Experiment time

[stellar_muddle]

What am I currently doing?

Hair
Daily: Unplait, run fingers through til the tangles come out. Replait or restrain in some manner. Easiest to sleep in plaited.
Weekly: Washed weekly - Initially lots of conditioner* on tail and up to neck, bit of shampoo on scalp. Rinse. Drown in apple cider vinegar (ACV) mix - ~1/2 c ACV, spoonful of honey in 500ml bottle which is filled with hot water in the shower and poured over. Slather in conditioner and leave for a while, and get on with washing rest of body. Run fingers through to detangle. Flinch slightly at size of hairballs. Rinse in cold water. Allow hair to dry naturally over next few hours - hair dryer produces PUFFBALL!!!.
Every couple of months: Henna. See LJ tags for details. Occasional self trim of ends when splits get annoying or ends get too dry. Occasional application of aloe vera to ends, but tend to forget.
Experiments:
Coconut oil on ends? Olive oil? Probably not crude...

Skin
Daily: Shower**. Currently washing with sorbelene soap-like stuff. Skin doesn't like this - ITCHY!!! No rash or anything, just ITCHY. Previous body wash (Purple stuff - ran out about Easter) didn't make itchy but isn't available any more. Current bodywash - itchy. Soap Z uses (basic stuff from Soap Shop in Belconnon Markets - smells nice and I like the oatmeal stuff :() - itches. Common ingredient in all but the purple stuff (of the ones which I have ingredient lists) is Sodium Lauryl Sulphate (SLS - stuff what acts as a surfactant and produces suds in a bunch of things from soaps to toothpaste and dishwashing liquid) which apparently can be a skin irritant in some people - mind you, just about anything can be a skin irritant for someone, especially if your google search leads you to the kookier "chemical free" sites***. This leads to...
Experiment:
Ditch SLS. Two ways to do that - find an SLS free soap or ditch the soap and just rinse with water. I am a cheap arse lazy bastard, so have just started on the second option. I already have enough fun and expense with getting aluminium free deodorants, and have enough fun going over the conditioner ingredients. Why not cut the fuss? So, if I get really grubby or icky, go with whatever soap is around (fingers crossed far less frequent use will calm things down) or keep an eye out for the SLS free stuff for occasional use only, otherwise, rinse with water and use flannel etc to scrub down.

Lets see how this goes. Suggestions from those who tend water only (at least wrt hair)?

NB This doesn't giving up on soap for basic hand washing. They don't get itchy and not spreading bugs in food prep etc is a good idea.

(But, cause I am occasionally evil and everyone likes footnotes :)
* Conditioner - avoiding silicon, -cones and other varnishes used to glue spit ends down. Luckily this can generally be done by giving up on the expensive conditioners and going for the cheaparse budget stuff. I'll take $1-2 per L if I am going to be slathering it on.
** Some people use caffiene to wake up in the mornings, I use a shower... and occasional Milo.
*** My rant on chemical free was a couple months ago. Suffice to say, if you wish to be chemical free, I will happily put a sticker on your back saying "Vacuum head" and kick you out the airlock to join the rest... Edit: Though as such, I probably shouldn't snap "No it isn't, it has substance" at the shop assistant going through their soap ingredients and insisting they are chemical free. After their sign for "chemical free" henna, they are 2 down on the three strikes and I am not buying there again after telling them so stakes. Nice smelling soaps though. Will save their SLS free olive oil soap for emergency grubbiness.

Comments

[wenchilada.livejournal.com]

Ya know, this reminds me (screen goes all wishy washy while I reminisce)...I used to have a whacky flatmate (didn't we all?). He had some strange habbits like playing my playstation in my room while I was asleep, smoking his fan-forced bong and trying to get it on with all his housemates. Annoying little pest...

Anyway, one day he decided that shampoo and conditioner were not the WIN for his lovely long, curly, auburn tresses and that oil was definately the go. So he started using the canola oil we had in the kitchen. I got a little bit annoyed about the tackiness underfoot in the bathtub/shower and expressed my concern about the possibility of one of us falling and hurting ourselves (probably really badly, because the floorboards were rotting and one of the other housemates was not exactly petite).

Next thing, I go into the bathroom to find the spray on canola oil from the kitchen. Oh well, at least the bath wasn't icky anymore. But from what we can tell, it didn't actually do anything good for his hair, infact, he was doing this over summer and it just got smelly and revolting and we wondered if his hair was cooking. Oh and it made him even less attractive to his housemates, not that any of us wanted to shag him anyway.

So is this story going somewhere? I'm not sure, but it was a fun distraction...

[alpha-angel.livejournal.com]

Yeah, canola oil is a bit heavy. It won't wash out easily with just water, and it's too heavy to be absorbed properly, so it'll go rancid - nasty. Coconut and jojoba oils, however, are much closer to the make up of your own skin oils, so they are absorbed by your hair better, and wash out easier. He was on the right track, but using the wrong stuff.

