CAIRO: Are you looking for volume? Shine? Straighter hair? Curlier hair? No problem, there's a shampoo for everything. It will penetrate your hair strands and fluff them, wax them, babyliss them and roll them too! Shampoo manufacturers seem to have forgotten why it was created. What happened to cleaning dirt, oils, sebum and debris? Why is eye irritation a common thing with most shampoos? Why are some detergents-like-chemicals that are known to corrode and damage the hair scalp commonly used? Scents and dyes are seemingly more important. It's true we all like a pretty bottle, colorful images and a sexy television advertisement – Herbal Essences we salute you- but some of us don't want to sacrifice our health anymore. Coloring and benzine-type products are known to damage our health, but are commonly used. Sodium Laureth Sulfate is known to be used in clinical testing as a primary skin irritant and has caused mutagenic effects in laboratory animal tests. Cocamidopropyl Betaine is a potential irritant and can be contaminated with or break down into chemicals linked to cancer. Ammonium Chloride is harmful if swallowed but can cause irritation to skin, eyes and respiratory organs if inhaled. Some shampoos add preservatives to prevent bacteria from degrading the proteins used in the “volume enhancing” types and to prevent the bottle from stinking. I might sound like I'm panicking, but I know that many chemicals aren't harmful, and natural doesn't always mean harmless. Here's the problem, lots of shampoos are mass produced and the quantity and concentration of these lab manufactured chemicals is questionable. In addition, crude oil makes up many of the constituents of shampoos. Millions of shampoo users pour those questionable chemicals into their bathroom drains every day. Those chemicals go back into our water supply one way or another and require more chemicals to clean them – hopefully the water is clean by the time it gets us. We went through some of the popular brands available in local supermarkets and found that the most have rated moderate to highly hazardous by the Skin Deep Cosmetic Safety Database. This database was created by the Environmental Working Group that rates many products based on their environmental and health impacts. The website provides a useful insight and you can easily search most of your toiletries and find out their ratings. The most environmentally friendly option would be to NOT use a shampoo, but that would take weeks of bad hair days as your hair and scalp get used to balancing themselves out as nature intended for them to do – and your acceptance of how your hair really is! Rinsing with warm water can remove most of the dirt including styling products, dust and other pollutants in the protective sebum produced by the hair follicles. Shampoo just clears up the small percentage that constitutes what's left after rinsing. We'll help you avoid all the chemical cocktails out there and mix your own shampoos, conditioners and hair treatments using household ingredients. No need to sigh, it's true we don't (yet) get eco-friendly shampoos or some other projects in Egypt, but even those products require for your hair to adjust while they detox the hair like the remedy below. All what you'll need is: baking soda, and apple cider vinegar. The most popular recipe uses baking soda, apple cider vinegar and water. Simply add 1 tea spoon of baking soda for every ¼ cup of water and massage your scalp thoroughly. Then rinse this with the conditioning mixture of apple cider vinegar and water (at a ratio of 1:2). Baking soda is remarkable for cleaning and deodorizing the scalp without stripping it of its natural oils. The apple cider vinegar is excellent for moisturizing, and you don't have to worry about smelling like a jar of pickle (you won't smell of strawberry passion though). Remember, after years of washing with harsh, pH altering shampoos, your scalp will need weeks to adjust its oils production. We've been promised amazing results, so join us on this initiative to reduce plastic use, reduce our chemicals input into the water systems and let our scalps do their job. Eco Options Egypt
