de-funk de pits

[Mara]

I think that body odor is affected by diet... https://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/08/24/body-odor_n_3786361.html

I've made the experience that during a time when I was on a zero carbohydrate diet I also had zero body odor. Not just the body, but the feces didn't smell either. I was very surprised as I had expected the opposite to happen. My guess is that bacteria feed on the sugars that we eat.

 

[SoaperForLife]

I've made the experience that during a time when I was on a zero carbohydrate diet I also had zero body odor. Not just the body, but the feces didn't smell either. I was very surprised as I had expected the opposite to happen. My guess is that bacteria feed on the sugars that we eat.

You may be right.... I am still trying to figure it all out. I get to the point that I am odor free even though I sweat with my homemade deo and then I eat something and find that I start smelling again. Oddly enough my test is my riding lesson - if I'm odor free afterwards I've done something right....

 

[SheLion]

I do have a weird thing happen though and I have to wonder if it me or if others have experienced this too. I don't start to smell for a couple of days and even then, its pretty mild but at the end of day one, there is a really bad musty smell. After some investigating, I discovered it is my clothing.
For some reason, my shirts develop a funk in the pit area, bad enough I sometimes have to change my shirt in the middle of the day.
Its weird and I'd like to get to the bottom of the cause. All my deodorant it unscented. Going to melt down on jar and add some scent, see if that might help things.

I have found that if I'm wearing a shirt with synthetic fibers in it, the shirt will have a funk. As far as I can figure, it's the chemistry of my sweat reacting with the fibers because when I take the shirt off, my pits don't smell funky. And I don't get the funky smell with cotton. So I've started paying closer attention when shopping. Sadly for me, a very high percentage of clothing is made with polyester, which is the worst offender for me.

 

[earlene]

That's why I hate polyester. Odors stick to it through repeated washings, too. Under arm odors are the hardest to remove from polyester in my experience, so I avoid whenever possible.

 

[SoaperForLife]

That's why I hate polyester. Odors stick to it through repeated washings, too. Under arm odors are the hardest to remove from polyester in my experience, so I avoid whenever possible.

Not sure that I even own anything polyester... I am a stay-at-home whatever so my clothes come from the second hand store here in town. T-shirts, hoodies, long sleeved shirts with stains or holes are mostly what I wear these days.

 

[earlene]

I don't know about the mid-Atlantic area, SoaperForLife, but here in my little MidWestern town our local Goodwill has lots of polyester and polyester blends. That's probably because there are so many polyesters in the clothes sold around here locally. It also used to be quite common in clothes sold in the 70's and 80's when I was a young woman, so I wore it a lot when I was young, but it persists in the clothing industry. It may be more common in some areas than others, of course. I would guess in areas where the trend is toward natural fibers, it would be less common in stores.

All you have to do is read the labels (if they are still intact) in your clothing to see if polyester is one of the fibers listed. It is quite often blended in clothes that are 'wrinkle-resistent' and 'active wear' clothing. https://www.whowhatwear.com/what-is-polyester

 

[Zany_in_CO]

For what it's worth, I'd like to mention that when I ran out of my normal "Pit Defunker", due to the info in this thread, I tried using Milk of Magnesia straight in a Roll On bottle and it works. I had a couple of nights of hard labor recently where I ended up sweating like never before and stayed odor free -- clothes didn't get funky either.

 

[Spice]

I decided to start this thread because it's really rude to hijack someone else's thread. I'm sorry Marie. However, I must also thank you. You got a great thread started and that in turn got my wheels spinning. So, if you're just joining in, please read mzimm's thread here: http://www.soapmakingforum.com/showthread.php?t=59818

I have discovered that babassu oil works much better than coconut oil at deodorizing the pits. On Monday, (7/25) I concocted a "pit detox" (something I had never heard of until I read the thread) made with bentonite clay and water. Since I added too much water, I had to add some kaolin clay to thicken it up a bit. I put that on my armpits for about 30 minutes. It was too long. I didn't mean to leave it that long, but I was doing laundry and watching Netflix. Oh, well. I rinsed it off with a warm wash cloth, dried well and put a little powder on there to make sure any residual moisture was absorbed.

I haven't used deodorant since then. I just shower, dry off really well, and put a little powder on to make sure any residual moisture gets absorbed. This has actually worked well for me. And I am shocked because (if you read mzimm's thread) I stink. Seriously. Bad. Thursday night when I went to bed (I think it was Thursday, they're all a blur) I didn't have the a/c set to 72, it was on 80 and I was sweating all night. I woke up stinking. After my shower, I was fine. And I was good all day: however, I did notice that my shirt smelled bad. The armpits of the t-shirt I was wearing absorbed the sweat (and therefore the funk); but when I smelled my skin, there was no funky odor. Just the shirt was funky. So, basically, the detox worked. As long as the sweat (and therefore the bacteria) are not on my body, I don't stink (badly).

