I'm a Mint-Head (Original Source Tea Tree and Mint Shampoo)

Member Name: claireislafrazer

Product:	Original Source Tea Tree and Mint Shampoo
Date:	04/11/08 (145 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Clean soft hair, clears your sinuses

Disadvantages: Freeze Scalp

Ive been using Original Source TeaTree and Mint shampoo recently adding it to my shampoo rotation. The first thing to notice about the shampoo is the lovely aqua green colour that you can see through the plastic bottle. It reminds me of being on holiday and looking out at the sea and seeing that rich green colour. If you hold the bottle up to the light it gets even more intense and actually reminds me of the tv program "superman" I used to watch years ago and the colour the kryptonite used to be! No radioactive particles in the shampoo though I hope!

The Bottle itself is a bit of a strange shape. It is 19cm high and it is flat and clear plastic on the front while the sides and back are rounded and the plastic has a kind of frosted bathroom window feel to it. The cap is black and slanted like a pen nib and flips open from the front and clicks back into place easily. On the front of the bottle there is writing in black and white with the company name and stating that this is a daily refreshing shampoo for all hair types and that it provides clean, long lasting freshness.

On the back of the bottle there is a sticker with the ingredients and directions for use but also gives you some other information. The shampoo contains 100% pure essential oils, the mint coming from fresh mint leaves. It states it will remove product build up in your hair to give you a fresh clean feeling. It also says that essential oils may not be suitable for your skin, this probably should be written in larger writing for people with sensitive skin I think.

Apparantly you can also get a free sample at www.originalsource.co.uk.

Looking at the ingredients it contains mint leaf oil, tea tree leaf oil, lavender oil and menthol. Everything else in the ingredient list looks very chemical based to me!

As soon as you open the lid you are hit with the very strong smell of the shampoo, it is predominantly a very strong mint smell. The first thing I thought of was toothpaste but also its very much like olbas oil. If you think about it you can detect a little teatree oil smell which ii was familiar with as ive used the bodyshop pure teatree oil in the past. You could certainly use this shampoo to clear your sinuses! In fact I did so this weeked. I just had a big sniff and found that my blocked nose was cleared almost instantly!

There is not much give in the plastic of the bottle so its a little difficult to get any shampoo out of it, you have to squeeze hard. This is not much of a problem as the bottle is full but i feel it will become more so when there is only a small amount left, it could be very difficult to get it out at all.

The consistancy of the shampoo is like toothpaste or hair gel. I remember there was a clear blue gel toothpaste I used once, I dont remember what make it was but this is very much like it but green. Therefore It doesnt drip out of the bottle but comes out in big blobs. I dont mind this but its just a bit different from your average shampoo which is thinner and more slimey.

Have you ever had a menthol sweet and then tried to have a glass of water afterwards but found your mouth was too frozen to drink it? Well if you have imagine that feeling on your scalp. This is what it feels like to use this shampoo. I was not expecting this the first time I used it and got a shock when my whole scalp felt frozen! It is almost stingy and painful but not quite. I think this is what it meant on the bottle when it said its not suitable for some skins. It could certainly be too much for some people. Its not what I wanted on a cold night I have to say but I imagine it would be much better in the summer.

If you are thinking the frozen scalp feeling will go when you rinse off the shampoo you are wrong! The warm water makes it momentarily better but then it comes back! It took all the time I was towel drying it and then combing it through for the warmth to come back to my scalp.

It is not all bad though, the strong smell makes it so easy to breathe when shampooing and it lathers up excellently. I only needed to rinse it once ( I was washing my hair in the sink) and my hair was literally squeaky clean.

As for the next day, my hair was smooth and felt clean and soft. The best thing was it didnt feel greasy all day. As ive said previously my hair can become greasy the next day after washing depending on the shampoo but this one was excellent. I do wash my hair every night so I cannot say how good it would have been after this time. For my hair though this is as good as it gets regarding grease, or lack of it!

I love the clean feeling I get from this shampoo and it is effective on grease too, the only thing that annoys me is that "freeze scalp" feeling. When I can get use to that then this shampoo will be a much more pleasurable experience.

The 250ml bottle costs 1.97 in Tesco and Sainsburys.

Summary: If you can put up with the cold tingle then it is great