SC is eating my brain

Paint me red and dump me in a vat of patchouli oil - SC is turning me into a hippy. Since I've been here I've become more and more eco-conscious and what I think I'll call "chemically" aware. Now, I'm not one of those "all natural is the best" "mother nature wouldn't kill anyone" "chemicals are bad" types. I'm not a moron. 1) There is better living through chemistry and 2) natural stuff will kill you just as fast as the chemical stuff. But I have become increasingly concerned regarding chemical overkill in some products. This was in part inspired by my time in London, where ingredients in cosmetics are much more strictly regulated and work just as well as the stuff here. Most of these for me fall into the category of "if they aren't necessary for the product why bother exposing myself?" Sort of like corn syrup. Didn't know I couldn't stand it until I accidentally stopped using pasta sauce w/ corn syrup for weeks and then accidentally cooked with an old bottle that had CS as the 2nd ingredient. Is it evil? No. Does is taste like bad (but you don't notice until you've been away from it), and artificially ramp up calories? Yes.

So where am I going with this? Well, most of my cleaning products are much simpler these days (vinegar and water, baking soda, one bottle of bleach cleaner for the mold) and work just as well. I've cut out soaps with parabens and some of the sodium laurel sulfates (mainly b/c they over-dry my skin), wear natural deodorant (Deo Dry and Tom's of Maine lavender - works if you re-apply throughout the day)and I'm working on whittling down my cosmetics and lotions to products w/o the "dirty dozen" (w/in reason, I'm a sucker for "fragrance").

But the real change happened when I started looking at my shampoo. I have very fine, straight, and dry hair. I've spent a lot of time and money trying to figure out how to reduce the appearance and texture of dryness- different shampoos, conditioners, silicone shine drops, mousses, leave-ins, rinse-outs, heat, heat with ions, no heat... you get the idea.  And then I was bored one day and stumbling across the internet, as you do, and I found the no-'poo Revolution (more here). And I convinced myself that rather than trying yet another non-drying (this time paraben, 'cone, and SLS -free) shampoo and conditioner I would buy into the hype and go 'poo free.

What's the worst that could happen? I wouldn't spend a dime and if I got really gross I'd bail and go back to shampoo. If it works, maybe my hair will less dry and more manageable and I'll save $$. Oh yeah, and the environment. I did notice when I stopped using anti-persperant that my body went through a "transition phase" of over sweating, but then leveled out as I adjusted to using only deodorant, and now I deal with fewer wet arm pits than I did when I was using Secret Platinum. Maybe my hair will be the same.

I'm not going to turn this into a beauty blog, but I'll keep a small paragraph update at the bottom of my blog posts regarding how the no-poo stuff is working. So far, so good. I used 1T baking soda to clean my roots on Friday, followed by 1:4 vinegar: water rinse. Yesterday a bee stung me on the scalp and I ended up with more baking soda in my hair to neutralize the sting, so I cleansed again and rinsed again. My hair gets really clean w/ just baking soda and the vinegar makes it very soft and manageable. Still a little dry, but I"m going to give it time and maybe try some honey in the rinse. So far, no crazy oil production and my hair is soft and shiny. I do have fly-away and breakages, but I think that's the hair that was "smoothed" by the silicone products I'd been using and simply aren't coated down anymore.