I work at a health food store now. I love it. It's a totally different sect of people than those I served in my Apothecary days. It's also a whole new set of questions that I am learning to navigate efficiently.
But, of course, the underlying question is still there: "How Do I Get Healthy?"
The tools for this are a lot different than when I started asking this question (14 years ago).
Back then, any typical google search brought up results from Homesteading Life Magazine, Dr. Josh Axe, and Youtube videos from Dr. Berg (don't recommend). Ya'll, I learned a lot REALLY fast. But I learned it way different.
Keep in mind, the precursor to TikTok (Vines) had not yet debuted and people ChaCha'd the weird 2am questions. It was generally useless, but it passed the time.
To find information about ANYTHING, you read a whole ass book or a long-form blog post from someone who either studied to learn or learned by experience. The information available was pure, rich, and generally useful--you just had to devote blocks of time to learn it.
So, after 6 months of deep dives, I could read a nutrition label with an UNDERSTANDING of why the particular combination was good or bad in MY particular situation. I could also read a nutrition label for someone else and tell them what the give and take with that particular product was.
The fact that you can just scan an item and have it ranked by an algorithm as 1-5 good/bad without understanding the inputs is therefore concerning to me.
And here is my prime example with why. Nutrition labels are a piece of cake. I learned how ingredients hide by multiple names. I learned what they're used for to determine whether they were truly necessary for the function of the recipe (of if they were just filler). I learned which companies gave you value and which ones were over-priced.
But laundry? I just punched my crunchy card and then lost.
You see, I went HARD. Pthalates cause endochrine disfunction? My endochrine organs don't seem to be keeping up, so cool--dropping all pthalates. Most companies weren't making free and clear options then, so that meant making ALL of my cleaning products from scratch. Vinegar, Baking Soda, Washing Soda, Borax, OxiClean (Free and Clear), Essential Oils on my wool dryer balls....
And then later, finding out that essential Oils also cause endochrine disfunction? Cool. Now also dropping everything with essential oils. Everything with any scent is gone. But, my clothes are dingy and losing thread count with every wash. My house looks grimy despite constant cleaning. And we are still getting sick more often than we should...
And then, with more kids and zero free time, it was all too much. I didn't have the brain space to go deeper into the chemistry, to find out WHY (and now the internet feels impossible to navigate (I didn't research heavily through the changes, so I lost my edge...).
Staring at the potential to lose all of my good (natural fiber clothes) to the laundering gods, I did the unthinkable. I bought a bottle of Woolite laundry detergent (I figured, if it's gentle enough to wash wool and silk, its gotta be gentle on a human *facepalm*) I only use half the recommended amount, but I'm still cringing inside. My clothes are clean, no longer losing threads, and don't have an overpowering smell, even though they are, in fact, scented. And for now, this is going to have to do. My preliminary searches have been useless for anything other than water temp and line dry vs. lay flat vs. tumble dry.... and that's not even what I asked of Jeeves...
And so, dear friends, ends the first installment of this cautionary tale. Learn chemistry in its practical applications so that navigating this damn consumer-driven world will feel more like a cake-walk and less like the smack-in-the-face that walking down the laundry detergent aisle is.
Until next time.
Elyssa