Monday, February 22, 2010

Get clean without detergents




Save detergents for your dishes and laundry. Dont treat your body and your face like dirty dishes. Detergents compromise your skin barrier. Most skincare lines in drugstore and department store either contain detergents or are loaded with ingredients that strip your skin off of its natural oils. FDA has not defined a term like "detergent free" yet, so it can be quite daunting to find something that is detergent free.

A common list of detergents or oil-stripping ingredients can be found here. Go grab your current cleanser and see how many of its are in that list. I am sure that you will find at least 2 or 3 ingredients.

So what do I do, you ask? Simple - Do what our ancestors (or their great grand fathers) would have done. Go natural. Use simple and natural cleansing formulas that are detergent-less.

Here are a few that I use and love.. I have NO affiliation with these products or manufacturers or retailers, other than the fact that I love them. I get NO free products or samples or money from them. They probably dont even know that I am writing about their products here in this post.

  • Wheatgerm cleanser - very good for dry skin.
  • Rose hip cleanser - good for normal to oil skin. Dry skins can use this after using an oil like jojoba or EVOO to remove the makeup and sunscreen off.
  • AHA cleanser - this has an active ingredient of glycolic acid at the right pH for your skin. I like to rub this on my face and leave it on for 5 minutes while I shower for the AHA to work its magic.
[I buy these here.]

For the body, I love using natural recipe mixes, some of them are what small villages and towns in southern India use even today.
  • Ground mung beans - coarsely powder dry mung beans (not the sprouted kind, the dry kind) in a food processor or spice/coffee grinder.
  • Oatmeal or coarsely ground oats
  • Brown sugar in any oil base. I like using EVOO with a few drops of vanilla essence.
All these work well to not just cleanse the skin on your body, but also to exfoliate gently.

Have you gone detergent-free yet for your skin? Do share your experience!