Safer, Natural Alternatives to Help You Stay Fresh and Dry

September 1, 2010 by 1 Comment

Knowing that the primary action of a deodorant is to either kill the bacteria in your armpits or turn the armpits into a hostile environment for bacteria, you can focus your efforts on finding or making a natural deodorant with ingredients that will do the job without posing the risk of harm.

The good news is there are plant-based and natural ingredients that can produce both deodorizing and (to a limited extent) antiperspirant effects. Some of these include:

  • Tea Tree or Manuka essential oil (antibacterial)
  • Sage essential oil, sage tea or other form of sage extract
    (astringent –helps inhibit sweat production)
  • Cypress, Lemongrass, Petitgrain and Pine Essential Oils (assist in regulating over-production and over-stimulation of sweat glands
  • Witch Hazel extract (astringent and antibacterial)
  • Goldenseal extract, tincture, or powder (astringent and antibacterial)
  • Myrrh or Benzoin powder (antibacterial)
  • Baking Soda (adsorbent and antibacterial)
  • Cornstarch (adsorbent)
  • Arrowroot powder (adsorbent)
  • Kaolin or Bentonite Clay powder (adsorbent)
  • Apple Cider Vinegar (antibacterial -lowers pH of the skin)

Other ingredients that are safe to use as fillers or binders include aloe vera and vegetable glycerin (for roll-ons), coconut oil, shea butter, and beeswax (for solids), and additional essential oils for fragrance. If you’re making your own deodorant powder you can grind fragrant herbs like lavender buds, lemon verbena, or rose petals in a coffee grinder and mix them in with your other powders. Stay away from any form of Talc or Talcum Powder as this can be toxic to your lungs when inhaled. In fact, a 1972 FDA study showed that 39 out of 40 talc samples tested contained up to 1% asbestos! Talcum powder and talc fibers have been linked to ovarian cancer and respiratory illnesses.

Last but not least are natural deodorants made from potassium alum or ammonium alum. Not to be confused with metal aluminum this alum is a compound found in alum salts and used to make solid crystal deodorants -a popular natural alternative. Crystal deodorants leave a layer of natural crystal salts on the surface of the skin producing a hostile environment for bacteria, and have been used as a deodorant throughout history in Thailand, the Far East, Mexico and several other countries.

Using mass-market antiperspirants and deodorants may seem like a simple and innocuous thing to do to assuage your fears about the way you smell. But knowing the facts will help you identify the safest and most effective options to meet your needs. Now you have some more information that can help you make wiser choices. Do you use a “natural” deodorant? If so, which is your favorite and why?

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Staying Fresh & Dry: The Difference Between Antiperspirants & Deodorants

August 25, 2010 by 1 Comment

stick of deodorantThe basic difference between antiperspirants and deodorants is that the former keep you from sweating, while the latter cut down on what makes you stink when you sweat. Understanding the difference between the two, and the pros and cons of each is the key to identifying the safest and most effective options out there.

Deodorants target the bacteria that hang around your armpits by making the skin there too salty or acidic (low pH) for bacteria to live in. No bacteria, means no smell. Most deodorants use alcohol to accomplish this and many use synthetic fragrances (which have their own inherent safety issues) to mask whatever smell is not fully eliminated by the other active ingredients.

Antiperspirants do the job using the exact opposite principle: they actually keep you from sweating by plugging the ducts that carry sweat from the glands to the skin’s surface. Without any sweat, the bacteria in your underarms don’t have anything to feast upon. Most antiperspirants have some of the same ingredients found in deodorants that kill bacteria as a failsafe. Their main function, however, is to keep you from perspiring, and alas, this only works for a short time before you have to re-apply it.

Antiperspirants are designed to decrease the production of eccrine sweat, which, ironically, has no odor and therefore no substances for bacteria to thrive on. And neither antiperspirants nor deodorants can decrease apocrine sweat, which is the type of sweat that is responsible for creating odors when the fats and proteins in it interact with the bacteria in your armpits. This begs the question of which product is better or necessary? While both types of products can be seen as interfering with our body’s naturally occurring processes, antiperspirants are clearly more disruptive as they are intended to stop you from sweating altogether and sweating is necessary for regulating body temperature. If body odor is your main concern (as opposed to staying dry), then deodorants are a more appropriate choice. Some people have a problem of excessive sweating which may push them in the direction of using an antiperspirant but if you’ve got this type of problem then you may need to consult a health care practitioner because using an antiperspirant may not be enough to tackle the problem.

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Survival Instinct: Sweating Does a Body Good

August 23, 2010 by Leave a Comment

I’m a big picture type of person. I like to start with a wider or broader view of something to establish a greater context within which to look at a more specific subject. In the case of using antiperspirants or deodorants and our obsession with body odor, I think it helps to first understand why and how we sweat before tackling the bigger decision of which type of product to use or if you should use any product at all.

Sweating is your body’s natural way of cooling itself off –whether that extra heat comes from hardworking muscles (the result of exercise or over-exertion), from over stimulated nerves (being nervous), or from the burning of food via the body’s metabolic processes. When sweat evaporates from the surface of your skin, it removes excess heat and cools you. So even though sweating can sometimes be embarrassing, it’s a natural bodily function that regulates and maintains the body’s normal temperature, which is crucial to our survival.

The average person has 2.6 million sweat glands in their skin. There are two different types of sweat glands in our underarms, apocrine and eccrine. The eccrine glands are by far the most numerous and produce most of the sweat in our underarms, as well as other areas, including the forehead, palms of the hands, and soles of the feet.

For the most part, human perspiration has no smell until fermented by bacteria, which thrive in hot, humid and acid pH environments like your armpits. The apocrine glands are responsible for making you stink. That’s because the sweat they produce contains fats and proteins from within your body that are carried to the exterior surface of your skin where they react with bacteria that live under your arms –creating odors. The fats and proteins in this sweat make it a little thicker and milkier than eccrine sweat and sometimes yellowish in color. This is what typically causes those yellow stains in the armpit area of your shirts.

Ironically, the under arm hair that most women tend to remove, either by waxing or shaving, can actually help minimize odors because it wicks moisture away from the skin and helps keep the skin dry enough to prevent or diminish bacterial colonization in the first place. This hair is less susceptible to bacterial growth and so it’s ideal for preventing bacterial odor. While antiperspirants and deodorants aim to achieve the same objective: eliminating the source of odor-causing sweat, they work in fundamentally different ways and I’ll talk about that a little more in my next post.

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