Green Armpits: Eco Beautiful Ways To Deal With BO

It’s a stinky subject, to be sure, but we are nothing if not intrepid in our approach to solving this very annoying problem. Who sweats, who doesn’t, who’s smelly, who isn’t: those are questions best left to the doctors and scientists. We are interested in figuring out what to do about it in the most practical and effective way, from an eco-beauty perspective.
Conventional wisdom suggests that perspiration is the cause of body odor. However, perspiration by itself is basically odorless, but it is the bacteria and odors coming from other sources that are the real culprits. Anaerobic bacteria, which flourish when your body doesn't have enough oxygen, may well be the cause of your body odor. As the body's metabolism goes to work, it gives off odors which is the body's way of ridding itself of waste products. Any imbalances in metabolism will result in stronger odors.
Sweat glands (apocrine glands) under the arms secrete a substance that is the major non-food/drink related cause of body odor. This substance, which contains protein, carbohydrates, and lipids, often secreted in tense moments or emotional stress, is quickly attacked by bacteria, causing odor.
First off, get thee the right underarm protection.
Deodorants help destroy bacteria and disguise odors. But look out for potentially toxic, irritating ingredients. Avoid aluminum (linked to Alzheimer's disease) which can potentially leach into the breasts and lymph glands, and products with emulsifiers (known to clog pores). Consider products with tea tree oil, known for its antibacterial and antifungal properties. Or use a deodorant stone, made from mineral salts. Antiperspirants reduce bacteria-feeding moisture -- but they block sweat glands and contain aluminum chlorohydrate. Not so good!
These are some of the brands we’ve found at to be the safest (most non-toxic), yet effective:
Naturally Fresh Deodorant Crystal
Lafe's Natural and Organic
Kiss My Face Liquid Rock
Floral Active by Terra Naturals
In addition to your deodorant, try using a mild solution of hydrogen peroxide (3%) that can be picked up at the pharmacy. Put a teaspoonful in a glass of water and wash the underarm. If that doesn't work, increase the amount of peroxide.
Make it a point to use pH-balanced soaps and skincare products to maintain the protective acid mantle of your skin.
Lifestyle changes
There are certain lifestyle changes to make if you have a constant problem with body odor:
Clothing is an area many people overlook. Loose fitting clothes allow the body to breathe better than tight clothes. The perspiration escapes and doesn't become a breeding ground for bacteria. The type of fabric is also very important. Synthetic fabrics for shoes and clothes don't allow the body to breathe, so use all natural fabrics. (Bamboo is naturally anti-microbial)
Tobacco use is a major cause of body odor. Not only does it come back through your lungs, but it comes through the skin. It probably mixes with other elements of your body's chemistry to create a distinct odor. If you stop smoking it may take several weeks before you notice any changes in your body odor.
Dietary changes are also very important in eliminating various sources of odor. Certain foods, such as meat, onions, garlic, exotic spices, and drinks such as coffee and alcohol can lead to body odor. Try eliminating these from your diet for a week or two and see if this makes a difference.
Maintain a balanced diet. Overloading or cutting back in vital areas can throw your system off and aggravate glandular secretions. Adapt a diet of 30 percent lean protein, to help the liver develop a sufficient amount of enzymes for the detox process; 30 percent essential fats (such as flaxseed oil, nuts, avocados and seeds), to lubricate the GI tract; and 40 percent slow-acting/high-fiber carbohydrates to “clean the pipes” as it were.
Cut down on dairy products and sugar. Protect your gastro tract from yeast-enhancing sugar. Look out for hidden sugars in everything from mayonnaise and soups to nondairy creamers and frozen, pre-packaged meals.
Detoxify your system regularly. It's the only way to keep your liver and gastrointestinal tract functioning at optimal levels -- and potential body odor at bay. Try taking steam baths or saunas frequently as part of an overall detoxification program.
Include friendly flora and a fiber supplement in your regimen. Lactobacillus acidophilus and bifidobacteria can reestablish the proper pH balance in your digestive system. Adding a fiber supplement will gently whisk away waste buildup in the intestinal tract.
Drink 10-12 glasses of water daily. Flush toxins from your body and keep metabolic processes humming along at peak levels.
Sweating As we mentioned above, excessive sweating may have underlying causes, so it is wise to be diagnosed to see if you have a medical problem. Women going through menopause and perimenopause may experience bouts of sweating accompanied by terrible body odor. The sweating may occur even when the woman is not warm (otherwise known as a hotflash).
Caffeine and medications may also be the cause of your sweating. Reduce your caffeine intake and note if there are changes when you stop taking medication.
Supplements
Chlorophyll One or two chlorophyll tablets or chlorophyll liquid taken with each meal may also help, as chlorophyll is a great deodorizer.
Magnesium Take magnesium supplements or augment your diet with food sources high in this important mineral. Between 200-500 mg of magnesium have been recommended. You will have to try different doses until you get the amounts that are right for your body.
Vitamins A high-potency B vitamin (50 mg or higher), when combined with magnesium, will help reduce certain secretions that can be a cause of odor. Make sure you are getting 100 mg of PABA and 100 mg of B6.
Zinc If you have body odor, try taking zinc tablets. Zinc, plus magnesium, will help balance your body's metabolism and reduce the cause of bad odor. Studies have shown that taking 30 to 50 mg daily will dramatically reduce certain body odors, although you may need less. Zinc may also reduce perspiration and sweaty feet. However, it is wise to go above 15 mg only with a doctor's supervision as zinc may interfere with the absorption of copper, another essential trace mineral.
Folk Remedies
Apple cider vinegar eliminates under arm body odor when used in place of deodorant because it reduces the pH of the skin. Bacteria can't live in areas with low pH. Try bathing in an apple cider vinegar wash twice a week. Pour 2 cups of apple vinegar in your bath. The vinegar smell is gone in minutes and you should be smell-free all day.
Parsley/alfalfa Chewing parsley, alfalfa and other leafy greens will help neutralize body odor, probably because of the deodorizing effect of the chlorophyll.
Sage Herbalists suggest drinking a cup of sage tea daily to reduce sweat gland activity. This is especially true for those who perspire excessively due to tension. Use 11/2 teaspoonsful of dried sage or two tea bags in one cup of water; steep for ten minutes; drink in small doses throughout the day.
• Fresh sage leaves blended with tomato juice has been found to be very effective against BO.
Wheat grass Take 500 mg of wheat grass daily on an empty stomach and wash down with a glass of water. The chlorophyll will dramatically reduce body odor.
Homeopathic
Silicea. Homeopaths recommend dissolving three 6X tablets of the tissue salt Silicea under the tongue each morning and evening to knock out odor. Can be found at natural food grocers and pharmacies with alternative medicine sections.

