Toothpaste

Just so you did not start to worry and think I had decided to act like a normal person, I have spent some time looking into all natural toothpaste.  Yes, that's right.  This all natural craze has gone that far!

It seems like just about everybody knows about all the studies linking sodium laureth sulfates (not to be confused with lauryl sulfates!) to cancer.  What I bet you didn't know is that your toothpaste is chock full of them.  Unfortunately, laureth sulfates are what give your toothpaste, shampoo, and other detergents those nice, fun bubbles.  These bad boys are in all the major toothpaste brands.  Even the "healthy" brands like Tom's.

Not only are your toothpastes full of laureth sulfates, but they have another offender:  fluoride.  Now, I know we all grew up hearing that this was good for you.  A lot of places even add various forms of fluoride to the water supply to help prevent tooth decay.  I'm going to give you a nice bullet-pointed list of reasons to avoid fluoride.  Or, if you want to read a good article that nicely summarizes the research on fluroide, click here.

• Fluoride makes a lot of little kids sick to their stomach, and may even cause gastrointestinal distress in adults.
• Research has not shown any significant effects of tooth decay prevention from adding fluoride to water.  Oh, actually, in New Zealand, kids living in areas with fluoridated water actually had worse tooth decay.
• Fluoride has been shown to decrease your thyroid function, and is one of the leading suspects in the rapidly increasing number of cases of hypothyroidism in the U.S.
• Fluoride accumulates in your body over a long period of time, even if you only get it in low doses.

Because your body cannot dispose of fluoride, even small amounts of it (like what is in your toothpaste) are cause for concern.  There is a lot more research about fluorides, but those are the highlights.  Anyway, to avoid sodium laureth sulfates and fluoride, I embarked on a toothpaste quest.

As usual, I started by trying ot make my own toothpaste.  This was a horrible, horrible mistake.  While baking soda is good for your teeth, it tastes like you're brushing your teeth with salt.  Nasty!  I headed to the stores.

After much whining and reading, I could not find a single toothpaste in store that did not have fluoride or sodium laureth sulfate.  If a toothpaste didn't have one, it had the other.  Now, I don't know if there is enough laureth sulfate in toothpaste to effect you.  I may have been making this a lot harder on myself than it needed to be.  But since I'd rather be safe than sorry, I eventually ordered a TON of Burt's Bees fluoride free toothpaste.  This stuff tastes MUCH better than Tom's (which was almost as bad as the baking soda experiment). 

The all natural toothpaste does not foam as well as my old Colgate did, but that is to be expected sans laureth sulfates.  In addition, the Burt's Bees toothpaste is not mint flavored, since whatever it is that cleans your teeth comes from cranberries.  I sometimes think I might have bad breath sooner after using this than I did when I used Colgate (a common problem for us heavy coffee drinkers) but I compensate by using a mouthwash more often, which is probably better for me anyway. 

All Natural Me

Nearly two months since I started my search for all natural products, and really only a week or two since absolutely everything has become chemical free, and my skin looks all new.

Even the redness on the backs of my arms is nearly gone!!!  I've had that my entire life!  This experiment has been totally worth it. 

Replacing Deodorant

Now, before you are seriously grossed out and run holding your nose and screaming away from this page, you should know that I have tried all kinds of ways to stay among the ranks of the unperspired.  I kid you not, it was deodorant that started this whole chemical-free quest.

Toward the end of last year I started getting hives in reaction to everything I put onto my skin.  Now, this happens to me once in a while.  I am not sure if it happens because my body gets tired of the same old thing, or maybe it just wants a little vindication for not exercising regularly.  Either way, I end up having to completely repurchase all of my hygiene products.  Sucks, huh?  Or should I say, "itches?"  Ahem.  Moving forward.

This happened with my deodorant. 


That was new.  I have not had trouble with deodorant since I was a prepubescent smelly tween.  And lemme tell ya, itchy armpits are the WORST.  This new dilemma soon moved beyond itching, though, right into the hurt.  And we are NOT going to talk about shaving.  So not going there.

