Natural Hair Care: today Vs. a century ago

All-natural or not, hair care products have been marketed for decades each providing different benefits… or not. Regardless of all the regulations, we still find ourselves exposed to a myriad of unhealthy chemicals daily in our personal care products, shampoo’s and conditioners are no exception. See “Average UK Woman Wears 515 Chemicals a Day“… sadly, US women are exposed to just as many. Don’t get your hair all in a tuss, there is an easy way to minimize your exposure to hazardous chemicals AND have lovely locks!

Until I began using Young Living shampoo and conditioner 12 years ago, I had to buy a different brand of shampoo and conditioner every single month due to flat, lifeless, oily build-up on my hair… even when I bought formulas supposedly designed for oily fine hair. Since I started using the Young Living shampoo’s and conditioner’s I have NOT had to switch brands, not at all in 12 years!!! OK, I’m impressed!

Two Things I Love!

1. All the Young Living products is that they use only therapeutic-grade essential oils in their products, rather than a cheap, low quality essential oil so they can keep the price point low.
2. And, buying these concentrated products at wholesale prices on the Essential Rewards program makes them as inexpensive as the cheap brands sold in stores. Every time I use these products I feel like I’m one of the smartest women in the world!

Here’s the skinny on the three natural and effective shampoo’s and conditioner’s Young Living makes…

Lavender Volume Shampoo™ and Conditioner

• Shampoo: Gently cleanses and volumizes fine hair while nourishing and restoring balance. Long known for its ability to improve the appearance of hair and skin, lavender oil works its fragrant magic to enhance the natural beauty of your hair. Added botanical extracts, vitamins, and essential oils remove buildup that comes from commercially sold hair products while maximizing body. Renewing and invigorating, Lavender Volume Shampoo contains MSM, a sulfur compound that is known for strengthening hair.
• Conditioner: gently conditions and adds volume to fine hair and formulated with MSM, milk protein, and vitamins to strengthen limp and weak hair. Essential oils are added to ensure that nutrients penetrate the hair follicle and leave the hair clean and freshly scented with lavender.

Lemon Sage Clarifying Shampoo™ and Conditioner

• Shampoo: Designed for all hair types, but is especially beneficial for oily hair. It is fortified with botanical extracts, vitamins, and essential oils to remove the harsh effects of hard water, chlorine, trace metals, medications, environmental pollutants, and product buildup, leaving hair shiny, healthy, and manageable.
• Conditioner: nourishes without weighing down the hair. This rich, creamy conditioner provides proprietary vitamin complexes and proteins and is great for oily hair. For clean, fortified hair.

Rosewood Moisturizing Shampoo™ and Conditioner

• Shampoo: Gently cleanses dry or damaged hair. The botanical herbal extracts, vitamins, and essential oils remove buildup from commercial hair products while maximizing body and supplementing moisture.
• Conditioner: Deeply moisturizes, protects, and de-frizzes hair with natural vegetable fatty acids, MSM, and milk protein. This rinse nourishes damaged and over-processed hair.

Hair Care a Century Ago

James Cook Ayer began selling pills and potions in Lowell, Massachusetts in 1843. By the early 1870′s he was a multimillionaire. One of his most popular products, not exactly promoted as a medication, was “Ayer’s Hair Vigor.” Ayer’s Hair Vigor was first bottled in 1867, sold in a beautiful cobalt blue bottle with a glass stopper. The accompanying literature, while not making direct claims of restoring hair or preventing grey, broadly hinted at such benefits while throwing in an occasional disclaimer.

An interesting feature of the descriptive literature is that it not only names the ingredients, (required in 1906) it also gives a brief rundown of the “possible” benefits of each, while encouraging the user to review the information with his own personal medical practitioner. The particulars are printed in English, French and Spanish, indicating this hair product was sold widely.

By the time “Hair Vigor” was being widely advertised people had just begun to learn of the “germ theory of disease” established by Louis Pasteur and Robert Koch in 1870. Though the theory was not yet well accepted or understood, it seems that many medicine promoters were quick to use this new scientific discovery to promote their wares, by attributing almost any symptom to “germs.”

