waywardsis, I accidentally clicked on your link. As I presume your name is Tracy and you wrote both the article on bulimia and meat organization in your whole kitchen, it's interesting to read. I too tried that self-indulged throwing up once after eating a hot dog that tasted like crap and a few cookies, and it was a horrible experience. It took like 30 minutes to get anything up and I had drunk a full bottle of water before hand, and it just didn't make any sense. I'm glad I tried it though to kind of get the feeling of what some women (and men) do to feel "good" about themselves. Screw that though. Not eating or throwing up your food is depressing. I prefer a high fat low carb diet to anything else out there. It's the natural way to be thin.

Edit: I realized that my hair is oily.. Which is sad because I thought I'd be out of the detox stage already. Perhaps I'm not doing the BS/ACV mix right. I've been poo-free for about three weeks now. Hopefully the detox ends soon because my mom is going to force wash my hair with shampoo if she sees it oily one more day.

Update: Last night my mom woke me up at 9 PM and forced me to shower and scrub my hair with avalon shampoo. UGHHHH!!!!! *ANGRY*

So, yeah, I'm a little pissed. The no-poo didn't work fast enough for my mom to let me try it out. I mean, I went no-poo for at least a month and my hair just progressively got more and more and more oilier, and I could feel the oil still on my hair after I scrubbed and showered really good with the BS/ACV mix, which really confuses me, because I was under the impression that the hair was supposed to wash clean after the BS/ACV mix..but not mine! I hate that avalon shampoo. It made my hair look like a frizz ball all day, LITERALLY! And now all my month-long "poo"-fast is ruined and my hair is so dry and puffy. POO!

Anyway, anyone who's tried no-poo, care to have some insight? I am confused and don't understand why it would take longer than a month to detox the oil from my hair. Now when I try it again, it's going to take 4 months because my hair is so dry from that shampoo I used on it. Anyway, just a little bit of a rant.

That sounds somewhat strange to me...I'll have gone 'no poo' as you guys call it for about three months straight (shower every other day w/o shampoo/conditioner and no tooth paste also)...my hair is long and slightly curly. At first it got a little oily but then that subsided in a few days. The only good guess I can give has to do with your diet, but at the same time I'm not so sure how it may correlate.

I have heard it takes anywhere from 3 weeks to 6 months for your hair to adjust to no-poo. Personally, no-poo never worked for me. I suspect it's my hair type (fine, blonde, and limp). My dad, who has the same hair I do, said that when he was a hippy back in the 70's that he went shampoo-free for about a year and his hair never looked good either.

FWIW if you want to continue with your no-poo experience, I don't think that your run-in with shampoo set you back to zero.

Sukiam6, I can't see how my diet would make my hair oily, especially since my diet is pretty nutritious, if not healthy, but I do eat a lot of fat (80% of my daily calories come from fat), so perhaps that makes my hair oily-perhaps having oily hair is really actually healthy and no one knows about it.. I just have oily hair, which is annoying to some people. Kallyn, I don't think I'm going to continue to go no-poo, just shower less now. Perhaps I'll shower every other day now instead of everyday with shampoo. And hopefully Avalon is safe to use. I certainly don't like smelling like peppermint and having frizzy hair.

The oiliness of your hair is directly related to how much you wash it, in my experience. When I used to wash it every day, it was VERY oily all the time. I would shower in the morning and it would be dirty/oily by dinner. Now I wash it twice a week and it does not get oily at all til at least the end of the 3rd day. If you had told me a few years ago that it would be possible for my hair to do that I would have laughed in your face! I only shower twice a week too. Unless I am out getting myself covered in grime I don't see the need to shower more often that that.

Right, I don't see a need to shower that often either, but it's hard convincing my mother to not bother me about it. The thing is, my hair was very oily right after I showered with the BS/ACV mix, so it must have been the BS/ACV that wasn't removing my excess oils from my hair. And I didn't shower that often using the BS/ACV mix either-only about every three days at most.

