Take olive oil for instance. I use it in my own furniture polish. I use it as a hot oil treatment. It is my personal favorite choice of moisturizer. It has so many benefits that I can't justify not using it. It's also cheap. Dirt cheap. I have recently found one other use for it that I would like to share with you. Back a little while ago Prarie Cottage Rose shared an olive oil cleanser . Well, I was all on that one. Seeing how it's so good for your skin, I definitely thought it a good idea to use it in a cleanser as well. Plus, MW would be inadvertently using it, too. MwaaaaHaaaaaahahahahaha! 
I love vinegar, too. It may truly be one of God's greatest gifts to the world. I buy it by the gallon now. I use it in just about every aspect of daily life. I use it as a general cleaner for counters, windows and a variety of other surfaces... It unclogs drains, clears out the coffee pot, makes a great fabric softener, disinfects, does floors, removes hard water and lime scale, kills mildew...the list could go on and on. Read this post if you want to find out more about the miracle that I like to call vinegar. But, today, I want to talk about the new way I've been using it. Let me share, if you will.
For the past year I have been having a hair issue. It started with a perm I got last May. Let me just add here that I have been getting my haired permed since I was 7 years old. Well, last May, shortly after we moved into this house, I had a perm break some of my hair off for the first time in my life. Not good. It began to grow out and I thought I was out of the woods. Then it started breaking off again - months and months after my disastrous perm. For the life of me, I can't figure out why it's breaking off. It's just in one spot on the top of the back of my head. Seeing how my hair has always been the one thing that I usually always felt really great about - this has been a little unsettling for me.
One day while reading one of Pioneer Woman's posts - she was talking about her own hair issues. I would find the exact post for you, but, I'm too lazy. :0) To make a long story short, it all spawned from her extremely hard water. Then I suddenly had a huge light bulb appear over my head. We have very hard water! So hard, that we had to replace the kitchen faucet when we moved in because it had so much mineral build-up that no water would flow out - at all. None. Nada. Zip. Zilch. My hair woes didn't begin until we moved into this house. Hmmm....Could it be that my hair breakage is due to the hard water we have? Pioneer Woman's thoughts (and they make much sense to me - because I have to remedy a lot of the same problems elsewhere in the house as she does) was that if hard water was messing up the pipes, the coffee maker and a host of other problems - then there's a possibility that it was messing up her hair, too. Well, vinegar is what we use to clear up these other issues, so, maybe a vinegar hair rinse would work here.
Now, it's not that I really want to go around smelling like a salad, or pickles, or the weird old lady at the supermarket - but desperate times call for desperate measures. Actually, I add a few drops of essential oil to my 50/50 vinegar/water solution to kill a lot of the smell. Once my hair is dry, it doesn't smell any more at all. Either that, or I'm just used to it by then. :0) No, it really doesn't smell any more after it's dry. BTW, I had actually read about doing this vinegar hair rinse in a book a while back, French Women For All Seasons. I had just never really tried it.
I should probably add here exactly what I do. First of all, I make a 50/50 solution of vinegar/water in a plastic sports bottle and add a couple drops of lavender essential oil. But, you could use whatever kind of essential oil you wanted. I just keep this in the shower. I shampoo and condition as normal. Then at the very end, I shake up the bottle to mix in the essential oil, and rinse my hair with it. I don't rinse this out. I just squeeze out the excess water and towel dry my hair. You can use either white distilled vinegar or apple cider vinegar. It really doesn't matter.
I've been doing this for a while now and here's what I have noticed. a) My hair is really shiny and responds much better to styling when I rinse it with vinegar. b) My roots are blending in nicely as they grow out. I don't have that awful line between new hair and old, colored hair. c) My greys aren't showing up nearly like they used to. Yay! And, they are much more manageable.
Now, honestly, I'm not sure if this vinegar rinse is the cure all to my breakage problems. I haven't been doing it long enough to know for sure or not, yet. But, I do see enough of a benefit in other arenas of my hair that I will continue to do this. I'm way past due for a haircut because, I was trying to let that spot grow out. I'll be getting it cut this week and then I'll have a better gauge of how it's growing.
So, now that you've heard my oil and vinegar tales, I hope that you begin to consider viewing oil and vinegar as something that is useful (and safe) for much more than the salad bowl.
Have a great day!
I read about PW's vinegar rinse, too. But, I didn't think about trying it until you were talking about your breakage. I haven't had any chemical hair stylings in a long time and my breakage isn't as bad as your's sounds, but I do have some that sometimes makes the top of my head look like I have a mohawk. lol. It's funny.... sometimes. I think I will have to try this.
ReplyDeleteI've been using an apple cider vinegar rinse in my hair for the past 2 months. I have noticed a huge difference. My hair was fried after trying to lighten it and turn it red (from black). My hair was bleached then redyed multiple times within a 2 month period of time. The ends were all white and split and I was getting knots in my hair constantly. My hair is very long. I'm working on growing it out to my waist and I thought for sure I was gonna have to cut it all off. Since I've been using the vinegar rinse and getting my hair trimmed every 6-8 weeks the ends of my hair are looking much better, I'm not getting knots in my hair, and I'm starting to get the luster back. I rinse it out though with cold water after shampoo and conditioner. Cold water after a warm shower also helps to add shine to your hair. Or if you blow your hair dry with warm or hot air at the end use the cool air. I forget why but for some reason it makes your hair shinier.
ReplyDeleteI'm glad that you're having great results with a vinegar rinse as well! Of course, this post is 3 years old now - but I still rinse with vinegar, although I play with how I do it. Now I keep it in a spray bottle so I can target the rinse and not waste any. I also usually end up rinsing it out. And, I use an herbal infusion instead of plain water mixed with the cider vinegar. All in all, I've never had another issue with hair breakage and my hair is really healthy. I was even able to let it grow long again. (I did end up cutting mine all off because of the issues I was having.) I'm glad you didn't have to go that route. :-) The reason it's good to end a rinse or blow-drying with cool air or water is because it causes the hair shaft to lay down and seal so you don't have frizzies. No one likes the frizzies. :-)
DeleteThanks so much for taking time to comment!
Olive oil has some great benefits for healthy skin care from use as a bath oil to skin moisturizer. More information on the benefits of olive oil for skin can be found at: www.healthy-skincare.com/olive-oil-skin-care.html
ReplyDeleteJust curious, Does using the olive oil cleanse on your eye area make your eye make up run at all? I have been wanting to try this but I do use quite a bit of eye make up everyday and have been nervous to do so lol
ReplyDeleteAlso! Thank you for sharing so many great ideas for natural beauty care!
If you are washing your face with the oil cleanse method before you remove your eye make-up - yes, it will take it off. However, if you are asking if cleansing this way will cause your eye make-up to run after you apply it - no, it won't. It will simply leave your skin soft and nourished, not greasy.
DeleteThank you!!!
DeleteOlive oil helps more than any other natural product. It has more powerful natural elements which gets us ultimately perfect skin. Use olive oil every day. Your skin cells bouncing out of joy in the goodness of olive.
ReplyDelete