Hair Vigor included:

• Sulphur – “destroys the dandruff germ and the germ which causes falling hair”. (Though sulphur is sometimes used in dandruff medications today, it is not specified for the “falling hair germ”).
• Glycerin – “for soothing and healing and a positive and distinct food value aiding nature in producing abundant luxuriant hair – food to the hairbulbs – destroys germ life.”
• Quinine – (Benefit not specified, but was most often used to treat. Malaria)
• Sodium Chloride – “for cleansing and healing” (table salt)
• Cantharides – “Arouses into full activity all the glands of the scalp.” (Formerly used as a counter-irritant for skinblisters, a diuretic and and an aphrodisiac. It is now an illegal substance in most countries)
• Alcohol – “preservative and valuable antiseptic” (and in this case, not meant to be ingested)
• Water / Perfume – “lavender, lemon and nerol.” (this must be some form of diluted down essential oil or possibly the hydosol from distillation of the essential oils)

The Hair Vigor informational insert read:

“Makes hair grow because it increases circulation of blood in the scalp and directly nourishes hair bulbs. But it will not do impossible things. It will not work contrary to any law of nature. We wish we could honestly say that Ayer’s Hair Vigor will grow hair on a bald head. But we cannot so state. No power in the world can make hair grow on an old thin shiny scalp. But if there is any life left in the hair bulbs it will stimulate them to do all they possibly can. Therefore we can only say that Ayer’s Hair Vigor will sometimes, but not always, make hair grow on bald heads. The only way to know is to try. While it prevents premature gray, it certainly will not prevent the gray and white hair which nature has declared should be a crown of beauty and dignity for ripe old age.”

Have Hair Care Products Really Gotten Much Better?

Taking a look at the ingredients list…

• Parabens (Methyl-, ethyl-, propyl- and butyl-parabens)
• Coal Tar Colors (FC&C Blue 1, Green 3, Yellow 5 & 6, D&C Red 33)
• Diethanolamine (cocamide DEA, TEA and MEA are related ingredients that can be contaminated with DEA)
• Nonoxynol or nonylphenol ethoxylate, phthalates (can be listed as DEHP, DHP, or DBP5 or hidden in “fragrance” Red 33)
• Diethanolamine (cocamide DEA, TEA and MEA are related ingredients that can be contaminated with DEA)
• Nonoxynol or nonylphenol ethoxylate
• Phthalates (can be listed as DEHP, DHP, or DBP5 or hidden in “fragrance”)(Phthalates are carcinogenic and hormone disruptors. Their purpose in products is to help lotions penetrate and soften the skin and are essential to scented products, and help fragrances last longer)
• DMDM hydantoin
• Triclosan (this one is all over the place these days, even in our toothpastes)
• Sodum lauryl and Sodium laureth sulfates (in toothpaste too, yup, even all-natural ones – just look at the label!)
• Toluene
• Formaldehyde (considered a probable carcinogen by the U.S. EPA)
• PEGs
• Fragrance / Perfume (these consist mostly of chemicals called volatile organic compounds, or VOCs) (Calvin Klein’s Eternity by an independent lab, commissioned by Environmental Health Network (EHN), revealed that the perfume contained over 800 compounds)Anything with “glycol” or “methyl” as part of the name.

Hidden Chemicals in Our Shampoo?!

Phthalates are rarely listed on labels, but when the Environmental Working Group (EWG) tested 72 products which did not list Phthalates it was discovered that almost 75 percent DID contain Phthalates. See The Toxic Chemistry of Everyday Products at Safe Cosmetics.com

Hmmmm, I think I’ll stick with my Young Living shampoo and conditioner!

Shop Here!

Articles by Evelyn Vincent, Young Living Independent Distributor #476766

Helping families make informed choices!

Subscribe to my "Oil Tip of the Day"

Buy at wholesale, Monthly Specials , Contact Evelyn

"There is nothing in a caterpillar that tells you it's going to be a butterfly." ~ R. Buckminster Fuller