Dances with DS

For many many months I have been driven by a secret obsession. Daily I stand with measuring beakers, ph strips, stirring away at seemingly endless concoctions.  I spend hours trawling safety assessments and learning about ratio’s and formulation.

It began with my hair & scalp reacting badly to regular shampoo.  Why? I cannot tell.  I was happily supporting all the major shampoo companies for many a year. I still don’t know if I had a cummulative reaction to ongoing use, or if my DS has made my hair as picky as my stomach. Same thing has happened to my skin. And worst of all lately if I use certain chemicals on my body, I get the weirdest thing ever - I taste the chemical in my mouth - what the heck this is I don’t know???

Anyhoo, I had devised a pretty good shampoo & I have to say it has done my hair more good than anything I have used to date, but as always  I can’t ever rest at ‘pretty good’.   I wanted more hair-nourishment. To complement it I worked on a conditioner one late night.  I don’t know why but the next morning I thought I should test it out all by it’s ownsome. My hair was a tad grimy so I did think about shampooing, but decided to just go ahead conditioner only - as I had included a fair % of natural surfactants (cleansers) in the formula & I was curious.

I massaged the conditioner into my hair - left it for a minute and washed it out. To my surprise it not only conditioned my hair (not perfectly but okish) and my hair was clean! A happy accident.

This lead to me thinking why on earth shampoo hair anyway?  If one could devise a conditioner that did the whole job - why not?

I surfed the web & saw more & more people are doing just that & using ‘no-poo’ methods. Quite wisely too imo.  It generally means a lot less chemical exposure, hair that is not subjected to the bruise & break of surfactants, just a much better more gentle way all round. I thought I might even buy a ready made ‘no poo’ type of cleanser - but most are fettered with chemicals too far away from mama nature and heavy use of silicones.  I want mine at least 60% closer to mother natures manufacturing plant.

And so I have been formulating for weeks on end. Researching and studying all the chemicals and natural actives like herbs, oils & butters that are possible players in my grand ensemble.

I read somewhere that even in a big cosmetic company it can take over a year to properly formulate a shampoo. I felt a bit better then. Until I realised they have a team on it & I am just a lone fart blowing about on a bat of my own!   

Still clearly I have determination if booger all else, and a cupboard full of motley chemicals & oils with unpronouncable names like : hydroxyethylcellulose & Bentrimonium.

I want this to be a quick solution, rub it in - rinse it off and go catch the day!   I want it to clean/condition/detangle/address my funny little hair regrowth factor that looks like feelers on top of my head/ nourish my scalp & smell delicious.   I think the little feelers are DS caused as I seem to have a rapid turnaround of hair loss & regrowth that I don’t remember having before my DS. Wonder if other WLS patients experience this too?My poor family have endured little sample pots in the bathroom & been guineas - bless them. Sometimes it has been disaster - like last week when my daughter tried one of my ‘experiments’ and semi hysterically asked me if it was normal to get a waxy coating on ones hair!   OMG  - it had worked ok on my hair the night before but on her hair it was a disaster.

I went back to my drawing board.

I think tonight I might have finally chipped it!  After a wash, my hair is clean. Not only clean - but soft like silk. (should be too as this formula does use silk amino’s for protein!) And shining with body. And flexible. My ‘feelers are not so standy-uppy. And not even a smidge of greasy feel!  YAYYYY!!!!

I know I keep singing that ‘I might have done it song’ …but I am soooo close.  Just a little stability testing & this might finally be the pillar of perfection I am striving for.

The rubbish thing is only time will tell. Will it work on all our hair types?  Will the emulsion be stable over the next few weeks or seperate out?  Will it cause build up or my hair to fall out??  Eeeek. 

Or will I stand with a luscious mane of vibrantly healthy hair in the next few months and feel all of this constant obsessing is worth the crazy persuit?

Please gods let me rest now. Let this be IT!  The happy end with a top result.  I want to move on & learn about creating other wonderful things.

Only time will tell if I am, finally,  a free hairwoman.

But enough now of hair matters. I am thinking next week I will begin to look at my nutrition - just what am I actually consuming daily in an analysis of my dietary habits?  Am I actually doing as well as I think I am or have I got ‘blind spots’ from too many years of not counting fats/carbs/proteins?   Do I really want to know?  Welll - not reallly, but it might be interesting!