Natural skin/hair care

Here are some cheap & easy tips for natural skin and hair care. If you have questions, please ask - everyone's needs are different :)

Skin Care

I use the Oil Cleansing Method (OCM) for skin care. The idea here is that the best way to cleanse your skin is to use - yup - oil! That may sound counterintuitive since the beauty product world would like us to buy their products, but the facts are:

- Oil does not clog pores. DIRT, trapped in your face's natural oils, clogs pores and causes breakouts.
- Oil dissolves oil
- Stripping the natural oils from your face will result in an overproduction of oil

So if you massage oil into your skin, you loosen the dirt trapped in the oil already on your face, then use a warm washcloth to massage the oil off. You are left with clean, soft skin and you haven't stripped your face of it's natural protection!

You can use different types of oil with OCM. Here are some that I've tried:

Olive oil/castor oil - This is a starting point for OCM. My skin is very dry/sensitive, so this didn't work for me. If you start here, be sure you are using food-grade castor oil. Play with the proportions.

Grapeseed oil - Worked well, but a bit too astringent for my dry skin.

Sweet almond oil - Perfect! This is what I use daily, straight from the bottle.

One thing to note is that if you are switching from commercial cleansers to OCM, you may experience a detox period where you suffer some breakouts. That will PASS. You need to give any particular oil/combo up to a month to see if it's working for you.

Some people do not need to moisturize after OCM - I do. I use raw, unrefined coconut oil, and (raw, unrefined) shea butter.

That's the basics - see the link or use your google-fu for more detailed information :)

Hair Care

Similarly as with skincare, using shampoos that contain sodium lauryl sulphate (SLS) can strip the oils from your scalp and cause an overproduction of oil. If you use shampoo, go to a health food store to locate many products that are SLS free. I use J/A/S/O/N brand shampoo (no conditioner), personally.

If you really want to be rebellious, you could try no poo. No poo is the method of not using shampoo at all, and only washing your hair a few times per week. See the link for details - I don't do this personally. However, I have used an ACV rinse as a detangler. Simply purchase some apple cider vinegar (ACV) (the good kind, from a health food store, where you can actually see bits of apple pulp in there), put it in a squirt bottle, put the bottle in your shower, spritz onto wet hair and let set for a few minutes, then rinse away. Yes, it will smell like vinegar, but only while WET. After you rinse, the smell ought to be mostly dissipated. If not, it will be by the time your hair is dry.