Yes, yes. I know y'all are thinking, "Well, Carol, I wash my hair every day!" Thing is, I don't. Now, before you get all grossed out, allow me to explain ...
In my earlier post about living green, I talked about how skinfood helped me eliminate a lot of harmful products from my health/beauty repertoire. Something in all that mix I had not eliminated was my shampoo and conditioner. Yeah, I had switched to something organic, but I was still tied into the belief I had to wash and condition my hair every single morning like clockwork or some obscure beauty care rule would be irrevocably broken and bad things might happen.
Like a bazillion other women on this planet, I was as faithful to the never ending search for healthy, soft, shiny, manageable, lovely locks as a dog to its master. Oh, to think of the hundreds of shampoos and conditioners I tried over the past 40+ years! And, sometimes I achieved success ... and sometimes I had hair resembling last years' birds' nest. A roller coaster ride of hair care. I'm sure y'all know just what I'm talking about.
About three years ago I started reading a lot about homemade beauty products. I had decided it was time to begin my process from being vegetarian to being full-fledged vegan. (notice I said 'begin my process', but more about that later!) I wanted to get rid of as many 'artificial' and/or 'animal based' products as I could. I wanted to get rid of even more chemicals, toxins, and basically nasty stuff from my little corner of the world. In all this research, and I don't even remember where now, I read about 'no poo'. To break it down simple: baking soda to wash, apple cider vinegar to condition. If you have really curly hair, you wash with just conditioner, no baking soda.
Shampooing, as we know it today, didn't come about until the 1930's when Dr. John H. Breck, Sr. founded Breck Shampoo. Remember the Breck Girls advertisements? Lovely ladies with silky soft hair. Kim Basinger and Brooke Shields were Breck Girls. Before then, people often used some form of soap made from animal fats and wood or plants ashes containing potassium carbonate. Think of lye soap - which is dangerous to make and pretty darn irritating to the skin for lots of people. It wasn't a great success on hair either.
Over the decades shampoo has gone through untold changes and modifications in formula, has been made by a staggering number of companies. Thousands of flavors for every hair type on the planet. The list of ingredients on a bottle of shampoo reads like a crazy science experiment ... a scary combination of hazardous chemicals stirred up together, with a little good smelling stuff tossed in to mask the danger. Something that smells so nice can't be bad, now can it?
Oh yes, my dears, it's not only just bad, it can kill you.
No, it won't have you curled up on the floor of your shower, writhing and foaming at the mouth like the death scene from a movie where an unsuspecting husband drinks the rat poison cocktail his smiling wife just made for him. Nope, it's actually a lot worse.
What you eat goes into your body, it gets digested, and the nutrients (and everything else in that food) gets absorbed into your system. That hamburger you ate for lunch? Eventually it will make its way into your blood stream, into your muscles, into your internal organs, etc. The process is the same with anything you put ON your body. Your skin is your largest organ, and it absorbs like a sponge. Think about that. The lotion you put on your hands soaks right in, gets into your blood stream, moves right into your organs and other tissues.
First time I really thought about it, well, it kinda' freaked me out. Particularly after I understood just what was in that hand lotion. Shampoo? Yep. You call it your scalp, but guess what, it's still just more skin, and it soaks up whatever is in your shampoo just like lotion on your hands. But you rinse it out! Hey, you put the stuff in your hair and massage it all over your scalp for a few minutes to get your head clean, right? It only takes a minute ... and your in the shower, where it's warm and your pores have opened up, too.
So what's so bad in that sweet smelling shampoo you spend ridiculous amounts of money on? (One time I actually spent $15 dollars on just one bottle of shampoo.) One of them is a detergent called ammonium lauryl sulfate, sodium lauryl sulfate, and/or sodium lauryl ether sulfate. Makes your shampoo foam up 'cause shampoo has to be all foamy and bubbly to work, right? Well, no, but everybody thinks it does.
The Journal of the American College of Toxicology says that sodium lauryl sulfate is a know skin irritant. It can also blind you if you do not irrigate the eyes immediately if you get it in there. Studies have indicated that sodium lauryl sulfate enters and maintains residual levels in the heart, liver, lungs and brain from skin contact. Still other research indicates it may be damaging to the immune system, especially within the skin.