Today I woke up with a canker sore on the back of my roof of my mouth, which made me think I had a cold, because I thought it was a sore throat, but it's not a cold, just a canker sore. I'm relating this to one of two things: A change in diet (and thus a change in my hormones) from eating all meat to now eating more and more carbs from fruits and vegetables, which has probably increased my levels of estrogen in my body. Or I read it could be attributed to using toothpaste with sodium lauryl sulfate (SLS) in it. Now, I was all set on this one type of toothpaste, Nature's Gate, that is fluoride-free, and all "natural" ingredients, but I read that article about the SLS causing canker sores (and I've read from no-poo that it does other toxic things like mixing with other chemicals in the toothpaste or shampoo solution and causing carcinogenic nitrates to form). I'm so angry. Two tubes of this toothpaste cost $10, and even though I haven't been brushing my teeth much lately, my mom's been using the stuff religiously, and I don't want her to get cancer from it.

Anyway, I was wondering if anyone could list all the alternative products they use that are SLS/SLES free, fluoride free, and pretty much safe to use that don't cause any adverse affects for them to use. I've tried to get my mom to wash the laundry with borax, because I'm sure some irritated areas on the back of my arms are caused by detergents of all forms(shampoo, laundry detergent..). We even bought some borax at walmart and a couple large boxes of baking soda, and she never washes the laundry with the stuff and I'm slightly afraid to touch the borax because it's leaking a little out of the container, so thus we continue to use the laundry detergent, which is fine, but I think it'd be better if we used the borax and baking soda to wash the laundry. And does anyone know of any 'organic', safe makeup that doesn't irritate your face, skin, eyes, etc? The eye-liners and powders I've ever used somehow end up getting in my eye and annoying my eye. I also think most lipsticks and makeups are somehow toxic, but that doesn't mean I want to look like I'm anti-makeup. I like to look feminine, I just don't want to end up with lip cancer down the road (not sure of the chances of this) and have my lip have to be cut off..leaving me lipless.

Here are the products I use on my body:

Avalon Shampoo (SLS/SLES free, all natural ingredients)
Coconut oil for lotion
no nail polishes
no sunscreens
not much soap other than the shampoo I use
very little makeup (would like to use more but don't know of 'safe' kinds to use)

I know the ancient Egyptians and Romans used tons of makeup on their faces, and I'm not against makeup. Does anyone know of any all natural, safe, makeups/lipstick to use on your face? I keep forgetting to go buy some of that soap Forefather mentioned. I'll have to do that, though water does wash my skin pretty clean if I scrub it as well.

Have you ever had problems with canker sores from your toothpaste in the past? If you haven't, then I wouldn't suspect that as the first culprit. What *I* would suspect would be the pineapple you mentioned you ate for breakfast the other day. Pineapples have a weird enzyme in them that breaks down tissue - like, if you marinate a steak in pineapple juice it will turn into a pile of mush.

Basically SLS makes things foam, which is why it's in toothpaste and shampoo. You might want to try tooth soap for your teeth. It turned me off of toothpastes containing glycerin, but I decided not to stick with the tooth soap in the long run. It actually makes your teeth so clean that food sticks to them and makes them brown unless you scrub like once a week with baking soda. Really weird. You can order from their website, but if you really want to try it out I actually have a tub of tooth soap shreds left over - I can send them to you if you want; I'm definitely never going to use them again and that crap is expensive. If you are interested, PM me.

If you really want body-friendly cosmetics you could look into making your own or buying from somebody who makes their own. Also I think Burt's Bees products have mostly ingredients that seem whole foods-ish. I've heard that coconut oil can be good for your skin short-term but that if you use it for a few years it will start to dry your skin and make it pinched and older-looking. I think that I would use shea butter for lotion. I don't use any lotion at all, though.

The only makeup I really wear is mascara and I have no idea how to find a healthy mascara to use. :/

Really? Hmm. If you think of where you read that, please let me know.

I can say its great for surgical scars!

I've never been able to go no-poo either. I can go 2 weeks, then I just need to wash. No amount of ACV gets the sweaty smell out of my head.

I have to say that my first experiment with my Aubrey Organics shampoo wasn't that great either. I think it didn't wash out very well. I'm going to use my old shampoo this next time, and then after that I'll try the new stuff again with a vinegar rinse. Mostly my hair still felt oily and limp.

We shall see.

I only wear make up for very special occasions, and I bought my stuff at The Body Shop. It isn't all natural, but it is more natural than others and made with sustainable resources and no animal testing. For as infrequently as I wear it, that's enough for me.

Really, give up make-up. Let your face get some summer color, and you'll find that you probably don't need it. Then you look especially fantastic when you do wear it.

I also use very little soap. I shower daily and use soap on the 'naughty bits', but only soap the rest of my body when I have time for serious scrubbing, about once a month. Or if I'm very dirty from cleaning or being outside.



