Today, I am going to share a blog from our friend, Erica! Erica is a busy mom, military wife, and OT. Today, She shares how to switch (effectively) to a natural deo and why, check it out!
I’m an occupational therapist. I’ve worked in a few different settings over my career, one of which was oncology rehab.
In the oncology setting I learned the value of using “natural ingredients” specifically with certain products. One of the natural products in particular that I heard Oncologists repeatedly encourage patients (specifically female patients) to use, or switch to, was deodorant.
I tried it. Didn’t like it. I stunk. Switched back. Continued to hear the Oncologists, RN’s, and Oncology Navigators I worked with preach the importance of females using natural deodorant. I didn’t care. I refused to walk around with stinking pits. Wasn’t happening. I didn’t care what their warnings were, how hard they preached, I wasn’t using the natural stuff again. It didn’t work!
Then my oldest daughter hit that age. You know the one I’m talking about. Where my sweet innocent little girl wrapped her arms around my neck to hug me and whooo ‘bout knocked me over! Yep, it was time for her to start wearing deodorant! Now I started to care a little bit more about all those warnings. While I might be all laissez faire about my own use of evil toxic chemical deodorant, this was my daughter. I wasn’t nearly as willing to take the risks with her health and her life.
However, I still had the unfortunate problem of the natural deodorant leaving me with stinky pits. This wasn’t going to work. My daughter (and I) needed something that was actually going to kill the stench. So I started doing some research.
Turns out you can’t just switch from the evil toxic chemical deodorant to the natural stuff or it won’t work. Go figure. You have to detox first. Yep. Detox your pits to get rid of the evil toxic chemicals so the wonderfully healthy natural stuff can do its job. So how does one detox their pits? Glad you asked!
It’s actually not that hard. You can use a simple mask made from equal parts Aztec Secret Indian Healing Clay (I found it on Amazon – linked here) and apple cider vinegar. I found the recipe for this mask on another blog (Lauren McBride) and decided to give it a try. I’ll admit I was skeptical, but it actually worked, so I wanted to share!
Step 1: mix equal parts apple cider vinegar and Indian Clay per the instructions on the clay container until it forms a paste
I ordered the cute little mixing bowl kit from Amazon as well to use for making face masks and it was perfect to use for this as well. It comes with the measuring utensil that has one end for wet ingredients and one end for dry ingredients, a spatula stick (not pictured), and two types of face brushes. I’ll link it here: Face Mask Mixing Bowl
Step 2: put it on your pits and find something to do while it dries which takes about 20 minutes (you’ll need to keep your arms up away from your body so that the paste can actually dry so I recommend you find something to do lying down or propped up)
Not a step but….. turns out these ingredients actually make for a good face mask, too, so I decided to try it on my face while I was waiting as well because, why not?
Step 3: rinse it off with warm water. The original blogger recommended doing this while still lying down, I recommend doing this in the shower.
She also recommends doing this once a month. I’m not sure why you would need to do this monthly if the purpose is to remove the evil toxic chemicals and you start using the wonderfully healthy natural stuff afterwards then there should be no more evil toxic chemicals to be detoxified. However, it can’t hurt so if you feel so inclined to continue to do it monthly, have at it! I will probably use it as a face mask again every so often. Maybe not monthly.
I can say that after doing this, I started using natural deodorant (I use Native brand) with much better success than I did the first time around. And I now have a much clearer conscience about letting my daughter use deodorant.
Stay Well,
Erica
I did want to mention, Native is an option for Natural Deodorant, but at Grits, Grace, and Granola we are partial to our YL deo. We voted for scent and the verdict is Mountain Mist or Valor (hello, confidence)!