[alpha-angel.livejournal.com]

Oh, you mean me?

Shampoos & conditioners with SLS (or equivalents) = itchy and pimply scalp which shortly equates to bloody and scabby - ew.
Body wash with SLS = itchy and pimply, just fracking horrible really. My legs can handle it fine, so I use it to shave my legs.

Soap - I buy mine at Common Sense Organics - they cost more but they smell nice and don't have SLS.

Vinegar rinses - Your skin is pretty good at looking after itself - it produces this nice layer of acidic oil to protect it from bacterial invasion, but then we decide that we're grubby and wash it off with mostly alkaline soap and detergents. So your skin, especially your scalp, freaks out and tries to compensate for having its protection stripped away by producing more, and pretty soon you're feeling like you have to wash your hair every day otherwise you look like a greaseball. Sooo... using a vinegar rinse after using soap helps maintain your acid mantle so you get less overproduction, and less bacterial infection (pimples). I often use a vinegar rinse instead of soap, especially on my face. The acid cuts grease pretty well on its own, and it makes my skin really soft.

I haven't used shampoo and conditioner on my hair in over a year, and have just been using water-only for 11 months?

Coconut oil rocks. Craig's been using mine more than I have, his hair just sucks it up. I added some cinnamon and ginger and nutmeg and cloves to mine, just for the smell.

Still need to cut down on the detergents in the laundry. I've been breaking out again, now that I'm back at the gym, and I think the sweat is giving me more contact with leftover detergent in my clothes

[thelancrewitch.livejournal.com]

SLS in shampoo also ends up with me getting an itchy, weepy, sore and generally revolting scalp. I gave up shampoo for a year and just used water, which was fine when it was short but I found got a bit tedious when it got longer as I was having to rinse every day. Eventually it still looked greasy however much I rinsed it, so I gave up and found some SLS-free shampoo, which I now use once a week. It starts getting lank after about four days so I start rinsing with water at that point. I think I will have to use alpha_angel's tips for the vinegar rinse.

I don't use anything on my face but water, but I have found that my body doesn't mind soap as much, so I use unfragranced, colour-free basic soap in the shower. I can use standard liquid handsoap on my hands okay too, even if it does have SLS.

[alpha-angel.livejournal.com]

If I'm not using soap I use 50/50 white vinegar and water mixture. Then because I don't like the smell of white vinegar I follow it up with an apple cider vinegar rinse - 1T of cider vinegar in a cup of chai tea with pinch of cloves and a teaspoon of honey - the honey is a great moisturiser.

Soap substitute

[manus.livejournal.com]

I don't know how true this is, but my doctor assured me the only place you can buy soap substitute is at the chemist. I get aqueous cream -- $3 per tub if you get a perscription, $5 per tub if you don't. It's fairly cheap, mostly parafin, is a little greasy and doesn't lather, but is great for using as a moisturiser before swimming in clorinated pools and for shaving.

*is sure that was full of spelling mistakes but doesn't care*

Re: Soap substitute

[micheinnz.livejournal.com]

Aqueous cream is great stuff. I thouroughly recommend it.

Also, have a look around the place for glycerine-based soap. No SLS there!

Re: Soap substitute

[alpha-angel.livejournal.com]

Actual soap rather than detergent-based cleaners works fine for me, it just seems to be the SLS which causes problems.

You've already given people the tmi warning

[mrsbrown.livejournal.com]

I haven't regularly used soap in the shower since I was a child. I wash/rinse daily (mostly) and I haven't had any of my closest friends tell me that I pong. It must work.

I figure that body smells are water soluble.

I've done the no shampoo thing in the past, but I had shorter hair then, and it saved me from needing mousses and gels. I rinsed my hair daily and it got to the point that it just looked "styled" all of the time. Now I have longer hair I like the bounce that shampoo'd hair has, so I wash it about every 4-5 days, depending on where the weekend falls. I don't wash it on weekends.

[anthraxia.livejournal.com]

Two ways to deal with no-wash hair that I know of:

1. Board bristle brush. The old thing about brushing your hair 100 strokes twice a day is done with one of these. The bristles pull the oil from the roots of the hair down along the shaft, and tend to take a lot of the dirt off. You need to wash the brush in soft soap or vinegar about once a fortnight. Takes the hair about 6 weeks to re-adjust if you've been shampooing regularly (i.e. hair looks greasy for about 6 weeks).

2. steel/wire bristle brush (the little ones used for wigs) with some light-weight silk cloth forced over the bristles (silk organza is good). Again, brushing 100 strokes minimum twice a day. The silk polished the hair, removes the excess oil and all the dirt, and you just move the brish to a new bit of silk when you have finished. You can usually use the silk three times before the process buggers the weave to the point where it is no longer useable.

Both were advised to me by a "hair model" - one of those women you see in shampoo/conditioner adds with stupidly shiny, lucious looking hair. Aparantly very few hair models ever shampoo or condition.