When I was about 28 I had a sudden and severe reaction to hair dye. After what is one of the grossest and most extreme reactions I have ever seen or experienced, I had to question what the hell it was I was putting on my head, next to my brain. Turns out it’s pretty bad.
I had been dying my hair for over 10 years by that point and then one day I did it and my entire scalp broke out in what the literature refers to as “weeping sores”, my neck and face swelled up, and I had to hide away until I didn’t look like the swamp thing.
My scalp’s natural balance wasn’t the same again for a few years after!
If I dye my hair again, it’s very likely I’ll have to be rushed to the ER so I haven’t done it since. I have also cut out a lot of beauty products to avoid pumping unnecessary chemicals into my body as well as reduce the waste I throw away.
I haven’t used face wash in years, because soap. Shower gels in plastic bottles are gone, because soap. Plastic shampoo bottles replaced with a shampoo bar in a tin (I highly recommend the shampoo bars from LUSH btw – really really). Coconut oil, honey, olive oil, coffee grinds, sea salt and other household foodstuffs for moisturizing hair treatments, face & body scrubs etc.
Occasionally I will splurge on a beauty product that is worthwhile (taking into account the responsibility of the brand) but at the end of the day, there is nothing they can make that any of us actually need.
Whatever that product says it does, the results are faster if you go to the source…your body and your mind. In the last year, my alcohol intake has dropped from an average of about 2 a day to 1 a week, if that – this has caused my eternal potbelly to disappear along with all signs of dandruff – both of which I’ve been fighting on and off for decades. Just gone.
Whether it’s health, hair, weight, skin, or ageing, the following have been the only things that have worked consistently and permanently to fix what I consider incorrect or unbalanced:
- Drink more water.
- Drink less alcohol.
- Eat real food when you’re hungry.
- Cut out ALL bread+noodles+pasta for a month at a time.
- Stop smoking (working on it).
- Walk.
- Moisturise in cold countries.
- Stay out of the sun in hot countries (not completely, one is not a mole).
- Live near nature.
- Addition if you have a sweet tooth:
- Avoid processed sugar (if you have to pick, dump the soft drinks/sodas).
That’s it. All of those things are free.