All in all, we hope the next time you conduct a “smell test” on yourself, that you pass with flying colors – at least one in particular: Green!!

The Wild Food Guy

I just finished reading one of my Christmas presents to myself (you always get exactly what you want that way). It’s a book of essays put out by The New Yorker magazine editors. called Secret Ingredients, a collection of food and drink writing since the magazine’s inception over 80 years ago. One that just blew me away was by John McPhee, and the week in 1968 he spent foraging in the Pennsylvania wilderness with Euell Gibbons. Besides the pleasure of his fine writing style, McPhee very poignantly captures the personality of this fascinating and amazing character that was Euell Gibbons.



In 1968, Gibbons was at the height of his renown as a true American naturalist and writer (his first book Stalking The Wild Asparagus, published in 1962, was a national bestseller). He was a Quaker, a former schoolteacher, a railroad hobo during the Depression, and a frustrated writer of novels and short stories. But he hit his stride writing about something that he’d learned to do as a child to keep from starving, and continued to do all his life, from the pleasure of it: the gathering and preparation of wild food – most commonly known as foraging. His talent in the creative preparation of these foods earned him the moniker of greatest living wild chef when he was alive. (He died in 1975 at age 64.)



Gibbons once harvested edible weeds from the President’s garden at the White House, bagged 15 wild foods in a vacant lot in Chicago, and collected materials for 3-course meal from Central Park in New York City. His interest in wild food was to prove simply that there is a marvelous variety of good food in the world that is only partially found in supermarkets, and that mass production of just a tiny fraction of “cultivated” foods is contributing to the demise of the planet and our ability to feed all its people. One need never go hungry when one is a friend of nature.



As a Quaker, Gibbons was a pacifist and a peacemonger, and lived in intentional communities long before they were popular. His goal in foraging was to engage in “creative protest against the artificiality of our daily lives.” Though he was a product of the first half of the previous century, and was embedded with folksy, rural values, his perspective is timeless, sophisticated, and very inspiring. Everything urban foodies are now discussing about crop sustainability, organic and local farming, seasonal ingredients, and so on, old Euell was preaching about 40 years ago. I can’t wait to get my hands on all of his writing.