I quested forth to find a suitable deodorant for my prima donna pits, and lo and behold, I found... nothing.  The all natural ones were just sticky messes.  The store bought ones all made the hives worse. The expensive online ones worked for a few weeks, and then I would have to start all over once a new round of rashes hit.

So then I tried nothing.  That's right, folks.  I stopped wearing deodorant.  You know what kept the smell away?  Oil.  I've already had a post about this, but my shame was too great to tell you about the 'pits.   Actually, at first I was putting fragranced lotion on to fight the case of the smellies, but once I gave up on lotion I thought I'd try my fragrance-free sesame seed oil.  Booyah.  No more rashes, and no B.O.!  Now I don't have any problems and I don't think I'll be going back to deodorant.

Update:
My oh-so-clever friend Katie gave me this recipe for homemade deodorant.  I haven't tried it yet, but for those of you who aren't brave enough to share your natural scent with the rest of the world, you might want to give this a whirl:

1/4 cup corn starch
1/4 cup baking soda
6 TB coconut oil

Update to the update:
That recipe for deodorant is the BEST.  You might want to cut down on the cornstarch, though, because it can make the paste a bit gritty.  You should also know that I didn't have coconut oil, so I used Gold Bond lotion instead.  I also added a few drops of tea tree oil for the smell.  You can customize your own way.  :)

If you make this with coconut oil, Katie suggested putting it in an old deodorant container and refrigerating it.  That way it will get hard, like store bought deodorant, and you can apply it the same way.  I don't mind putting mine on with the softer lotion.  It's really easy to smear on and absorbs right away.

Oh, and bonuses about this?  I can make it smell however I want.  No more white streaks on clothes.  No gunked up stuff under there (yes, that's gross, but you know EXACTLY what I'm talking about).  This is basically the best stuff ever.  And...

I'm back among the Wearers of Deodorant!

Oil? I'm already oily!

For those of you who don't know me well, I'm a pasty, oily-skinned, fine-haired, acne-prone (oh yeah, even the backne) white person.  Everything on me turns red, red, red, from hair dyes and makeup to having too much iron in the water.  I have red bumps all over my arms and legs, and usually have a rash or five somewhere due to something unknown.

At least, that used to be me...

My whole life I've looked for the magic facewash, 3 step program, bodywash, etc. that would clear up my ridiculously finicky skin.  I believe I have tried almost every product under the sun, all natural stuff included.  Then someone put me onto parabens.  (Thanks, mom!)  I've been avoiding those nasty suckers for 3 weeks now, and my skin looks the BEST it's ever been! Look at my brand new face!

Parabens are loaded into your cleaning products.  They are mostly in moisutrizers, but they have a nasty habit of sneaking into your laundry detergent and other soaps, too.  I even found it in my face powder!  Eeps!  So, as things have been running out around the house (sometimes with help into the garbage can), I've been replacing them with sulfate and paraben free products.  Okay, I've been going a lot farther than that... they're as chemical free as I can get them!  And the results speak for themselves.

I chose sesame seed oil because it is fairly cheap, but still better for your skin than mineral oil.  I've actually just started coating up with this in the shower to replace my lotions altogether.  Seriously.  Best.  Skin.  Ever.

That's right, I have replaced ALL of my lotion with oil.  Even my face lotion.  At first I was using sesame, and my skin soaked it up.  While that initially actually cleared my skin of acne, I started getting it again after a few weeks.  My brother recommended jojoba oil, and I've started applying that with a cotton ball. On days when my face is drier, I just don't rinse the excess oil off.  My face looooooves it.

Some of the oils I've tried are coconut, mineral, Alba (it's a mixture, and heavenly, but too pricey for regular use), sesame, olive, canola, and jojoba.  The sesame for my body and the jojoba for my face were the most economical options that didn't give me acne.

