By Homerun Nievera, Negosentro.com | Ever since I was a kid, I have seen how my Lola Doring laboriously used organic gugo shampoo to wash her hair at night. I didn’t exactly know where she bought her fresh gugo ingredients but I saw the benefits that made her so-called great as her hair was thick and strong. She was in her 60’s then.
What I usually saw from lola was that the fibrous gugo bark was soaked in water and the wash, which is milky in color, is what she uses to wash her hair. This milky wash is said to strengthen hair and stimulate hair growth.
As an adult, I later noticed that my hair was thinning. I remembered my Lola Doring’s “secret” to thick and healthy hair – gugo shampoo. The problem was that there wasn’t any available that you can call really organic, just the way my Lola Doring had back then.
Once in a while, I’d be able to buy a bottle or so but usually, the stocks don’t last. Maybe, the ingredients were scarce or back then, there was little market to sustain sales for the manufacturers. Until now.
Out in the market today, you’ll see a couple of claims on organic gugo shampoo but for sure, you’re a skeptic at the ingredients. But hey, there are still a few brands that are true to form but cost much.
Recently, I bought and reviewed the brand Daila Gugo with Aloe Vera shampoo from an online seller (disclaimer/reveal: it was The Red Bus Shop). I had a chance to talk to the owner who later told me that all of Daila’s ingredients were natural, organic and locally-sourced. Wow! That made my mind spin happily because I knew it was a sustainable type of a business. And yes, it’s Filipino-owned!
But before we go gaga about the Daila brand of products, let’s look the benefits of Gugo Shampoo.
Where Does Gugo Come From?
Gugo or Gogo (Entada phaseoloides) is a large woody plant, a climbing vine found in tropical forests. It is said that its bark, seeds, and vines have many uses in Filipino folk medicine. The gugo vine climbs high in forest canopies with thick stems. Those stems are usually twisted like a corkscrew reaching to as much as 18 centimeters wide. Native Filipinos for ages plant Gugo barks traditionally and soak the barks in cold water before processing. They will squeeze the bark to get the extracted juice and use it as shampoo.
Benefits of Gugo Shampoo as Natural Hair Treatment
A quick look from Google’s abundant resources on gugo will tell you these benefits:
- Promotes hair growth
- Stops hair fall
- Gets your hair thicker and fuller
- Helps get rid of dandruff
- Reduces itchy scalp
- Gets soft and smooth hair
- Gets shining hair
- Has anti-inflammatory properties
Maybe you’re also wondering what the active ingredient/s of Gugo are, right? Its most active ingredient, saponin is a natural surfactant that cleans hair, helps cure eczema, and prevents dandruff. The Saponin in Gugo deeply penetrates the follicles to stimulate hair regeneration.
Want to DIY Gugo Shampoo?
If you’re really into gugo shampoo and and you want to make your own concoction, you can do it by first finding a gugo bark. In some talipapa or palengke, you can still find this.
Here’s the procedure sourced from drhealthbenefits.com:
- Soak the bark sheet in a bowl with distilled water and leave it overnight. The water should cover the bark entirely.
- Cut about 4 eight-inch branches Rosemary bush. The Health Benefits of Rosemary for Skin will improve the quality of the shampoo we make.
- Boil them in approximately 16 oz of distilled water for around ten minutes and you will get tea-like liquid.
- Prepare a big jar and pour in the Gugo decoction.
- Place a strainer on top of the jar lid and then pour in the cooled Rosemary liquid.
- Next, squeeze a lemon and add the juice to the mixture.
- Add three tablespoons of apple cider vinegar to the mixture.
- To use it, you can pour some to a spray bottle and add strips of the Gugo bark.
- Store it in the refrigerator when you won’t use it.
So, there you have it. So instead of using expensive shampoos that hurt your hair more than helping it, think of Gugo Shampoo.
