The Skin Detective is currently on maternity leave.
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Love this article via Grist.org on why everyday use of the wrong products (and food with junk in it!) is bad for your health. For your spring cleaning this year, why not kick one toxic product to the curb?
The other day, my coworker brought in a sunscreen she uses every day to have me tell her how natural (or not) it was. I had to admit it had some nasty stuff in it, which she wasn’t surprised about. But she had a really good theory about compensating for a can’t-live-without-it but not-exactly-natural product.
You know about carbon offsets, right? I know many greenies think these aren’t perfect, but the idea that you can take a flight and invest in clean energy to offset the environmental damage applies even better to your skin care. For example, my coworker is really attached to that sunscreen—it’s the only one that’s never made her break out. So, she picks other greener products to use in the rest of her regimen.
You might think everything I put on my body is totally natural, but I offset, too. I dislike the freckles on my hands (too much like age spots), so I apply an affordable drugstore vitamin A cream to the tops of my hands every night (and sunscreen during the day). It’s definitely not a very clean product, but I haven’t yet found an effective, more natural vitamin A cream (if anyone has any tips, send ‘em to me!). To compensate, I use a one ingredient product as my body lotion: sweet almond oil from Acacia. You can get it in gallon sizes! It’s a pretty good deal, too (but oils can spoil, so make sure you use enough to buy this much).
You can offset in other ways besides ingredients, too. Say if one of your must-haves is poorly packaged (small, non-recyclable container), you can buy something else you use all the time in bulk (my husband’s shower gel is classic Castile soap from Dr. Bronner’s, and I can refill our 32-ounce bottle at my local natural food store).
This cleanser was awesome. My face felt totally soft and smooth after and it smelled delicious. Like breakfast. And I love breakfast. I would do this weekly. I’m seriously thinking about an oatmeal bath now.
I needed a quick project because we went away for the weekend and just got back today, so I thought I’d try something that has been recommended to me many times over, by actual people who cut hair: olive oil as hair conditioning treatment. I used only extra-virgin olive oil, nothing extra, because I love the smell of olive oil, especially the super green, almost bitter kind we buy, which even has a little sediment in it. It didn’t have much of a smell once I applied it, anyway.
You can see from the picture how much I used (there was a little extra, which I used after as body oil!). I poured a little in my hands and applied it to my hair, going around my head until it all seemed coated. Then I wrapped my head in plastic wrap to keep it warm. Yes, plastic wrap. Amazing how the kitchen and bathroom coincide in these projects.
I sat in a bath while I waited for it to infuse into my hair. I gave it about 40 minutes, periodically wetting a washcloth with hot water, wringing it out so it was warm and damp, and placing it on my head to warm the oil under the plastic wrap. Once I was done, I showered but the oil didn’t rinse away without a good amount of water and a couple rounds of shampoo. I’m pretty sure there is still some oil in my hair; it remains to be seen whether this will have negative effects on how it looks, so check back later in the week for an update.
Overall this was totally easy to do and seems pretty cheap (again, we buy our oil in bulk so it’s hard to tell), so if it works, I think I would do it every week! But I would just buy a shower cap I could reuse every time with the oil: I hate the idea of using all that plastic wrap.
