Can I give up shampoo?

Can I give up shampoo?

I'll bet that's not a question that's heard very often. So why do I want to give up shampoo?

For a long time now I've suffered with psoriasis. I've got all the lotions and potions from the doctor, many of which I react badly to. I can kind of keep on top of most of it but I really struggle with scalp psoriasis. It's hard to get at, unsightly, and worst of all down right painful.

I've been working out in recent years what the triggers are for my autoimmune problems (psoriasis is autoimmune) and in the last year it's become painfully (literally) obvious that chemicals are not my friends.

So far, I've switched to making my own laundry products, soap, cleaning fluids and some hygiene products. Each move has eased my flares a bit, so long as I live in a bubble to avoid chemicals on others. What I've failed to make is shampoo. I've tried various recipes and shampoo bars (ouch!) but nothing has been a success so I've gone back to the one brand of shampoo that I could sort of tolerate. I mean, who really wants to be a greasy, smelly mess? I definitely don't.

One of my headscarves

It has been obvious over the years that the psoriasis on my scalp is far, far worse than anywhere else on my body. I've always thought that this was because it is so hard to get at the skin under my hair. Two years ago I cut off my long hair so that I could get at my scalp better but that didn't help. In fact, it made me feel even more miserable as everyone could now see just how bad my skin looked. It was painful to touch and bled all the time, not to mention the bald patches where my hair had fallen out. I resorted to wearing head scarves out of embarrassment and also to try to stop me from scratching so much.

Last week it occurred to me that with my intolerance to scents and perfumes, that maybe the shampoo itself was why my scalp is always so bad. I don't use scented products to wash anywhere else but have you ever seen a fragrance/perfume free shampoo? I haven't. This is why I tried to make my own.

I took to the internet to do yet more research. I found a few no shampoo methods. It pretty much means training your hair and scalp to adapt to washing with plain water. It's pretty gross for a few months, but I still have the head scarves. It gets itchy as well. This could be a problem as I already struggle with this and I'm driven to almost ripping my skin off as the itching gets so bad.

So figured, why not give it a go? I'm mostly housebound anyway and can't have visitors so who's going to see me other than Hubby and Missy?

I've just washed my hair with shampoo (I know, but bare with me). I wanted to first wash out all the prescription products on my scalp and hair as I'm going to stop them as well. It's not like they have worked anyway and they are even more harsh than shampoo!

I didn't use conditioner today. I usually have to condition as my hair tangles without it and causes me to accidentally pull out a lot of hair when brushing. Really, it doesn't matter how careful I am, my hair is extremely brittle from harsh prescription potions. Just ask Hubby how much hair is in the drain in the shower!

Instead, I've rinsed my hair with apple cider vinegar. It's an old school way of conditioning hair that our grannies would have known about. I massaged it through my hair and scalp and left it on for about 5 minutes before rinsing it out with water.

I am very pleasantly surprised how well it detangled my hair. Better than any conditioner I've used! It was so much easier to comb out after. It's air drying as I type. I hope it's not a complete mess when dry!

In place of shampoo, I intend to use mostly plain water although I'm going to try a hair mask made from bentonite clay once or twice a week in the hope that it will help my skin to heal. (Affiliate link) I'm not sure how often it will be needed yet and I haven't done my patch test yet to know if I can use it. I'll have to report back. Then I intend to rinse with apple cider vinegar to remove all residues like I did today.

I was careful choosing the type of vinegar. I already use white vinegar for rinsing laundry and as a rinse aid in the dishwasher where it works very well. However, for my skin I've gone with cold-pressed apple cider vinegar with mother (all the good microbes). (Affiliate link) This is recommended for its health benefits for so many conditions, including autoimmune and dandruff (if used on your scalp). It seemed like a good choice. I have bought food grade so I will also use it in the kitchen. I didn't realise that the supermarket-bought apple cider vinegar I had didn't contain the mother (microbes) so it would be nice if it also helped calm my gut (as recommended in numerous places) by using it in my food instead of the supermarket bought ones.

This is a complete experiment and I have no idea how it will work for me. I am prepared for it to be horrible for a while in the hope that firstly, the scalp psoriasis will calm down without the chemicals in shampoo on it everyday, and secondly, that my natural oils will adapt over time to not needing shampoo that strips them out of your hair.

Think about it, how many years have humans lived quite happily without all these products? I'm pretty sure my cat doesn't need shampoo and conditioner. His fur is stunningly soft and always meticulously clean. Besides, have you ever tried to bath a cat!!

Suki doesn't need Vidal Sassoon. He's purr-fect!

Edit: Here's my 4 week progress update if you are interested in what I've learnt. Enjoy!

How I'm eating a clean diet to improve health, saving money and the planet

My diet has been refined over many years due to intolerances and allergies but in the last 4 months I've taken things to a whole new level.

After my epiphany in France, I realised that my food was making me more sick. I have been careful to eliminate many, many things from my diet for the last 8 years but the improvements were often short lived. I still don't really understand why but suspect it's a side effect of my medication that I can't do without or part of my autoimmune disease.

Marmalade, the bear, shopping at the
 French market

So 4 months ago, I took the decision to eliminate most processed foods from my diet. I didn't eat badly before but I did use some convenience foods, such as jars of sauces or instant gravy to help on the days when I felt too sick to cook.