I don't want to use an antiperspirant again. I don't mind sweating. It's the stinking that I mind. Besides, my antiperspirant wasn't doing that great of a job in the first place, ya dig? The antiperspirant is made to plug up the stink glands (uh, sweat glands) under your arms so you don't sweat and feed the bacteria. It's the bacteria that make you stink, their waste products, actually (I think). So, kill the bacteria and you kill the stink. Which leads me to today's experiment.

I was hoping to stink, so I left the a/c on 86 last night and sweated my butt off. I also had Max in bed with me as well as Chase and Ivy. Max usually sleeps in his crate, so Friday & Saturday nights he gets a break and I get no sleep. I have 67 pounds of Max on one side of me and 52 pounds of Ivy on the other side of me. Sweat city. PERFECT!! Boy did my pits make my eyes water today. I didn't even have to lift my arms high to catch a whiff. Can you say, "Gag a maggot."

I grabbed a sliver of babassu oil out of the fridge and melted it in my palm. That was taking too long so I just rubbed it onto my left armpit. The oil absorbed quickly and the stench disappeared within a minute or two of application of the oil. Impressive!!

I grabbed the jar of (melted) coconut oil and dipped a clean (very important!) finger into it and rubbed it onto my right armpit, trying not to gag. The oil did not absorb well and my finger stunk. (TMI?) The thing is, 5 minutes later, I grabbed the jar and dipped four (clean!!) fingers into it and tried again. This time I rubbed the oil into my skin for a longer amount of time. The oil did not absorb well into the skin and 15 minutes later I got the babassu oil and rubbed it onto my right armpit.

My left armpit is not greasy or oily and does not have a strong odor. There is a slight odor, but it is not detectable unless I really stick my nose in there. I would definitely go out in public and not be bothered at all. I'm confident not one could smell me but me. (And I've got to stick my face in my pit.)

My right armpit still stinks. It's not quite as bad as it was before; but it is bad enough that I would not be comfortable going out in public. It's probably not so bad that people would confuse me for being a hippie or homeless, but I'd be self-conscience about it. Mind you, this is even though I used significantly more coconut oil on it compared to the babassu on the left AND actually used babassu as well. I think the babassu was not able to penetrate through the coconut oil to get to the bacteria causing the odor. I'm going to go wipe all of the oil off of my armpit with a dry paper towel and try the babassu again.

So, although it is in no way scientific, I believe babassu oil is definitely the best oil to use for a deodorant. It certainly proved this morning it has antimicrobial activity. It absorbs well into my skin and is not at all greasy. I don't even think that I'll need to add arrowroot or cornstarch to this if I made it into a stick deodorant.

What I am going to do is use plain babassu oil as a deodorant on one armpit for the coming week and just powder the other (as I've done since Tuesday morning). I'll see how the babassu compares to the powder. The powder I've been using is the Dollar General version of Shower to Shower deodorant powder. I've been using that for years after my shower, especially in the summer when it's so humid.

DELETE

 

[earlene]

Is there something wrong with just using a crystal rock? I know that Babassu oil can be costly, the work it takes to mix, and the time...I would spent more time on something else. When my 18 year old boy (he has so much hair on his body, his brothers called him carpet) took my face towel and wiped his pits, then I came around washed my face and dried with that towel....I almost through up. I was mad...but he was getting a complex because he didn't know what to do, so I say to him, "use my salt rock". It worked, I actually thought it wouldn't because he has some very strong gene, sweats ALOT, and is a huge man now.

Well, much as I wish TeresaT would come back to us on a regular basis, she hasn't been around in about 6 weeks or so and a bit less frequently for a the past few months. Life must hold a lot for her lately, I guess. Anyway, I don't know when she will see your question.

 

[Spice]

Well, much as I wish TeresaT would come back to us on a regular basis, she hasn't been around in about 6 weeks or so and a bit less frequently for a the past few months. Life must hold a lot for her lately, I guess. Anyway, I don't know when she will see your question.

I saw the date of this post and deleted. Have a real bad cold and just not myself. I haven't been around either. Anyway, that salt rock does miracles.

 

[IrishLass]

I saw the date of this post and deleted. Have a real bad cold and just not myself. I haven't been around either. Anyway, that salt rock does miracles.

No worries, Spice- this seems to be one of those long, on-going threads, such as the shaving thread or the Soaping 101 thread.

I used to use the crystal rock deodorant stones back in the late '90's, and while on the one hand they worked great for me, they ended up irritating my pits rather badly after a few months of steady use that I had to stop using them.

