Lemons: Dénouement

In real time, this trial concluded over a month ago. As of day 8, my pits were back to normal. I continued using lemons for some time after the trial. However, my pits seemed to get irritated about once a week, and I would be unable to apply lemons because it would sting far more than I was comfortable with. For about 2 weeks I went back to the ‘trusted’ Mitchum deodorant searching for another natural alternative, until a friend sent me a link to Primal Pit Paste. I read their site and independent reviews, and ordered the unscented stick. I have used this ever since (2 weeks). No smell, no irritation, and all attributed to the all natural, organic ingredients they use.

My conclusion on lemons as deodorant:

Lemons are a very effective, safe deodorant, but not to be used long term. I would say if you go to a remote vacation destination and forget your deodorant, or find yourself in some other sort of deodorant pinch, you can swing by a market and use a lemon for a short period of time safely and effectively. Anything beyond that, I think most people will find the same irritation I did. So as a deodorant, lemons are a back-up, and should not make it into your starting rotation. 

Lemons: Day 7

Today I worked out and went to the beach to catch some Vitamin D. Im not sure what prompted this, but my pits became a bit irritated. They were a little sensitive and pink in color. Nothing serious, but discerning if this is from the lemons or the heat is difficult. I cannot recall this happening any time I used store bought deodorant. When I woke up, all was well in my pits. I applied some lemon all up in there, worked out, then went to the beach. When I returned, I showered, and that’s when I noticed the irritation. I did not apply any lemon or modern deodorant at that point, I just went Matthew Mcconaughey the rest of the Sunday evening. This will not deter my conversion to lemons, but it certainly has me wondering if they are the culprit. After speaking to my physician’s assistant friend Stephanie in Denver (who thinks I’m an idiot for applying something so high in acid to my skin on a daily basis) believes the acid in the lemons is likely to blame. Also, do not google image “irritated skin.” 

Lemons: Day 6

Today, myself and a couple work friends drove north into Wisconsin for a nice 6 mile hike. It was overcast, warm, and humid, which made for a great test on my lemon pits. I lathered up with a couple wedges before I left, and brought a lemon along just in case it got super gnarly. The hike was warm, and surprisingly beautiful. I’m not sure what I expected of WI, but it was much prettier than I imagined. If you are ever up that way, the Scuppernong trail near Eagle, WI is worth a visit. After the hike, we tossed a football around, chest bumped, etc. Once we were about to settle back into the car, I performed a quick smell test. I mean, I was sweating, so its not going to turn up roses, but the smell was rather “meh.” My hiking companions were aware of my ‘unorthodox’ 7 day trial. One of them volunteered to sample a waft from a safe, yet exposed distance (unprompted too, I guess a little curious for himself). He stated he smelled nothing offensive. I stressed the importance of honesty, in the name of posterity (See The Princess Bride scene - Pit of Despair), and he was adamant of my odor neutrality. For me, if the lemons can stand up to a balmy hike in the summer, they can stand up to anything. The drive back was comfortable (changed shirts) and no complaints from the homies. The conversion seems complete. 

Lemons: Day 4 & 5

There’s really nothing new to report. My lemony pits are still dry and stank free. My habits seem changed forever.  Worked out again, no complaints. Another human has yet to verify my lack of stench. Come Saturday, that should change when I hike with some friends. They will be trapped in my car with me for about 2 hours each way. Im sure they will let me know if I smell like hot wet garbage.… The only negative I have found so far are the lemon seeds. Too many of those little shits. 

Lemons: Day 3

After sleeping on the lunch room discussion with clean, fresh smelling pits, I thought of more appropriate questions to ask my colleagues. At lunch, I asked, “what would motivate you to go to such lengths as cutting a lemon wedge every morning to use as deodorant, or another natural alternative?” The answers funneled down to ‘an official/surgeon general’s warning on modern deodorants.’ I can understand the their skepticism. To the same degree, I am baffled they would trust any company with their body, assuming because it is available for purchase at a store that its safe. I think there are plenty of products/ingredients that are legal to sell/use in US stores that should turn that skepticism back where it belongs, on the man made products and not the natural plants our bodies have evolved with for thousands of years. Click here for examples. And here.

 I make an effort not to talk too much about these topics because I probably come off as some hippie, elitist douche bag (as I write a blog about it). There are times I can’t help myself, and it’s a little more often than I like. Cramming how I feel down other peoples throats (TWSS) isn’t how I want to carry myself, and certainly won’t change any minds. However, from posing questions and an honest discussion, hopefully we will seek information and reassess why we make the decisions we make when it comes to taking care of ourselves. Then maybe change will occur and ideally we will naturally live longer, healthier lives. This is exactly what happened in the lunch room. A nice discussion about arm pits. I don’t think any of them are going to go to the grocery store and buy a bag of lemons, but maybe they think a little differently now… Or most likely they went home and told their families about their hippie douche bag co-worker smearing fruit in his pits.

