This generation is a savvy one: bit by bit we’re moving away from big companies in the skin care and beauty industries, because we’re learning more about the long lists of chemical ingredients in their products. We’re choosing natural ingredients over synthetic ones that have harmful side effects. Product by product, we’re making better decisions for our health by choosing brands that are safer for our bodies and the environment—and we’re enjoying the benefits of captivating scents and brighter-looking skin while we’re doing it.
But many people still don’t know that one of the best ways to protect ourselves from harmful toxins is to stop using regular antiperspirant deodorant.
If you’re one of the ones that do, you still might not have had the courage to move to natural deodorant pastes—because you still want to smell good, right? There’s a big misconception that all natural deodorants don’t work at stopping odour, so it’s no wonder that you’re not keen on paying for products that will only result in spending your days overpowered by your own ripeness. But you’ll be pleased to know you don’t have to smell funky to eliminate toxins from your pits. And besides that, there’s a whole lot of other reasons you should care more about them, and go natural (without smelling au natural).
What’s hiding in conventional deodorants
If this is the first time you’ve read about the health consequences of conventional deodorants, don’t freak out! It’s important to know what’s in your mainstream cosmetics and skin care products so you can make an informed choice: but keep in mind, there are amazing, healthy alternatives just waiting for you to try them. Unlike natural deodorant creams and pastes, mainstream deodorants contain lots of ingredients that aren’t regulated by health authorities—and that are bad for us.
One of the main ones is aluminium salts, which swells your skin cells to keep your sweat glands shut and stop you from sweating.
They also contain phthalates, propylene glycol, formaldehyde, parabens and even pesticides, which are absorbed directly into your blood stream. Believe it or not, you’d be better off eating them, because your digestive tract could do a more effective job of filtering them. (BTW, we don’t recommend that either.)
The science is out there, and the evidence is growing every day. Among many other side effects (and no doubt a bunch we don’t even know about yet), these chemicals cause endocrine (hormone) disruption, allergies, reproductive problems and inflammation—and the scariest of all: cancers (especially breast cancer) and Alzheimer’s disease.
We don’t know about you, but we don’t want to use carcinogenic products that make us sick. That’s why Black Chicken Remedies formulated a natural solution to body odour in our Axilla Deodorant Paste™. But there’s a whole other issue we should tackle: why we shouldn’t stop ourselves from sweating in the first place.
Sweating is good for you
Brace yourself for a massive revelation: antiperspirants don’t work! Despite the strength of the most dangerous chemicals they use to stop us from sweating, the most you can expect your deodorant to reduce your armpit dampness is by about 20%.
Most of us have been under the misconception for our whole lives that we should stop ourselves sweating.
So why do we have millions of sweat glands in our bodies? Nature is rarely wrong about these things, and sweating is no exception. You probably already know that sweating helps us to regulate our body temperature. But it does a lot more than that: it supports our immune system function, and allows us to excrete toxins from our bodies. There are toxins in our environment, and we’re exposed to them every day—it’s part of the parcel of living on planet Earth. But sweating helps us to get rid of a lot of what we’ve absorbed, including heavy metals (arsenic, lead, mercury, cadmium), BPA, and phthalates that are present in beauty and body products, plastics, water, cigarette smoke, car exhausts and other emissions. Sweat concentrates and excretes these metals and chemicals for us—in essence, it’s a daily detox. Pretty neat! While we need to let our armpits breathe, they’re still a good reservoir for bacteria, which we all know can get kind of stinky. But we can still let our pores do what they’re designed to do while we control our smelliness—by giving them a helping hand with a good detox.
How to detox your pits
You might never have heard of an armpit cleanse, but it probably doesn’t come as a surprise when you think about how hard it is to remove the slimy build up your deodorant leaves behind. There’s probably so much of it still left there after you’ve showered that you wouldn’t need to reapply it, except that the residue traps bacteria, making you smellier! It also blocks your pores and causes all the health problems we’ve already talked about.
Luckily, there’s an easy way to unglue this gump from your pits and relieve the pressure on your valuable lymphatic system. A tablespoon of bentonite clay mixed with a teaspoon of raw apple cider vinegar will do the trick: mix them together into a paste, apply it like a mask, and let it work its magic for about 15 minutes before washing thoroughly. You can repeat this process every day until your armpits are fresh and clean, less smelly, and less irritated. Another way to tell you’ve been relieved of your nasty chemical residue: you’ll get sick less often, because your lymphatic and immune systems are working better. Yay!
Once you’re free of your poisonous old deodorants, you can use diet and health conscious lifestyle choices to support normal perspiration and body odour.
You already know you should eat a well-balanced diet of fruits and vegetables, wholegrains, legumes, seeds, and healthy fats. But you might be surprised to know that if you’re sweating excessively, you might be able to reduce it by limiting your intake of spicy food, alcohol, caffeine, sugary and processed food, bad fats, and garlic and onion. There’s also food for smelling good: rosemary, sage, mint, parsley, basil, wheatgrass, and vitamins and supplements like chlorophyll and B and C are all natural deodorisers as well.
The natural, original, and best solution
Sometimes a good armpit cleanse can help to eliminate bad armpit odour altogether. And if you’re one of those people who can get away without wearing any deodorant at all, good for you! But there’s a whole lot of us who feel they do need a deodorant, or just want to enjoy nice perfumes on our bodies.
Black Chicken Remedies is the home of the original natural deodorant. We formulated our Axilla Deodorant Paste™ with a unique blend of organic, food-grade, plant and mineral-derived ingredients that naturally (and effectively) neutralise odour and inhibit bacteria without relying on chemicals or sweat blockers. We care about bodies: so we made a product that helps them do what they do naturally, without the funk that sometimes comes with it. We made our Axilla Deodorant Paste™ with a gorgeously luxurious texture that’s suitable for all virtually skin types, and (unlike most conventional deodorants), it’s completely invisible and rapidly absorbed once it’s applied.
We know there’s a bunch of other deodorant crèmes and pastes on the market. But at Black Chicken Remedies, we’ve been making them a long time. We’ve refined our unique blend of pure essential oils and botanical extracts into a tantalising blend that’s so good you won’t believe it’s for your underarms! We even won the Editors choice for best deodorant at the recent Beauty Shortlist Awards. And (as they always were) our products are all vegan friendly and made with love in Australia. There’s nothing to lose by trying them—except a whole lot of toxic stink!