Some of what they used was toxic or otherwise undesirable. Kohl eyeliner for example was something that you had to set on fire, then use. I expect it probably wasn't a good thing. Many early makeups used pigments that are actually toxic, like many greens and whites.

Toms of Main makes quality tooth pastes. I can't give the ingredients though. I can't use it, its too harsh for my sensitive teeth.

My local health food store carries a nice line of environmentally friendly soaps that are scent free. I find these work better than borax, or some of the other non-soap things I've used.

You have to find a balance. There's a reason that so many products have been developed, and that's because they actually do work better than the old standbys. Figure out what you can live with. I bet your mom is much more likely to use a bottle of laundry soap than the borax, so find one that's better than the commercial stuff and compromise for now.

I'm pretty sure I heard it on the native-nutrition yahoo group.

Hmm, I wasn't aware coconut oil might make my skin get dry. Perhaps I'll try that soap you mentioned Bat Spit to get my mom to wash the laundry with. Maybe that would stop the clothes from being so abrasive to my arms. You know, I've noticed after going no-poo, that now that I'm using Avalon and only showering every 3-4 days, my hair gets completely soft and clean after I shampoo, and stays non-oily until either the 3rd or 4th day, whereby I have to wash it again. I really swear by the Avalon now. I read on the label that it doesn't have any SLS or SLES in it, no other unnatural chemicals either, and the peppermint scent from it is from real peppermint extract and no artificial smells. I'll have to check out Burt's Bees Kallyn. I don't mind not wearing makeup all the time. And when I do wear makeup, it's usually for concerts or recitals, etc.

And the last time I checked out toothpastes at the organic grocery store here, all they had was Tom of Maine's and Nature's Gate, and Tom of Maine's has fluoride in it. I bought Tom of Maine's and when I got outside with it I looked at the label and it said fluoride, which was the main reason I was buying it and not something like Crest, so I had to take it back and get the other kind, Nature's Gate. But then again I only just realized today that Nature's Gate has SLS in it..maybe not very much, but it's there. Well, I guess since I never eat sugar or processed foods, I don't have to worry too much about getting rotten teeth. And Kallyn, I don't think I want to use the tooth soap if you said it cleans your teeth so well that food stains the teeth. I mean, isn't that destroying the enamel that is supposed to keep the teeth from changing color or absorbing things? I really think there's something about exposing onesself to sunlight outdoors that keeps the body healthy and teeth strong. I dunno, perhaps it's not true, but from all the experiments that have been done by John Ott and now the more recent 'discovery' of the importance of lighting on mood and health, it would make sense that the majority of components in sunlight, including UV, impact our health. It's too bad Ott couldn't convince the medical institutes of the impact of light on health and get them to test it more. Then again, Ott did write his book some 30 years ago, which is what my mom emphasizes to me every time I mention that sunlight is good for your health and how Ott tested this.

The teeth only get superficially "stained." Here is an explanation form the tooth soap people:

Toothpaste contains viscous, sticky glycerin, the main ingredient in toothpaste, which coats the teeth and prevents re-enamelization from nutrients in the diet. Glycerin takes over 20 rinses to be removed and leaves your teeth coated! Skeptical? Try this simple test. Start with a clean sink and smear some of your toothpaste on the sink. Rinse it off and watch how the water beads up because of the sticky glycerin. You will have to keep rinsing and rinsing to remove it! Your teeth are similar to a porcelain sink, and your teeth are being coated every time you use toothpaste. Coated teeth cannot re-enamelize from nutrients in the diet!

and this:

When teeth are super clean, with no film to coat and smother them, whatever is eaten may leave a little color behind. Basically, if you eat foods that leave stains, you will see them on your teeth, especially when they are squeaky clean! Think of a really clean sink and when you spill something with color on it (like tea, blueberries,coffee, etc.) it leaves a slight stain behind. It is the same for your super clean teeth.

In my own case, I noticed a little bit of brown near my gumline so I freaked out and brushed with regular toothpaste, and the brown came immediately off. Then I reread the tooth soap booklet and saw the bit about staining.

We just use baking soda to bush our teeth and gargle with a drop or two of tea tree oil mixed in a dixie cup of water.

My grandmother said when she was young they used the white ashes from the cooking stove to brush their teeth.

Quoldrix, I would be careful with the baking soda. I've always read that it's very abrasive and can start to wear the enamel off of your teeth.