You will notice that I said that I'm eliminating most, but not all, processed foods. I've found that some things don't make me sick. I guess these items don't contain whatever additives I am sensitive to. One of these foods that I've kept is Schaar gluten-free bread, as I have failed abysmally at making my own. Even Jaws would struggle to bite through these babies!

This wasn't such a big jump as it might sound as for years Missy and I have been restricted to gluten-free and pulses (including soy) free foods. More and more foods have become unsuitable to us as soy (or other pulses) are increasingly being added to foods in place of things like palm oil. Really, we just took out the few things left that we thought were ok.

We started by eliminating all processed foods. Hubby isn't 100% converted in this as he doesn't have to be and I'm sure he's really grateful to his cast iron gut!

After about 2-3 months, amazingly I was getting fewer attacks (autoimmune flares) and my depression has lifted. I feel like the 'real me' again. I can think clearly again and am a lot happier. My anxiety has really dropped. I've even stopped taking CBD oil daily as a result. Heck, the weight is falling off me without trying!

Furthermore, Missy (who has a milder form of the illness) has also commented on how much better she is feeling even though I've not been as strict with her diet (as it was already a strict difficult diet for a child to follow). She says that her pain is a lot better and she is also able to think more clearly. She's also feeling more creative, which is wonderful for an author in the making.

By clearing the foods toxins out of my body I've also learnt just how severe the environmental air bourne toxins are to me. It has been much easier to pin down my triggers as they are nearly always environmental now and in public places where I have no control over them.

So what do we eat now? Mainly, real food. In other words, food that looks like its name. An apple that looks like an apple. A chicken that looks like a chicken, and so on. I cook everything from scratch, including all sauces and gravy. My Crockpot is amazing for this.

The Crockpot I love, but mine is green!

At the moment I have a limited list of meals to choose from but each month I'm adding another one or two to the list. Pinterest has been a great source of inspiration. I've learnt how to adapt recipes for our allergies and most things have worked out quite well. Missy is also getting more into nutrition and cooking with me. She has announced that there is no way she's going back to eating processed muck when she leaves home. Time will tell, I guess.

Apart from the obvious benefits of feeling so much better mentally and pain-wise, there is another huge silver lining. Our food costs have almost halved!! We are currently spending, on average, about £300 per month on groceries for three of us (plus a cat), while still eating meat and buying expensive gluten-free bread. This is our entire food bill as we never eat out any more and take lunches with us. I'm seriously impressed!

We do a lot of our grocery shopping at the market now as 80-90% of what we are eating now is fresh fruit, vegetables, meat and dairy, all of which we can get at the market for a much cheaper price than the supermarket. Twice as much for often half the price!

Baking a gluten-free cake for the
school's bake-off. And there's my
Crockpot hiding on the left!

We do still use supermarkets but most things we buy now are shopping around the edges. 80% of what is in supermarkets is processed and most of that is now off the menu. I might get some tinned fruit and veg, and I still drink tea and coffee (full caffeine too as it has never bothered me). Not everything we want is in the market so we bulk buy about twice a month at the market, prep and freeze what we won't use quickly, then only have to top up things like bread and milk each week at the supermarket.

I think the biggest money saving thing here is no longer looking for gluten-free products. If you look at the ingredients list it's scary. It might be gluten-free (advertised or otherwise) but there are so many more nasty chemicals in them to try to improve taste and longevity that they have been making me ill. Not to mention that they all taste like crap anyway!

Missy ate a ready meal recently and said how awful it was. Her taste buds are no longer used to processed foods so she could actually taste the chemicals in it. Quite an eye-opener.

Another big change is that we are now cooking a lot more as a family. As everything is cooked from scratch, and I'm somewhat limited with the use of my hands, I have become head chef and I now have two sous chefs. It's been fun and a great way to teach Missy how to look after her health for when she leaves home. She starts cookery class in school next week!

Most weekends we batch cook and freeze as many extra portions as we can. This reduces food waste and costs, as well as meaning that I don't have to take on a big meal prep every day. On days when I'm not very good, I can dip into the freezer and we have our own healthy version of a frozen meal.

My sous chefs in action

I'm looking into buying an economical half size chest freezer to go with my two drawer freezers. We freeze ingredients that are cheaper to buy in bulk as well as freezing batch cooked meals. It's far cheaper to do it this way. I really miss my third freezer that died a few years ago.

Last week we noticed another big change. Hubby couldn't work out if it was the week for bin collection or not, as we only have rubbish collected twice a month. Everyone else had put their bins out so it was the right week but we only had 1 black bag of rubbish in our bin... from 2 weeks! We were amazed that a simple change like making food from scratch would have such a huge knock-on effect environmentally. We knew it would help, but not this much!! Amazing! It just goes to show how much packaging we have with our foods. We are probably paying a lot more for processed foods simply to pay for the packaging that is covered in marketing designs.

So this lifestyle change has meant
- better health (our reason for doing this)
-less money spent
-less food waste
-less packaging to recycle (if it can be)
-more family time cooking together as well as eating together at the table.

This is one change that we won't be giving up.