Switching to oil was... weird.  I like the thicker consistency of lotion better.  To help facilitate the change, I started using Gold Bond Ultra Healing lotion.  The stuff is wondrous.  Not as chemical free as I'd like, but free of the big offenders that are in most store-bought brands and way, way better than any of the natural brand products I've tried.  Anyway, I used Gold Bond on days when I didn't want to be bothered by oil or forgot to put it on in the shower.  Now that I've adjusted to oil, though, I hardly use the lotion any longer.  The long winded point I'm trying to make here is this:  Make this change as easy on yourself as possible.

Dr. Bronner's Soaps - 'Cuz everybody's doing it

Did you know your skin absorbs three fifths of what you put on it?  Now go read what's on the label for your lotion, shampoo, and body wash.  Eeeeew!  Time to change.

Every site I've visited mentions Dr. Bronner's Magic Soaps.  They are the ultimate in multitasking, granola products.  I have purchased one of their body bars before out of curiosity more than for any health-conscious reasons, and I remember my reaction being "meh."  However, since apparently lots of all natural, super healthy, safe, plant derived, blah, blah, blah stuff doesn't actually work, I figured I'd take the safe road and try this first as a body wash and as a shampoo.

I got a bottle of peppermint castille soap (it was soooo hard to choose between peppermint and citrus!).  Most websites suggested diluting the soap to half soap, half water before using it.

Now, Dr. Bronner's products are famous for being versatile.  Unfortunately, since I already bought all of the Shaklee cleaning products (which ran about the same price as Dr. Bronner's would break down to for their laundry detergent, and their Basic H multipurpose cleaner was actually even cheaper) I did not plan to use the castille soap for housecleaning.  I did, however, need some me cleaners.


Body Wash
I squirted a few drops of this on my loofah and scrubbed like I normally would.  I was surprised that the soap lathered a bit as I thought soap only did that with artificial whatevers added.  The peppermint made the soap tingly and wonderful!

I had heard that castille soap can be a bit drying, but that was not the case.  New favorite body wash!


Shampoo
This is coming out in a later post.  Click here.


Shaving Cream
This stuff was FABULOUS as shaving cream!  I've been using oil like my mother before me, and this was so much better!  Don't dither or dally... run, run to the store.  You will never shave with anything else.  Evar.  It is not like shaving with other kinds of soap that leaves your skin irritated.  I was serious about running to the store.  Why are you still reading this?


Shower Cleaner
After a fun scrub-a-dub bathtime with my new soap goodness, I thought I'd try to clean the tub with the soap.  This failed miserably.  I even left the soap on for a while to see if it would do any better at cutting through the accumulation on our tub walls  (I later learned that soap moves dirt around, while detergent and baking soda cut through soap for scrubbing!).  Shaklee products will still be my cleaning products.  However, Dr. Bronner's body products have far surpassed Shaklee's body products for effectiveness.  I'm ridiculously pleased.

Overall the castile soap was a winner.  It's very economical because of all the things it can do.  Plus, the peppermint smells fabulous!  There are a gazillion "recipes" for all of the possible uses for the stuff online.  Buy a bottle, have some fun, and no longer worry when your cats or kids eat things they shouldn't.

Going Granola?

We all have those friends who do things that are just plain strange.  With the advent of social networking, the strangeness can become pervasive.  Seriously, every time I open my browser one of said friends has recently been posting about all the stuff she ISN'T using... diapers, shampoo, conditioner, chemical cleaners, and so forth.  She gets a lot of interesting comments from other strange folks who are doing the same thing.  Now, I've tried to use all natural products here and there, with limited (okay, no) success.


Recently, some health concerns have me ready to try, try again.  With that being said, I'm not brave enough to buy all the strange ingredients to make my own, well, everything.  So I started off by buying Shaklee housecleaners and laundry stuff.  I love their vitamins, so Shaklee's homecare line should be good too, right?  I mean, how different can they be?  Actually, this little chemical-free endeavor went really, really well!  I was inspired, and continued on my quest to eradicate unpronounceable ingredients from my house. 


At the end of this "going granola" experiment I plan to post a page with all of my favorite recipes and what works the best!


Update:  Said page is done!  Click Here.