To make shampoo sounds easy... However QUALITY shampoo is complicated!

Companies make shampoo in huge mixing vats that can produce enormous amounts of product. The majority of these businesses will use cheap ingredients that do remove foreign material from the hair and scalp and therefore cleanse.

When I was growing up in a small town I used to help my mother make soap. We would take a large brass pot and put a bunch of pig fat and bring it to a boil... then we would add straight lye, stir and boil for about a half hour. Then let it cool off and in a few days it would harden and we would cut it into bars of soap. I would not recommend using this soap on anything but industrial cleaning!

The reason I tell you this story is to illustrate that there many "kitchen chemists" that will throw some ingredients into a pot and make their version of hair shampoo products... just like my mother and I did with the lye soap. It makes sense that you would not use the lye soap on your hair... much less on your body.

Yet the majority of big companies use as their first ingredient for formulating shampoo... sodium laurel sulfate. I dare you to go to your bathroom now and read the ingredients on your shampoo. I do not care if you are buying an expensive or a cheap product, you will probably find sodium laurel sulfate.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~tip~~~~~~~~~~~~~~tip~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Warning... The Cosmetic, Toiletry, and Fragrance Association (CTFA) and the American Cancer Society have stated their common belief that sodium laurel sulfate is a carcinogen! ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

As a professional, I have found that most hair products contain sodium laurel sulfate as the first ingredient, wether it was a professional product or not. Sodium laurel sulfate is a known irritant and it is probably a carcinogen.

Sodium laurel sulfate, or sodium lauryl ether sulfate (SLES), is a detergent and surfactant found in many personal care products (soaps, shampoos, toothpaste etc.). It is an inexpensive and very effective foamer.

Even organic shampoo... with out the proper research for quality of product can irritate and break down hair and damage the scalp also.

If you make shampoo... it must have plant based ingredients that have been researched for quality and purity by a reputable company that has a philosophy of natural-to-the-skin-and-hair!

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