DreadHeadHQ.com Knowledge Base .: Are your products all natural?

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Are your products all natural?

This is not a short answer so pour yourself a lemonade and get comfy.

Did you know that the term "All Natural" means absolutely nothing? It's use is completely unregulated and it tells you nothing about what's inside the product. People have started to look for it as a sign that the product is safe to use, like a short cut, "oh it's all natural so it's all good". The thing is there's tons of completely "natural" things that will cause allergic reactions or even kill you. Even water is dangerous, ask anyone who's downed or been burned by steam....hell even oxygen is explosive near an open flame.

One of the problems with the term "All Natural" is that everyone has their own definition. Some say it's "unprocessed", some say it's "unchanged by man", others say it means there are no chemicals. Oh, that sounds good right... "no chemicals". Fine. What the hell is a chemical:

The definition of a Chemical: Chemistry is the study of matter and its interactions with other matter. Anything made of matter is a chemical. Any liquid, solid, gas. Any pure substance; any mixture. Water is an example of a chemical.

Ok, that pretty much blows the "no chemicals" idea. As EVERYTHING is a chemical. Then the next step might be to say only "harmful" chemicals but it's pretty obvious for a product to be certified as a cosmetic it can't have "harmful" chemicals.

Cosmetic testers talking: "Hey Bob, did that one pass?" "Oh hell no, it ate the skin right off his arm!"

So let's go back to the amount of processing. What we're assuming here is that unprocessed is better than processed. This is true in some cases and in others, not so much. For example it turns out that un-homogenized milk is better for you than homogenized milk. Apparently the homogenization breaks the fat down so small it can enter areas of your body it otherwise wouldn't. On the other hand I'd much rather drink water that's been through a filtering process than not, and if I could have my choice I'd drink water that's been through reverse osmosis. (a rather high tech process that produces pure H2O, yummy) So it's not really processing that makes something good or bad. In fact with little exception the highest grade, purest things almost always undergo extensive processing.

So where the heck does that leave us...

Well, I've given this a lot of thought. There's no one thing that makes an ingredient good or bad.The only way to really know if a product is completely safe is to research each of the ingredients in general, look at what testing has been done, how it's used, issues if any, and then look at the source of that particular ingredient and it's specifications for use. Often the same ingredient is created for different purposes in different grades: pharmaceutical, food, industrial, all meeting different criteria.

Since Dread Head HQ is so uber small, it's not like we have to pass stuff by a board or anything. If we see a better way or a better ingredient we do it. With this in mind I've done tons research on our ingredients and alternative ingredients and I'm really happy with the ones we've chosen. Not only are they all certified as safe cosmetic ingredients with a perfect track record for decades, they are also the best working ingredients for each application, making the most effective products possible.

If you read through our ingredients you will find several "hotly debated" ingredients such as mineral oil and sodium laureth sulfate. Lot's of people see these and flip out. You should too, most likely you've heard terrible stuff about them. When you're done flipping out come back and read on. Done already? A quick google search will return tons of sites quoting a doctors research stating that sodium lareth sulfate causes blindness and all kinds of heinous crap. If you dig a lil deeper you'll find that the original source of these articles was a company called New Ways. They published several versions of "Top ten most harmful ingredients" lists that were quickly circulated around the Internet. They also published several pamphlets stating the "findings of research" done at the University of Georgia.

You should check it out, it's terrifying. Well it turns out that it's all bunk. Basically New Ways was looking for an edge in the cosmetic market so they found some ingredients that were in almost every product, then they removed it from their products and started a viral "scare campaign". It actually worked really well for them, sales skyrocketed and it wasn't actually illegal, well most of it wasn't... To give their literature some credibility they needed a doctors name on it. Well the doctor who had done the research didn't find that SLS caused blindness or cancer or anything really. Poor doctor Green was pretty surprised when hundreds of people started calling him to find out more about his "industry shaking" findings. He let New Ways know that they were completely distorting the results of his research and they were not allowed to use his name in connection with it. Surprisingly New Ways did nothing. After several letters from the University of Georgia they still didn't remove is name, so UGA took them to court.

Interesting story, but the Internet remains littered with hundreds of sites regurgitating harmful top ten lists and bunk info about SLS. Well meaning moms forwarded emails about it, you may have even been asked by your mom to check your toothpaste or shampoo for SLS. Usually if mom is all bent out of shape about the toothpaste you assume it's pretty bad and you don't tend to question it too much. It's amazing how many people they were able to reach with their ingredients scare.

So where does that leave us?
Well it left me with a decision. I could either use what research and facts had determined to be the best and the safest ingredients or I could settle for alternative ingredients that were equally as safe, although tested less, and much less effective.
I went with the good stuff that had gotten a bad rap. If it bothers you and you research it yourself you'll feel great about it after. If it bothers you and you don't feel like researching it you can take our word....or not... it's up to you, but at least now you know why we made the decision we did.

If you're interested you can get more information on our ingredients and the facts and rumors surrounding them in the ingredients section here.