Wednesday, July 23, 2008

Natural Beauty Products Part 2

Ha, I found it. A natural deodorant that works, is inexpensive and easy to make. Yep, you can make it yourself. It's a little too easy and you may not believe me that it works but I have been testing it for over a week and under several circumstances and it has come out with shinning colors. It is..... drum roll please.... baking soda and coconut oil! That's it.

I cannot even remember what amount of each. I just took a Tablespoon or two of coconut oil and poured and worked in enough baking soda to make a thick paste and then I crammed it into a small film canister so it would be small and available for use. I just press off enough to make a small paste and smooth it on and it seems to soak in and disappear.

I have used lavender essential oil sprayed right from a refillable perfume bottle for some time in the past but for some reason it seemed to stop working after several months.

I also heard somewhere that you can put a drop or two of tee tree oil in the coconut/baking soda mixture to help with antibacterial effects. So far I haven't found this necessary but will try it if the effect wears off over time. (I really do not expect it to)

Everyone's body chemistry is different and I'd be interested if anyone else has had similar success (with this recipe or any other particular one.

I'm sure you have baking soda on hand and if you do not have coconut oil you can usually pick it up at any health food store nowadays or even a grocery store that has a Health Food section. You will need only a small amount to try it so be sure to use the rest of the coconut oil in cooking. It is wonderfully fragrant and has many, many health benefits.

Below is an excerpt from an article by Dr Mercola talking about the dangers of using common drug store deodorants.

".... I need to explain that one of the simplest, least expensive and non
toxic alternatives to deodorants is simply plain soap. Antiperspirants are far
more dangerous than deodorants, but I haven’t used either for over two decades.

An additional benefit of stopping these CHEMICALS is that you will stop
producing the yellow stains in the armpits of your shirts. Those stains are NOT
due to your sweat but rather caused by the chemicals you are putting on and in
your body."


Putting chemicals on your skin is actually far worse than ingesting them, because when you eat something the enzymes in your saliva and stomach help break it down and flush it out of your body.

When you put these chemicals on your skin, however, they are absorbed straight into your blood stream without filtering of any kind, so there's no protection against the toxins. Instead, they are in large part going directly to your delicate organs."

Using natural deodorant is such a benefit as there are loads of lympth glands under the skin in the armpit area. It is downright dangerous to put chemicals on the skin in that area that STOP perspiration. The intent with natural deodorants are that you do not stop perspiration, just stop any bacterial growth that cause odor. We do that by creating unfavorable conditions that are not harmful to the skin nor the underlying lymph nodes, and allowing proper drainage as it should be. On another note, the less toxic you are internally, the less troublesome body odor will be. Perhaps that is another post, internal cleansing!

Living a Lifestyle of Learning daily

3 comments:

DW said...

Hi Janet. I've heard that baking soda contains aluminum. Do you know if this is true?

Janet Langford, said...

Good question Darnell, I do not think so even though I too recently heard the same news that it might have aluminum in it (I read it in a comment section of a discussion board-not reliable but does raise suspicions). Regular store bought baking powder does but I am not aware that baking soda does have that dreaded ingredient. I am checking into this and see what I can come up with.I will post anything new that I find or I will let you know via email. Thanks for the quesiton. It's a very important question if indeed it is true! PS if you do happen to find any further info on this please let me know and I'll do a warning post on it.)THanks

DW said...

Thanks, Janet. A couple of days after I asked this question, I came across an aluminum free baking powder. This is probably where I got the two (soda & powder) confused.

Wanted to mention that while I'm waiting for my new shampoo to come in from my Azure Standard order, I used baking soda to wash my very thick hair. You're right, it does work, and I didn't use conditioner. At one point I wasn't sure, because I was looking in the mirror and saw some static electricity in my hair :-). It only happened one time, and I've used it for four days now. Thanks for sharing.

Another thing, I've used a kefir face mask (just rubbed it on my face), and it really works well. My skin looks radiant, and my pores significantly reduced. In my online research, I also read it can be done with any cultured milk product (yogurt, sour cream?) It was straight from the fridge, so it had a cold, uplifting feeling.

I just love the security of knowing what ingredients are in what I put on my body. I'm working toward that in my family's diet, but it's much slower going. Have a great day!