you can read further into that if you want. But how does it keep their hair from going grey? It's thought that this method maintains hair color due to the high amount of This promotes the production of melanin which is a key pigment to maintaining color. But keep in mind this could also be down to the genetics of certain cultures and ethnicities. Interesting stuff right? Yeah! So now let's make this recipe. First things first, what rice do you use? The Yao women use plain white rice. Don't use brown rice, it's too rich in protein. And don't use One of the Yao women mentioned that sticky rice is even better so I managed to track down some where I live and that's what I'll be using today. First, rinse the rice. This just gets rid of any dirt and dust. It's unclear whether the Yao women do this but their rice is probably a lot cleaner in the first place. Next, wash the rice. This is different from the initial rinse. The women are really thorough washing the rice between their hands like this to get all the properties needed out of the rice. Now this is the part a lot of people seem to get wrong. There seems to be a viral method floating around the internet leaving the rice and the water in a jar overnight. Maybe this does something, I don't know, but for the sake of being accurate let's go with the Yao. So after washing the rice the women actually discard the rice and boil the remaining water with a few other ingredients. The women make huge batches of this stuff so it's unclear how much for one use but I went with one cup of rice and four cups of water which turned out to be exactly one jar full. I don't think it matters too much but if you're worried about the protein, which I'll get to at the end of the video, try diluting it with more water. And of course fresh spring water will be the best choice but filtered or distilled water will be better than tap water. By the way if you are liking this video so far please give me a little thumbs up and if you want to see more please do subscribe. According to this woman some families even add their own secret ingredients but they most commonly use pomelo peel which is a type of citrus fruit. Now because pomelo isn't commonly available most people on the internet seem to use orange peel but I did a little bit of research and I found out that grapefruit is actually the most closely related fruit to pomelo so you best believe I went out and bought a grapefruit. I used all the peel from one whole grapefruit and how beautiful is this grapefruit? It just looked and smelled absolutely divine and of course you don't want to waste this beautiful grapefruit so I put this aside to eat later on. Special secret! In another video it's mentioned that they add herbs and certain oils and I managed to find out that they use the mashed up remnants of tea plant seeds which they use to make cooking oil. Again this ingredient is not so readily available where I live but I imagine that essential or herbal oils will work in a similar way so I'm gonna use lavender oil. Next they boil it. It's unclear how long they boil it for but there's no mention that this takes very long so I'm assuming just around 10 to 15 minutes and after it's boiled this mixture is then stored and fermented before using it. Some recipes online instruct to soak the rice in the water for a few hours but I'm pretty sure this is useless. You need to ferment it for maximum effect and it lowers the pH which can be really helpful to closing the hair cuticle so you can check out my hair science video if you want to know more on that. But how long do you ferment it for? Right this is where I heard a bunch of different information. The method that we've come to know through YouTube says to leave it for 24 hours and many say that if it's left any longer than two to three days it will go bad. The Yao women however say that they ferment it for two weeks to one month and in another video a mother and daughter explained that they leave it for at least one week. I've heard from another source that they leave it up to three months so for time's sake I left mine for one whole week. Right now we've got our mixture, how do we use it? So the women use just this mixture alone to wash their hair. Now this probably won't work the same for those of us who are used to using products so generally I've seen people use it after shampooing and conditioning but out of curiosity I thought I'd try it the traditional way. Also the Yao women apply it with their head over a bucket so I did this too. Also if you know about the inversion method this is really good for circulation. You just want to saturate all of your hair and your scalp and you can massage it into the scalp for that extra bit of love. Now I found that the mixture didn't smell bad at all which loads of people on the internet were saying. I did use quite a bit of grapefruit peel so it just smelled really citrusy. As for the consistency it felt kind of slippery in my hair almost like a watery conditioner which I definitely wasn't expecting. So here I'm just squeezing out the excess and now we need to leave this in. But Isabella how long for? Well some people on the interwebs have said to leave this in as little as two minutes, ten minutes, as long as one to two hours. Apparently this depends on your hair's sensitivity to protein but the Yao women say they leave it on for 20 to 30 minutes so I decided on 20. So they rinse theirs out in fresh spring river water which they credit to playing a big part in the health of their hair. So if you want to get real authentic go for it but I'm just going to use the cleanest water available to me which is filtered water. This is the problem with washing your hair upside down when you flip it back it's kind of tangled but I have like a super soft towel. I am looking into getting another microfiber towel because I know towels aren't good but this is like the softest one I have. I never rub my hair I just really gently blot out the water. Okay I'm back my hair has completely air dried. My hair is just being my hair. This is how it always looks when it air dries so obviously my hair is not going to look like the Yao women of China. They have been doing this all of their lives so their hair is obviously used to it. I think my hair is doing this because it's transitioning to wavy so I am going to be implementing techniques for the curly girl method into my hair again. I might check in maybe tomorrow to update you once the frizz has settled but this is what I'm working with at the moment. So it is the next day I slept with my silk cap as I usually do either that or a silk pillowcase or a satin pillowcase. So my hair has calmed down a little bit I just wanted to show you what it looks like. Straight after air drying is when my hair looks the worst so usually second day hair it looks a little bit more tamed but I will say that obviously because the rice water isn't a shampoo my hair is still pretty greasy. I will say my hair was really easy to detangle it was really had a lot of slip to it it's quite easy to just run my fingers through and it was very easy to brush and obviously I use a very wide toothed brush and I'm very gentle if I'm brushing my hair while it's wet. Most of my daily life I let my hair be I just literally let it be how it wants to be. One of the reasons this needs to be rinsed out is because too much protein can cause protein overload leading to brittle hair and breakage. Now this is really really important especially in terms of how often this method should be used so the Yao women say that they wash their hair this way every two to three days but I'd strongly suggest using this method sparingly. You've got to keep in mind that the cultures that use this method have become accustomed to it their hair type is unique to their own ethnicity so it can't be promised that this will work the same on other hair types. Many women on YouTube have explained that by using the rinse as much as once a week their hair was left frizzy dry and stiff and this is due to the excess protein. I mean this could be because they were simply doing the method wrong. I'm not 100% sure and personally I don't want to risk damaging my own hair by testing this but I will probably give it another go in the future. If you're worried about the protein some sources suggest diluting the mixture with water before rinsing but it totally depends on your hair type and what it needs. So I'd say give it a go it's not gonna hurt your hair after one use and if it works well for your hair maybe try it again the following month. So there you go that should be everything you need to know about the rice water method in its truest form. Don't forget you can find me on social media all of the usual are on the screen now I also have an acting Instagram which I'm trying to grow my audience on so my username is Isabella Byford. Thank you so much for watching I hope you learned something new I definitely did and I will see you in the next one. Bye!