The Magic of Baking Soda

For the last two weeks, I’ve been experimenting with homemade toothpaste. I found a recipe on instructables.com and decided to try it out. The original recipe was:

6 parts baking soda

1 part hydrogen peroxide

1 part vegetable glycerin

Flavoring (essential oils, or food extract, your choice)

Mix into a paste.

I found my vegetable glycerin at the local organic/health food store. You can find it online if you don’t have a store that carries it. It’s a thin syrupy-like consistency and tastes sweet. It’s used here to take a bit of the edge off the baking soda taste and to bind the paste together. I also saw recipes using coconut oil instead, but I can't speak for how that works. 

I used teaspoons for measuring my first batch, just to try it out on a small amount. I used Lemon extract (about a tsp) for the flavoring, since I thought it’d be nice to have a new flavor than the usual mint. I was nervous about using essential oils; since so many things say don’t ingest them, so I just went with extract, since it’s made for food. The recipe seems to use essential oils, so that’s a personal choice and also depends on what you have available. For storage, I just used a small Tupperware-like container for storage and dipped my brush in to get some out.

Review: At first I hated it. Even though it smells deliciously lemony, it tastes like baking soda and there is no getting around that. I was surprised at how salty that is. But, it made my teeth feel really clean and baking soda is a natural whitener, so I stuck with it. By the end of the week, I was used to it and it wasn’t too bad.

Last night, I made a different batch, changing up the recipe a bit.
This time I used:
3 tbsp baking soda
1 tbsp hydrogen peroxide
1 tbsp vegetable glycerin
Peppermint extract (about 1 tsp)

It wasn’t quite pasty enough, so I added about 1 more tbsp baking soda while stirring it up to make it a bit thicker. Still tastes mostly like baking soda, but it works. I’m going to keep trying flavors and combos, so if I hit upon one that works better, I’ll certainly share it here. I plan to get one of the travel bottles with the flip-top squeeze lids for next time.  

Shampoo-less
I’ve also gone without shampoo or conditioner all week. I wash my hair with a paste of baking soda and water (about 1 Tbsp to ¾ cup). Just dump it on and massage it in, then rinse with water. I rinse it with a mixture of Apple Cider Vinegar and water (about 1/3 ACV and 2/3 water) and one drop of rosemary oil in a spray bottle. Just spray it all around and then rinse. I’m still working out the exact amounts, but it seems ok. My hair is not overly oily, which it normally is after one day without washing or extremely dry, which I was worried it might be without conditioner. It feels pretty much normal. Not extra tangled or thick and dread-y.

So, baking soda has found 2 more uses in my household and three more corporate products have found their way out (I think). Soon I hope to try my hand at making deodorant & lotion, so I’ll be sure to share those tales as well.

**Please note- these are my personal experiments and I am not recommending that anyone else should try them without consulting a doctor or doing research first.  I am merely sharing my experiences.**