A better way to Shampoo for you & the planet

All my life I have been using the shampoos, conditioners, and soaps that are found on the shelf of your local target. I started life with the classic Johnson & Jonhson no tears baby shampoo and moved onto more fruity smelling shampoos as a young girl & teen. Through college I bought whatever was cheapest bringing me to today. Then once I began to learn about living a green and sustainable lifestyle I realized that these drugstore staples were NOT the best for either me or the planet earth. I was shocked to say the least! I mean I know that my hairdresser has always harasses me not to shampoo every day because it is bad for your hair, but I didn't realize how right she was. Also I didn't realize that all those chemicals go into the drain to pollute the earths water supply.

I will use this analogy for you to help put things into perspective. Say you have a favorite sweater made out of.. lets say silk and angora. How would you wash that sweater? Would you throw it in the wash with your regular cotton clothes, use a conventional detergent, and then put it in the dryer? NO WAY!!! That sweater would be ruined in 2 seconds flat =(

Well your hair follows the same principals. Like your favorite sweater your hair is a type of fiber that needs to be treated delicately. You don't want to over-process it. Now do me a favor & look at the back of your bottle of shampoo. Can you even pronounce all those chemicals there? Do you know what they are for? I sure didn't!!!! So imagine my surprise when I learned that those chemicals designed to "clean" your hair actually strip your hair of all it's natural oils. Then imagine the shock I felt when I learned that many of those chemicals were carcinogens and neurotoxins!!!

For example the sodium laurel sulfate (SLS) than is in most all shampoos to create lather has been proved to be a skin irritant and is often contaminated with a carcinogen called 1,4-dioxane. Another example is "Fragrance." What is fragrance? Who knows; and that is the point. The word Fragrance is used to refer to the chemicals in a product that make it smell better than other products on the market. It is the equivalent to say that "secret sauce" on your hamburger. What is in fragrance is a secret that the company does not have to disclose and is not regulated!! This means that companies can use the word fragrance to mask hundreds of harmful chemicals in their products and have NO legal responsibility to reveal what those chemicals are to the consumer. They could be ANYTHING. Another really scary class of chemicals that are often found in your cosmetics are Parabens. These little chemicals are put into your products to preserve them, however once they get into your body they mimic estrogen and increased estrogen levels have been linked to breast cancer. Nice huh! For a handy list of chemicals to avoid that you can print out and put in your purse go here! Also go to the EWG website to their data base called skindeep to type in the products you are already using & they will give you a safety score on them.

The other benefit of natural shampoos & conditoners is that they don't strip your hair of it's natural oils. Why is this good? Well those natural oils protect your hair from breaking and give it a nice shiny smooth appearance. These are those same oils that make your hair gross and greasy if you don't wash your hair regularly. What happens when you use shampoos that strip all the oil out of your hair is that your oil glands go into overdrive trying to replace it causing excessive oiliness. So if you switch over to a natural shampoo you are going to notice a little bit of a texture change to your hair. Don't freak like I did!!! It is just your scalp adjusting to not needing to produce all that excess oil.

In the end you are going to have healthier and silkier smooth hair I promise!! Last weekend I went home for that Nascar race & took a shower at my parents. They only had conventional shampoo & conditioner. I used it but I swear my hair felt like nasty straw afterwards!!!! I didn't realize how much healthier my hair had become until that moment. So what shampoos & conditioners do I use for my very tangly straight hair? I like the Avalon organics shampoos and the Aveda conditioners. (also Aveda salons give you a FABULOUS!! massage along with your hair cut if you go there!!!)