Thursday, May 29, 2008

Never let them see you sweat(?)


As we have evolved into the highly sophisticated, urbane people that we are, we have decided as a whole that certain human bodily functions are abhorrent. Flatulence, excess body hair and yes, perspiration are on that list (among others). Well, I must tell you, the way in which we deal with some of these could be hazardous to our health. The more I learned about health, the more I realized that the human body has its own internal cleaning mechanisms, one of which is perspiration. The body also has different sides for the intake and output of things. Traditionally the right side is the input and the left side is the output. You will find more of the lymph nodes that handle the filtration on the left under your armpit than on the right. And, it also follows that the majority of breast cancer found is also on the left side. When understanding that the body needs to sweat to release toxins, I began a search about a year ago for just a deoderant without an antipersperant. In the women's aisle, I found zero, zilch, nada. Evidently someone somewhere deemed women no longer needed to sweat and it had become so distastefull that we would eradicate it from the earth. If you were a man however, it is evidently very manly to sweat and we can manufacture deoderants to as to mask some of the odor without eliminating it altogether. That was perplexing to me. I did find a mineral salt crystal. It is all natural and changes the PH so that even when you do sweat (which is healthy and necessary) the bacteria does not get produced which actually causes the odors of perspiration. So that is what I started using. The more people I spoke to about this all seemed to caution one thing, if you do continue to use antiperspirants, choose one without aluminum. Here is an article about this topic for further reading:
I have gotten over some of my fear of going antiperspirant-less. My mindset is that of more concern for my health and less for the social impact of some body odor. Does that mean I want to be recognized as the stinky girl in the neighborhood? No....but I realize that sweating is a part of being human and a necessary thing. So I have said goodbye to the traditional antiperspirants until I find one that is a safer alternative. Yes, I know, I live in Arizona and it gets hot. I am not a fan of sweating but oh well, it has to happen. Sometimes you do need to let them see you sweat!!

1 comment:

Sherri @ Dude I Made It said...

I need to look into this as well. I am a "sweaty girl" so going with out anti-perspirant is frightening to me.
Summer in Arizona -- you've just gotta love it.