Today has been a really stuffy day. I’ve been in the lab with Sherif all day while he’s doing experiments. Not fun at all. This just confirms to me that I am not a science person at all (well, with the exception of making personal care products from scratch … actually not much science involved there either, haha). Anyway, this “lab getaway” has given me a chance to catch up on a few writing projects and start to organize the thousands of pictures that I have on my computer. Organizing files on the computer is not my forte either.

What the heck am I good at then? Oh, right, playing with food in the kitchen. And daydreaming … oh, I’m so good at daydreaming.

Anyway, I’ve started this post completely off-topic. So hair care …

About two years ago, I embarked on a journey to find the most natural brand of shampoo and conditioner available. I was actually pretty horrified after watching this video below (the Story of Cosmetics). Produced by the same people who put together the Story of Stuff, this video shows how safety regulations for cosmetics and personal care products are so lax so that many nasty chemicals and suspected carcinogens end up in a lot of the products that we use… Gross.

So I started buying my shampoo and conditioner from Whole Foods.

I tried most of the brands sold there including Burt’s Bees, Dr. Hauksha, Aubrey Organics, Avalon Organics, Giovanni, and Jason Natural. I also tried Miessence, which is not sold at Whole Foods. These are just the ones off the top of my head – I’m sure there are more that I’ve tried. None of these brands did it for me. They either didn’t clean well, didn’t moisturize enough, left the ends dry, or didn’t smell fresh. With the exception of Miessence, their ingredient list was actually pretty suspect as well. Some of them have long chemical names and carefully worded descriptions to camouflage the fact that they are not really any better than the “conventional” brands.

Oh – I should also add that the “fancy” salon brands are actually really artificial as well … so don’t let that ritzy packaging and captivating (i.e. misleading) advertising fool you. For example, this image below of Pureology shampoo (note the sensationalistic name) gives the impression that the ingredients are all derived from botanical sources. This is not so. This shampoo ranks very high on the toxicity scale and has a number of hazardous chemicals. But you would never know this simply looking at the packaging or even reading its flowery description – you have to do your research…

I gave up in my search for the brands, and decided to see if there is a way to get away from using a store-bought shampoo and conditioner altogether. I came across many blogs that discuss the benefits of going “no-poo” (i.e. removing shampooing entirely from your showering regimen). I was inspired. I decided to try it. I threw away the remaining shampoo and conditioner I had, and started using baking soda and water to clean my hair and apple cider vinegar to rinse the ends. For three days or so, it was great. Then, it was miserable. I wanted to wear a bag over my head.

Out of desperation, I searched online. I searched Good Guide and Natural Geographic Green Buying Guide but couldn’t find any new information. As I was grocery shopping at Whole Foods, I came across another brand – CTonics, that I hadn’t seen before. Brown bottles in recyclable packaging … definitely advertising to hippie-ish people like me. I took note of that and read the ingredients … they didn’t seem that bad! Because they were new products, they were on discount – two for one. I hesitated only for a second and then decided to buy.

For the next couple of months, I was really impressed with the results. CTonics products smelled great; cleaned well; rinsed off well; moisturized without weighing the hair down – I was smitten. Then, Whole Foods stopped carrying CTonics. Thankfully, I found them on Amazon, and even though they were $34 per bottle, I ordered anyway.

Some things you need to know about CTonics:

1. The shampoo does not foam or lather. Since sodium laureth sulfate is not on the ingredient list, you will not get any soap suds when working it through your hair. This is a good thing. The cosmetics industry has duped people into believing that lathering with soap suds = cleansing = good. This is faulty thinking.
2. A little goes a long, long way. Depending on the length and thickness of your hair, you should be using anywhere between a nickel or quarter-sized amount of shampoo and no more than half a dime-sized amount of conditioner. More is not always better. It just takes longer to rinse out … and it’s a waste.
3. You’re supposed to refrigerate it. It sounds weird, but according to the pamphlet that came with the shampoo and conditioner, refrigeration was encouraged in order to preserve the “live, bioactive formulations” in the products. Check out the CTonics FAQs for more info on this. I was doing this for a while until I kept forgetting to grab it and stick it into the fridge every time after I was done showering … Oh well.
4. The shampoo is brown. This is only weird for a day or two until you get used to it. :-p
5. You don’t need to wash your hair everyday… unless you work in construction. Every time you wash, you’re  stripping natural hair oils from your hair, causing your oil glands to freak out and produce more oil (hence, the greasy look after two days of not washing). The reality is that God didn’t design us with shampoo attached to our bodies; so naturally, our bodies are supposed to self-regulate (as long as impurities are being rinsed out with water). So, technically, this no-poo business is what’s natural … but if you’re going to use a brand of shampoo/conditioner, try CTonics till your hair gets used to this gentler process of handling.

As much as I have grown to love this brand, I am still unhappy to be:

a) paying $68 just to clean my hair, with most of it literally washing down the drain (the shampoo and conditioner last about two months).

b) exposing my hair to any chemicals whatsoever (not sure of the quantities here)

c) failing to achieve independence from manufactured personal care products

A fellow healthy living blogger, Katie from Nourishing Flourishing, recently wrote a great post about natural hair care and she answers a lot of questions about the no-poo process. For me, cutting out the shampoo and conditioner cold turkey did not work. So, for the next few months, I will be trying to wean myself off CTonics gradually – maybe by using it only twice a week and using baking soda and apple cider vinegar in between as Katie advises.

Ah… curly hair is a blessing, isn’t it (note the sarcasm…)

I’ll let you know how the “no-poo” approach works out for me! In the meantime, share with me your hair experiences (or woes) and let me know what you think of the no-poo experiment. Would you try it?

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