Do homemade beauty treatments work?

There are do-it-yourself skin and hair treatments that are effective and safe, especially if you use high-quality organic ingredients.

The fresh extra-virgin olive oil you have in your pantry is as potent a skin conditioner as an olive oil face cream. In fact, depending on the brand of olive-oil cream you compare your kitchen oil to, your own fresh unfiltered organic olive oil (100% active ingredients) may be more effective and safer than a lotion that contains a low percentage of refined, non-extra virgin, non-certified organic olive oil. The downsides are that the pure olive oil will be messier to work with, much oilier in feel than a lotion, and it won’t smell of flowers. (I don’t recommend using pure olive oil under your eyes because it is rather heavy and could weigh down the delicate under-eye skin.)

By the same token, the old recipe for mayonnaise hair mask should work as a conditioner for very dry or damaged hair (though I haven’t tested it—I have an aversion to putting jarred mayonnaise on my hair—would I put back the leftover amount in my refrigerator for use in food?) because it contains mostly vegetable oil and eggs.

But you would be much better off whisking egg yolks (use 1 or 2 depending on the length on your hair) and roughly 1 tablespoon of that extra-virgin olive oil or, even better, castor oil plus a few drops of lemon juice. This way you control the quality of your eggs and oil and skip preservatives and spices, which you hair doesn’t need. Put this concoction on dry hair, cover with a plastic bag or plastic wrap and a towel, and leave on for at least 30 minutes up to 2 hours. Rinse, shampoo, and rinse again.

But you may not want to spend time looking for recipes and shopping for ingredients. You don’t want to bother making your own potions, dealing with waste and spoilage, and testing on yourself whether your concoction gives you an allergic reaction or clogs your pores. In this case, turn to professionally formulated products by companies that concentrate on quality of the ingredients (preferably organic to avoid all those pesticides, herbicides, etc.).

When you buy a skin care product, the manufacturer already took care of all the testing for effectiveness, allergic reactions, possible pore-clogging, and suitability to particular skin types. The manufacturer preserved the product, created a pleasing consistency, and arrived at an appealing scent, hopefully using essential oils (not synthetic scents due to high risk of allergies and toxicity).