I worked out tonight and did not smell offensive afterwards. I changed and ran some errands after without showering, which would not have been a good idea before the lemon revolution. I have to say, my expectations were pretty low here. But these lemons are seriously doing work. Day 3 is another total success. 

Lemons: Day 2

I woke up in the morning with literally no BO smell in my pits. After showering, I generously applied another dose of sweet lemon juice all up in my pits, hopped on the express bus downtown on an unseasonably cool and foggy summer morning, feeling a bit more confident than yesterday due to the Day 1 success and the cool temps. During my lunch hour with my co-workers in our break room (haters gonna hate), I decided to fill my cohorts in on my current experiment. There were about 4 of us, all college educated, reasonably healthy, given up on our dreams, etc. I announced my current experiment and its structure and asked what they thought. Their rhetoric was interrogatory, and their tone judging me absurd, which was my reaction when I heard lemons could be used for deodorant as well. So I explained what the hippie and black magic sites stated, and prophesized my Day 1 success. I asked if they would ever consider trying lemons for a week. ‘No.’ Unanimously. Of course I inquired further, and the most popular responses were that it was too weird, too much time in the morning to deal with, and another mentioned they were unaware of any risk of modern store bought deodorant use. I cannot and will not prove that deodorant kills you. But the cancer incident rate in the US exceeds most other countries while boasting top medical facilities, medicine, medical education, doctors, etc. Click here for a chart yo. How can we have the best facilities and still be so unhealthy? Apples and oranges. My theory is this: Medicine aides an existing illness. Our habits either prevent or create that illness (for the most part). It sounds so simple I feel ridiculous even calling it a theory, but so many people talk about genetics as if it has just as much weight in this discussion. Genetics is definitely relevant, but I think it only speaks to your susceptibility to certain diseases, not the cause of them. We as adults, our habits, knowingly or unknowingly cause the disease (for the most part anyway… obviously the body can be diseased without such habits i.e. babies who get sick, disease in countries without a western diet, etc.) using and consuming products our bodies have not had time to evolutionarily adapt to and process without incident (processed food, our portion sizes of certain foods, etc). Since we Americans can’t fully blame 1 cause conclusively (diet, stress, pollution, Bieber fever) why not eliminate as much exposure to risk as possible. Minimizing any risk, even as seemingly marginal as deodorant, could be worthwhile, at least to me. With all the research on the western diet now, and the toll it takes on the human body, I think we can all agree it is the #1 suspect when it comes to irregularity and disease in the human body, but that’s a whole other animal.

I have to say, kudos to the companies that make deodorant. They have created and maintained such a market for their product, most customers do not even contemplate its absence/alternative. Some may switch scents or brands, but not eliminating the risk (the risk being that there are designed penetrating properties in deodorants to help it absorb the anti-persperant or fragrance (aluminum chloride and the likes) into the body to ensure maximum effect. Again, I’m not saying using deodorant is suicide, but I think we can all reasonably agree that our bodies are safer without it or with an equally effective all natural alternative providing the same service.) So the lunch room became more a discussion of how harmful deodorant really is. Something tells me this will be a recurring topic the rest of the week.

I had a sand volleyball game this evening. I did reapply some lemon before I went, though based on smell it wasn’t necessary. I just wanted to play it safe. It was still pretty cool outside, and the league is somewhere between recreational and an arm flailing contest, so the exercise was minimal. I did walk home about 4 miles after the game. I did a serious smell test when I got home. Very strange…. It smelled like celery. Clean celery. Even more strange… I haven’t eaten celery in days. Not that I smell like celery when I eat it, just saying it would make more sense if I had celery recently. Day 2, also a success.

