Is it possible? Yes it is. Last Friday was my first day in attempting my freeing of the armpits. I'm going to be honest and say I didn't do much research starting out, so I came by some knowledge just in experience and then wondering why it worked persuaded me to find the answer.
So when I began a week ago I read a blog where a woman was just documenting her experience to a point where it seemed her sweat moderated itself and all was well. I hadn't heard this was possible. It sounded like when I entered the "No 'Poo" method of hair washing, where we can get the sebaceous glands to take a chill pill in overproduction as we stop making them overproduce with stripping, but these are different glands. If this can be done, then logically I approached it the same way -- just as hair needs sebum as a protector, so this excretion is also needed. I didn't stop my sebum production completely when I went to the "No 'Poo" method; I just taught my scalp to not overproduce because I stopped giving it a reason to continuously replenish -- I stopped stripping it with detergent shampoos. It was just a thought, but I wondered if overproduction of sweat was due to stripping moisture from the armpits, which in turn is linked to the body odor; to add, that over-kill of the skin's bacteria (odor contributor) made an imbalance of it as well.
First, you need to understand a few things about deodorant and why you should stay away from it. Well, before that we need to establish that there is a difference between deodorant and antiperspirant. Most sticks you label "deodorant" are a combination of both a deodorizing agent and an antiperspirant, though a true deodorant itself does not contain antiperspirant. Most organic or natural deodorants are in this field. They do not stop sweat production but handle the bacteria on the surface of the skin which causes the odor. My issue with this is that they are quite costly.
Going back to body odor -- the apocrine glands are those that are associated with hair follicles, and are the ones you find under your armpits. The fluid is odorless until it is met with bacteria on the skin's surface. Logically, this should be good bacteria, unless you mess with it, which you often do in deodorants. My theory above was perhaps the bacterial imbalance that would make very pungent odors are due to messing too much with the bacteria with chemicals in deodorants and antiperspirants. Most natural deodorants will deal with the bacteria in the form of essential oils like lavender, tea tree, etc. These oils are good antibacterial agents.
Your conventional deodorant-antiperspirant stick uses a form of aluminum to contract the pores to the point of keeping you dry. It clogs them, in a nutshell. I have an issue with this because you need to sweat. There is a reason why God made those glands, and failure to expel toxins and pheromones, and failure to release sodium back into the blood stream after bodily stress each has their own set of consequences that can be quite damaging to other systems of the body, not to mention outpours of claims that aluminum is toxic internally.
Back to the problem I have with buying natural deodorants: I already have plenty of items in my house that handle bacteria. I actually used to make my own deodorant with lemon essential oil, coconut oil, and baking soda. I was annoyed at how often I had to apply it. I personally wanted a bit more freedom for my armpits, and not have a sandy, oily, substance sitting under them. So I decided to just use an essential oil and see how long I could go. My test was with ylang ylang, simply because I love the smell.
The week was especially interesting. First, I washed my armpits each day with baking soda. Since I was trying to handle the sweat-production imbalance in the same way I handled my sebum-production imbalance, I'd use the same product. I'm not sure if that did much for the sweat production, but in the very least it did help out as I realized that the fluid of the apocrine gland will mix with sebum before it makes it to the surface. So since sebum was involved, balancing it out with baking soda seemed to be a bonus to my deodorant-free trial.
On with the day to day... Day 1 was my day to clean my house for the week, filled with bathtub scrubbing, elbow grease in the oven, etc. I only had to apply it once, first thing in the morning and I felt so free by the end of the day. Weird, I know. Day 2 was interesting since it was Saturday and I am a part of a flag worship team in our congregation. I thought it mightily brave of me to do all the dancing and whipping of arms up and down without anything under those pits except for a single drop of ylang ylang applied to each. Let me tell you, worked like a charm. Day 3 was especially interesting because it was our hiking day. We hiked up to a ridge at over 5800 ft elevation. I applied a drop of ylang ylang under each arm before we even left the house and brought the bottle with me. I was shocked to note that I did not have to reuse that bottle, and boy was I sweating! Just in case my own nose was acclimating to my pits faster than my pits were acclimating to my new routine, I asked my family's input. No body odor apparent. The rest of the week was quite mild, though one day I tried bergamot instead and noticed that it did not work as well for me, another I tried lemon, and then another I tried lavender. Both of those worked well. I am sure they each dealt with the bacteria at hand. Yesterday when I showed up to dance practice, a couple of people noted how I actually smelled good. No deodorant and I smell good -- how about that!
Anyway, later I linked the ylang ylang success to the fact that it is a muscle relaxer of a sort. It prevents muscle contraction, and though slight contraction is used to expel sweat from armpits, the excessive contraction is the science behind antiperspirants. Therefore, I wondered if the freedom versus the constraint made my body happy and that even the more often that fluid reaches the surface, the less bacteria has a chance to build up to mix with it and make a pungent smell. Going against an antiperspirant's contraction, it was the difference between being continuously moist, versus being dry but dumping sweat profusely when nervous. My balance theory proving itself? Note, my armpits were not dry, but neither were they sweaty. Couple this with ylang ylang just smelling good, and hey, it worked! I later read that ylang ylang is an anti-seborrhic, which tells me it further would balance out the over production of sebum. I wonder if the oily substance (sebum mixes with the fluid that becomes sweat before it expels) has anything to do with odor lasting, and that even if I had odor from the apocrine glands expelling, it wouldn't stick around anyway without a fat like sebum. Hmmm...
I'd enjoy hearing your experiences and successes!
No comments:
Post a Comment