Thankfully, that has not been the case for me with the babassu/magnesium hydroxide after almost 2 years of steady use. I don't do the extra 'doctoring-up' to turn it into a stick deodorant, so mine is made and ready to go in less than a minute. I just mix the two ingredients in a jar and call it done. It's a creamy consistency that can be applied with the fingers. At first it kinda creeped me out having to rub it into my pits with my fingers, but it didn't take me very long to get used to it.


IrishLass

 

[shunt2011]

I saw the date of this post and deleted. Have a real bad cold and just not myself. I haven't been around either. Anyway, that salt rock does miracles.

You are fine on this as it’s an ongoing process for most here.

 

[SaltedFig]

Carpet!

@Spice That is seriously funny!

I'd only thought of Potassium alum (Potassium aluminium sulfate) from the art use side of things, I didn't realise it was the same stuff in crystal deoderant.

I tried the crystal deoderant a long time ago and decided then that I didn't like it, but other folk do swear by it (and it's very popular in countries around here).

Apparently it's also used as a post-shaving/post-hair removal treatment for it's soothing and antibacterial qualities (something I found out from the Wiki page, so thanks for talking about the crystals ... I've learned something new today )

 

[SoaperForLife]

As I was looking through one of my herbal tea books I happened upon a "Better Body Odor Tea" that some of you may be interested in trying out... it is 2 parts peppermint leaf, 2 parts spearmint leaf, 1 part alfalfa leaf, 1 part nettle leaf. There is a notation stating that "herbs rich in chlorophyll help purify the system from within". I have not tried this specific recipe but I do often drink another herbal tea that contains two of the four aforementioned herbs and it's quite possible that there is a correlation between when I get on a "tea bender" and the subsequent lack of underarm odor I experience.

 

[DeeAnna]

Thought I'd give a cross-link to a recent related thread. There's been some good discussion there about where to find the "hard" babassu for the babassu / mag hydroxide deo. https://www.soapmakingforum.com/threads/hard-babassu-oil-for-deodorant.72028/#post-728149

 

[TeresaT]

Well, much as I wish TeresaT would come back to us on a regular basis, she hasn't been around in about 6 weeks or so and a bit less frequently for a the past few months. Life must hold a lot for her lately, I guess. Anyway, I don't know when she will see your question.

SURPRISE!! I just popped in for a second. Don’t really know what prompted me to, actually. Yes, Earlene, life is definitely getting in the way lately. As far as the question of the salt crystal is concerned, I did use one of those for a long time and loved it. The only problem I has was stinging after shaving (salt on an open wound kinda hurts). Then suddenly it seemed to stop working. I don’t know if my hormones had something to do with it or I got a fake salt rock the second time I bought one, but there was definitely a reduction in the deodorant ability of the product. One of the tings I liked about the product was the longevity of it. A standard deodorant tube sized stone lasted me almost a year of daily use. When I bought it, I thought it was kind of expensive (at nearly $8 about 20 years ago). But a friend of mine swore it was worth it. It really was. Unfortunately, the next time I purchased a crystal deodorant, I didn’t see that same brand and bout a different one. It didn’t feel the same or work as well. The cool thing about the salt crystal is you can also use it on your feet if you have sweaty, stinky feet. (Personally, I would use a different one for my feet than for my pits; but, how many foot deodorants are on the market? Does anyone use their Secret on their feet and their pits?)

Totally different subject: you remember I said my air conditioner went out in 2013? Guess whose heater went out in 2018? Yup, this girl. I finally got a new heat pump!! This summer I will actually have central air, humidity will be abolished, and my soap won’t sweat. I can actually start making soap again. I haven’t made any in over a year because it’s been so discouraging having sweaty soap all over the place. Whatever soap I have in the house will be strictly personal use. Anything I make starting now will be for gifting/selling. It’ll be nice to get the mad scientist going again.

 

[amd]

(Personally, I would use a different one for my feet than for my pits; but, how many foot deodorants are on the market? Does anyone use their Secret on their feet and their pits?)

Well, I didn't use my stick deoderant on my feet, but when I used to wear a lot of dress shoes in the summer I would by the aerosol deoderant to spray my feet with. Worked a million times better than foot powder (and smelled nicer too).

 

[Saipan]

Wow, I went away for a bit, and this thread exploded. Is there a recipe in here somewhere? Can anyone repost it for me or give a page number?

 

[IrishLass]

Well, there are a good handful of different recipes throughout this thread! For simplicity sake, here's mine: 60% magnesium hydroxide powder mixed with 40% babassu oil. I normally make it unscented, but sometimes I add a few drops of FO or EO if the mood strikes me. My favorite FO to add is dragon's blood.

It makes a deodorant with a creamy consistency that I apply with my fingertips. I should mention that my babassu oil is not the hydrogenated kind, so it's liquid at room temp. If you use a harder babassu that some vendors sell, the consistency of your deodorant will not turn out so creamy.


IrishLass

 

[Saipan]

Is Magnesium hydroxide powder the same as Magnesium sterate?