"No Poo" Movement catching on. Must read.

I got this note from a young friend of mine. He got me going. His note and my reply:

"Hi Jules,

I read a few days ago that daily shampooing was invented in the 60's by hair companies, and that prior to that women washed hair once a month.

Apparently there is a movement called 'no poo', which is sort of pushing the idea its the hair care products that make our hair unattractive. rinse daily with water, Sodium bicarbonate for washing every few weeks, and apple cider vinegar for conditioner after washing with the sodium bicarbonate.

Apparently there is like a month of 'adjustment' where you are gross greasy mess, then the hair stabilizes.

What do you remember from your youth on this topic?"

You can probably anticipate what I will say. There is no such thing as a free lunch. If you think about it, there are so many things that need to be examined. Everything we put in or on our bodies has a consequence. I don't think that plastics were developed until WW 11. Now we expose everything to plastics. We put our food in plastic bags, our clothes (fleece) are pure plastic, we eat and drink from plastic, almost all store food comes in plastic, sheets and pillows are made from plastic, all your sports gear is plastic. The chemical soups we drench ourselves in all have negative consequences. All. Most pharmaceuticals have awful side effects. Two of the five major medicines Mom took in the last years of her life have been removed because they caused heart attacks. She died of a heart attack. Somehow, the Mad Men of the sixties were so much more successful than we can ever imagine and in reality there is no one protecting us. The FDA and so forth have allowed endless damaging and destructive drugs and cosmetics and food stuffs to pollute our selves. There is nothing that doesn't have an down side. 

Both my mother and father were shocked when their kids started taking showers everyday. They grew up washing and shining shoes on Saturday night. Old farm traditions. My Dad used a bar soap for shampoo his whole life. He had beautiful hair. Mom used to have her hair washed and set once a week at the hairdresser.

We old hippies used Dr. Bronners (

Peppermint Liquid Soap - 32 oz

 ) for almost everything. toothpaste, shampoo, body wash, laundry. Then started coming the naturals and we used them. In Nica the poor people use a drop of bar soap and a lot of brushing. In many places people use coconut oil and a lot of brushing. In India, people use oil and have gorgeous hair. The Amerindians and Eskimos used bear fat or other available oils. You see, it is a bad idea to dry out your hair and then have to put products to counter the dryness. That is a fact. And each product has a soup of chemicals and additives and fake color and dangerous scents. Bad. Every scent in your laundry is some nasty chemical. People used to hang out laundry to dry and it smelled so fresh. Now chemical places like DuPont and Monsanto use nasty shit to emulate that nice smell. I get a headache when I am in the detergent section of a market. If I told that to a doctor, I would get a chemical prescription to counteract the headache.

Many of the things we do without examining them are not only stupid, but destructive. Fluoride in the drinking water, no proof that it helps with teeth. Very expensive and lots of side effects. An aspirin a day for your heart-same thing. Who started that ad campaign? Non dairy sour cream has something like 70 chemicals in it. Hair care is a good place to start. Get a good brush to stimulate your natural oils (maybe a non plastic brush) and go from there.

A good idea is to look to the past before TV ads and before Monsanto and before supermarket chains. People did a lot of body care with baking soda. Great for stomach stuff, odors,cleaning. Vinegar was used for everything..cleaning, fighting infections, washing windows and on and on. Epsom salts were used for a million things. Salt was used for teeth brushing and gum health and gargle. You get my drift.This doesn't even take into consideration herbs, and spices and natural healing and ancient traditions..acupuncture, massage, and so forth. I have seen a comfrey compress take down swelling in front of my eyes.

I am slightly amused that a person who only has a half inch of hair is looking at this issue, but I am happy to have you thinking along these lines. All the people I know in your generation are very concerned about researching the best products to buy for their needs. The next step would be to study the best non-products. I am not against the use of anything commercial, you know that, but if use of one thing is creating the need for the next thing and the next thing, the spiral gets more and more away from the simple things that have worked forever. 

p.s., The frequent chemical shampooing may also have created the need for the massive hair coloring industry in the US which almost always uses cancer producing ingredients. My grandmother B. died with no grey in her hair.

This is more than you wanted, I am sure, but a good way to think about things is "what did people used to do, what do poor people do and how much shit do I want to use on a regular basis?" The natural cosmetic and food industry has offered a lot of substitutes for the worst shit, but the mentality is the same..what do I let them sell me?