Lemons: Day 1

I woke up this morning a little easier than other Mondays. The curiosity of smearing a lemon wedge in my pits must have helped me swing my feet to the floor a little quicker.** I showered and brushed my teeth, among other morning rituals (watching my neighbors across the way get ready, then when they spot me, act like I am just looking outside at the day’s weather). I then ambled to the kitchen to slice the appropriate amount of lemon for my pits (basically a lemon wedge you would find on your beverage at a bar/restaurant). As ‘natural’ as this experiment is, it felt completely unnatural to apply it… Pulp breaking free during application…. Weeding out the seeds… then finding out you didn’t weed them all out…. Then trying to pick them up off the floor like an asshole because you and I both know that’s impossible. What a nightmare. I slathered those poor wedges from damn near my elbow to below the nipple line. I stood in front of a full body mirror to ensure full coverage. I figured, I better cover some serious ground here, if it all goes to shit, hopefully the excess will negate some of the failure. I discarded what was left of the gnarled wedges with some seriously wet, lemony pits. I continued getting ready shirtless, hoping some of the juice would evaporate. I really wanted to avoid any towel dabbing, I was convinced I would need all the protection I could get. I mean, we’re talking about citrus here.  The clock left me no option, I was forced to towel the excess lemon juice out of my pits. I donned the usual v neck undershirt and oxford, tucked them into my underpants, and made my way downstairs to my bus stop. On the bus, I was already smelling myself. I don’t know if my nostrils were burnt out, but I couldn’t smell the lemon in my pits, it just didn’t smell like…. anything.  At the office, the smelling continued. Still nothing. Surely after lunch the lemon would start to waiver….. OK, definitely around quitting time…. Lets see what we have going on in there after dinner…. BEDTIME??? No smell at all. All day. No lemon smell. No smell at all. Totally neutral. No reapplication was applied, and I towel dabbed before I left the house. Behold the power of citrus! Day 1 was a major success, but there was no real physical activity. Tomorrow however, I have a sand volleyball game and a walk/run home… walk.

Please watch this funny lemon video.

**Not to say I don’t like Mondays or any other day of the week for that matter. I just want to be sure I am differentiating this comment from the mouth breathers who comment how many days away Friday is every day of the week. Every day should feel like a breeze on the ball bag. If it doesn’t to you, then shit in your own hat. 

When Life Gives You Lemons, Smear Them All Up In Your Pits

The first all natural trial is deodorant. According to Wikipedia, deodorant is defined as:

“substances applied to the body to affect body odor caused by bacterial growth and the smell associated with bacterial breakdown of perspiration in armpits, feet and other areas of the body. A subgroup of deodorants, antiperspirants, affect odor as well as prevent sweating by affecting sweat glands.”

It also says the first commercial deodorant was created in the late 1800s. So before that… holy shit.

To give you an idea of what my deodorant is up against… It is summer here in Chicago. I ride the bus and/or the EL daily. So the embarrassment threshold, if there is any amount of failure, is quite vast. I work out a few times a week and I will be sure to run and go for a long hike in Wisconsin this week to really test this alternative.

Per recent internet research (hippie and black magic sites), the all natural, organic alternative I am going to try is….. lemons. FML. I am going to cut a slice of a lemon each morning, cut that slice in half, and use that as my day’s protection between a neutral smell and Robert Downey Jr circa 1996.

Personal Background

Products: For a few years now I have used Mitchum solid unscented. I have deviated at times to an ‘all natural’ deodorant you can find at Whole Foods or Trader Joe’s. The Mitchum is my go-to bc it seems to do the trick well enough. However, it can create a smell that is not BO. It’s almost as if its drawing something out of my body that is unnatural (the reaction my body has to David Beckham), or creating a reaction in my pits.  

BO Factor: I do not consider myself a ‘smelly’ guy. I understand most smelly guys are unaware they are the smelly guy, but I feel like the girlfriends I have had in the past were very honest, and if I stunk, they would tell me. Believe me, these bitches didn’t pull any punches. If I stunk, I was the 2^nd person to know. The Whole Foods/Trader Joes products seemed to only accelerate my BO from the point of application, not to mention the product’s unpleasant feel and scent on its own. The mitchum seems to tame the sweating and smell when called upon.

Body Hair: I should mention that I manscape. I am not outrageous. There are no geometric shapes or patterns. I only trim so it is clean and groomed, and that goes for my whole body…… lllllladies. I mention this to note that the lemon will be reacting mostly with my pit skin, not my pit hair.

This trial starts tomorrow. I am not sure if or how I should prepare for this. 

And So It Begins...

In my quest to become all natural and vegan, I have found some modern convenience products are more than just that. They have transformed into a societal ‘necessity’ we assume there is no all natural alternative, if we ever even consciously contemplate any alternative to something as staple as the food we eat, modern medicine, toothpaste, deodorant, etc. As I collect more knowledge of the power of plants, it is becoming clear to me (or so I believe) that the earth naturally provides everything we need organically, and can do a better job than large businesses can concoct for us to clean ourselves, groom ourselves, feed ourselves, medicate ourselves, generally take care of ourselves while at the same time keeping basic morals and respect for other forms of life in tact. This blog will serve as a window into my personal experiments in replacing such products with a 100% natural, organic when possible, alternative for 7 days with the intent of changing my habits forever and hopefully proving what I believe is indeed true. I will keep a journal for the 7 day use, ingestion, encounter of the natural alternative, posting any and all entries. I will tell people close to me and share their reactions, I will share my body’s reactions, and the general success and failure of the natural alternative, which will be around the same price point of what it is replacing. Should be fun(ny).