Now, tell me why it is necessary to put something in my shampoo that is irritating to the very thing I'm trying to clean - my scalp. Why does something I use so close to my eyes have the potential to blind me? Why does washing my hair need to be a hazard to my heart, liver, brain, or my immune system? I'm just trying to have pretty hair.
That is just one ingredient.
Suave Naturals Lavender Shampoo with Lavender Extracts and Vitamin B5 is a 7 on the Skin Deep website for it's ingredients. It's natural. Has lavender in it. A nice B vitamin, too. Yeah ... and it is swimming in ingredients that are linked to cancer, immunotoxicity, neurotoxicity, organ system toxicity. Shampoo to clean my hair plus give me cancer, destroy my immune system, destroy my nervous system, and my reproductive system. Sounds like a sudsy, fragrant and vitamin filled way to a slow, unpleasant death to me.
So back to 'no poo' ...
I started my new hair care routine in January 2008. Seemed like an appropriate time to me. New year, new hair. Armed with a bag of this ...
and a bottle of this ...
I hopped in the shower and 'no pooed' my head. The formula: 1 tbs baking soda dissolved into 10 ounces of warm water. Pour it on dry hair, concentrating it on the scalp. Massage scalp with finger tips just like regular shampooing. Rinse. Pour another 10 ounces of warm water mixed with 1 tbs. apple cider vinegar over hair, again concentrating on getting it all over scalp. A little more scalp massage. Rinse with cool water.
Honestly, I didn't know for sure what to expect. I had read blogs written by other women who had done the 'no poo' thing. Some loved it. Some hated it. I knew I was pretty much a good candidate for the process because I have thick, naturally wavy hair which tends to get coarse, dry and slightly frizzy if I don't keep it well conditioned.
I wanted to give 'no poo' every chance to prove whether it would work or not. I gave myself three months before I passed judgment. I was prepared to start wearing hats for a month, or two. I'm a knitter, so I was kind of psyched over the prospect that I might have the opportunity (or excuse!) to knit up some spiffy hats to sport around in. Alas, by the end of the third week I knew I was forever done with traditional shampoo. I was a 'no poo' convert.
The first week I 'no pooed' three times. The second only twice. The third week I went six days before I pooed my hair. *Note - I can't stand to let my hair dry naturally because it's thick - takes forever to dry, not to mention it's too flippin' cold in January to venture outside with a wet head unless you live in a tropical paradise. Thus, I did use my hair dryer, but only to dry the roots. Oh, my hair is long. It was about down to my bra strap at that time - even longer now.
Look up the word 'flabbergasted' in the dictionary and you will see my picture. My hair felt soft. It actually had some shine again. I could comb it and not have to fight with tangles. It was like little kid hair. Wow.
For the remaining nine weeks I 'no pooed' every Monday morning. If at any time I got sweaty from exercise, I'd do a quick 'no poo' that day as well, but basically kept it to once a week. For the first time in several years I had strangers tell me they thought I had pretty hair. One guy in line behind me at the post office even reached out to touch it - and got all embarrassed when I caught him. He said, "I sure wish my wife had hair like yours." While a little strange, I still thought it was a nice compliment. And, a testament to the 'no poo' method of shampooing my hair.
Now, it hasn't been 100% effective in giving me fabulous hair. As I said, my hair is naturally thick and has a history of being temperamental, coarse, and often dry. Diet, climate and stress levels also play an important factor in the condition of a person's hair. I've had my ups and downs with those, too. But in all this time the only extra step I've added to 'no pooing' is a deep conditioning treatment once or twice a month on the ends. For this I use plain ol' olive oil.
Without doubt, 'no poo' isn't for everyone. I've asked my husband to try it because he's got a life-long battle raging with the dreaded dandruff beast. I've explained to him that the vinegar will actually re-balance the ph level of his scalp and most likely eliminate the dandruff problem. He doesn't like the smell. I said, okay, then use orange juice - it's the acidity you're after anyway. He said orange juice was for breakfast, not bathing. He's a grown man, he can do what he wants. I've got friends and family members who love their shampoo routine just too much to give it up. I've also got another friend who swears she can't do it because her hair is too oily and the 'no poo' made it worse. Yeah, it will for some, for about a month or so, until the scalp/sebaceous glands can regroup and get their proper function going on again. She doesn't have patience, and won't wear a hat. Again, it's her choice and I respect that.
But for me, it's more about making a better choice for my health, both now and long term ... clean, pretty hair is a bonus.
Namaste, y'all ...
Carol
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