Saturday, November 08, 2008

Shampoo frustration

 I threatened to shave my head today after total failure in getting hold of a decent shampoo or conditioner. The supermarket (Asda this time) only seems to sell shower gels. Tesco, as I've mentioned before, doesn't seem to stock the wheat and cornflour shampoo and conditioner that it used to sell. So now I've just squeezed the last drop out of the last bottle in the bathroom.

I popped into a branch of Boots to get the Simple shampoo and conditioner that I bought before. Not there. Eventually I bought a Derm shower gel for sensitive skin. I tried it. It's no good for the hair and when I smeared some on my arm it left two red blotches. I need to go through the ingredients in detail. I didn't spot salicylate.

My hairdresser suggested Johnson's baby shampoo. I said I hadn't seen that on sale. She said you have to look in the baby corner. The other problem is it stinks.

Of course when you are told there is no simple test for salicylate hypersensitivity it's not necessarily true. There may well be - it's called Imperial Leather shampoo. Along with one or two other commercial shampoos, it's rich in salicylate. That's the secret ingredient - aspirin! Before I was diagnosed I used it - and always came out of the shower bright red. The flare-up never seemed to last and I always put it down to having slightly "sensitive" skin. I didn't realise it was contributing to my eye-ache and other things. So there's a possible test - a salicylate shower!

RAS

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

But is it salicylate free? If it were, it would be the only berry to be so. The only herbal shampoos that are okay seem to be those that are chamomile based. And conditioners are even worse!

Anonymous said...

Try health food stores. They often stock bases which are free of fragrances etc. In Aus the RPAH recommends one of the common ones here 'Melrose', not sure if you could find it in the UK.