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The struggle is real when it come to finding hair care products with ingredients that you trust.  

Not only do you need to trust the ingredients, but you need them to work! Sometimes this seems mutually exclusive.  

Did you know that the average adult uses 9 personal care products each day and comes in contact with approximately 126 unique chemical ingredients?

126 chemicals a day from personal products alone!!! That isn’t counting chemicals in cleaning products or pesticides used on foods.  

Can you imagine the number if you include markers, whiteout, tape, dyes, fertilizers, detergents, and other miscellaneous things we use each day?

Personal care products include things like shampoo, conditioner, soap, toothpaste, body wash, perfume, cologne, makeup, nail polish, shaving cream, lotion, or other skin care products.  Many more items fall in this group!

I am on a mission to minimize the chemicals in my life.  Slowly, I am working my way through the products I use in order to reduce and remove the chemicals I encounter each day.

It is empowering to be more informed in caring for your health.  This process of examination is insightful. I have learned so much! I suppose I can thank my experience of healing from Hashimoto’s for this new side of myself.

THE HAIR CARE STRUGGLE

Back to the hair care struggle.  And I do mean struggle..

If you do a quick search on Pinterest you can find an overwhelming number of blogs recommending the ‘No poo” method for shampooing your hair.  This includes mixing baking soda and water and using it as your shampoo.

Another DIY for conditioner that is equally simple combines distilled water and apple cider vinegar (ACV) as a conditioning rinse.  If these simple methods work for you- that is quite wonderful. In fact, I envy you!

My experience with both of these led to disaster!!  The baking soda shampoo left me with greasy hair and dandruff.  Can you even have oily hair and a dry scalp at the same time?! Apparently, yes.

And the ACV conditioning rinse did nothing to help me detangle my hair.  Running a brush through my hair took me 25 minutes! And it hurt. Sigh. I have been practically married to my detangling conditioner for years.

I have very long, fine, and wavy blond hair that has been color treated in the past so this is no doubt part of the reason my hair was not successful in many of the methods of DIY shampoo or conditioner.  I also swim regularly in chlorine (more chemicals!) which is very hard on my hair.

However, I am not willing to walk around with greasy hair and dandruff each day.  We all have our limits.

There are many other options for DIY shampoos you can find, but many of them need to be kept in the refrigerator and are not shelf stable for long periods of time.  Maybe you feel differently, but I need some amount of convenience when it comes to these items.  And I need them to work.

This process was so disheartening to me because I want to reduce the chemicals I am in contact with each day.  Eventually, I was able to find a compromise that made me happy.

SHAMPOO AND CONDITIONER BARS

I had never heard of a shampoo bar before my exploratory hair care process.  And definitely not a conditioning bar.

I came across these shampoo and conditioner bars and decided to try them.  At first I was a bit put off by the price, but after using them I have to say I was impressed.  

The shampoo bar contains 8 ingredients and the conditioning bar contains 13 ingredients.  I personally want a product that works and contains very few ingredients. Most of these ingredients I recognize which is inspiring.

Ingredients

• Shampoo Bar: Sodium Coco Sulfate, Coconut Oil, Cocoa Butter, D-panthenol, Hemp Seed Oil, Natural oxides and food grade color. Orange and Tangerine Essential Oils.
• Conditioner Bar: Behentrimonium Methosulfate (From Rapeseed oil), Cocoa Butter, Cetyl Alcohol, Coconut Oil, Jojoba Oil, Glycerin, D-Pantheranol, Hemp Seed Oil, Extra Virgin Olive oil, Natural oxides and food grade color, Vitamin E. Orange and Tangerine Essential Oils.

This is not a perfect answer.  The shampoo bar does contain sodium coco sulfate which is a gentle foaming and cleaning agent that is used in baby shampoos.  It is gentle and will not completely strip the natural oils from your hair, yet your hair still is clean.

Ideally, I could find something that worked well without even this diluted form of sulfate derivative.  However, due to my experiences with DIY shampoos and conditioners this is where I have decided to settle.  

It has been such a struggle to find a compromise between what works and products that have ingredients that I trust.

I am excited by how long the bars last (up to 80 washes) and how easy they are to fit in my gym bag.  Super convenient!

I was carrying around large bottles of chemical laden shampoos and conditioners that together were the same cost and I would need to replace them every 2 to 3 weeks instead of every few months.

Another nice discovery is that I can use the shampoo bar as body soap.  And I love that they use essential oils for fragrance.

Pro tip:  Be sure to work the conditioning bar into your hair and let it set for 5 minutes before rinsing it out.  This makes a difference when you brush or detangle your hair later.

If you find that you still have trouble detangling your hair, it can be helpful to soak your hair in coconut oil for several hours (or overnight) as a hair mask. Then wash well.

I hope my experience can be helpful for you.  This process has been more difficult than I could have ever imagined.  

And if you find something that you love, please share.  I would love to hear it!