Winter in L.A.

We are now deeply into winter, aren’t we? For those of us here in Southern California, it means we’re able to drive an hour in one direction up to the nearby mountains and go skiing, sledding, and snowball fighting. It also means we can drive an hour in the other direction and sit out in the high desert under cobalt blue skies, then take a dip in a nearby hot mineral spring pool to stay warm. Or drive in still yet another direction and be at the beach, where you may or may not need to wear a sweater or jacket on the sand. Pretty amazing, isn’t it? Something I haven’t still gotten over, even after living here for 17 years.

The first winter I lived here, I remember driving up to the mountains with my friends, and piling snow on the roof of the car then driving down to the beach with it, parking on the sand, and drinking an ice cold beer as we watched it melt in the afternoon sun. We took lots of pictures with us posing by the snow covered car in our bikini tops and sunglasses.Life is good here on the edge of the continent, isn’t it?

Whenever the ungodly traffic, rude strangers, bad air, and other high costs of living in LA start to make me crazy, I find I’m able to calm down about it all a bit, by focusing on the bountiful aspect of nature that surrounds us here. It’s a cliché, but nature does heal – it calms and soothes in a way that nothing else can.

I spent some time once, in the late 1980’s, studying Native American shamanism with several teachers. One of the cornerstone’s of that spiritual path is the guidance we must be open to receive from Nature in all its forms — from plant life, rocks, animals, to the wind, bodies of water – if we are to evolve our thinking about ourselves and our place in the cosmos.

Here’s a poem by Mary Oliver – a very gifted poetess and high priestess of communing with Nature herself. (PS: You will get many chances to read Mary Oliver’s poems in this blog as she is one of my favorites. Look her up – you’ll love her, too)

The Swan

by Mary Oliver

Did you too see it, drifting, all night, on the black river?

Did you see it in the morning, rising into the silvery air -

An armful of white blossoms,
A perfect commotion of silk and linen as it leaned
into the bondage of its wings; a snowbank, a bank of lilies,
Biting the air with its black beak?
Did you hear it, fluting and whistling
A shrill dark music - like the rain pelting the trees - like a waterfall
Knifing down the black ledges?
And did you see it, finally, just under the clouds -
A white cross Streaming across the sky, its feet
Like black leaves, its wings Like the stretching light of the river?
And did you feel it, in your heart, how it pertained to everything?

And have you too finally figured out what beauty is for? And have you changed your life?

Greetings for the New Year

The wheel has turned again, and here we are at the starting point of a New Year. What a great time to focus on how best we all want to live our lives: spending more time with those we love, creating meaningful work, participating in the conscious stewardship of our community — and by extension the world at large — and cultivating the good health that will make it possible to do all of these things for as long as possible. What does “good health” mean, anyway? For most of us, it’s getting a handle on stress, on finding ways to reduce it.

After that comes exercise, diet, sleep. But really, it’s all related: you sleep better when you aren’t stressed, when you are managing your time well, you have time to exercise, when you are exercising regularly, you tend to make better food choices, and so on.

So what’s the problem, here? Why is this very straightforward way to live and enjoy life more, so incredibly difficult to grab hold of? Perhaps it’s just the very nature of being alive in the era we now find ourselves, endemic to a particular American existence. When basic issues of food, shelter, and survival has been met, then one is free to start worrying about the other stuff?

“We either make ourselves miserable or we make ourselves happy. The amount of work is the same.”
~ Carlos Castaneda

I’m reminded of what all great thinkers, spiritual teachers, and just wise people in general, continually seem to say about this: try to move into gratitude when all else fails. Gratitude is the thing that gives us the ability to pause, slow down a minute or two, and really put into perspective what it is we’re trying to do, to be, to know, to become.

Gratitude for the big things, as well as small. Gratitude for the ability to draw breath – the prana, or “life force” as it’s called in yoga - and to be alive, every moment of every day. This is one aspect of “conscious” living, and when it becomes a part of the fabric of our everyday lives, then everything else flows.

Thank you for reading, thank you for being a part of our GreenBliss community, thank you for making us one of your healthful living choices this past year, and in the year to come.