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).