Category Archives: health

health, psychiatry, psychology, psychology/psychiatry

On Rediscovering Reading And My Battle With YouTube.

I have been on a journey to rediscover reading for pleasure.  A journey that has had many twists and turns since childhood.  Like most things that I do, this rediscovery has practical implications.  Let me explain.

The early issue

You may recall from previous posts that I had significant problems learning how to read.  I attended a Catholic grade school in the 1960s, where learning was expected, and processing problems were not understood. At a 2nd-grade parent-teacher conference, my teacher, a nun, told my parents that she thought I was very bright, so my reading problem must be due to poor vision.  She was certain that I needed glasses. This was not met with joy from my dad; glasses were expensive.  However, he was a dutiful Catholic, and I was taken to the Optometrist. Honestly, I was pretty excited as my young brain completely trusted the nun’s evaluation.  Soon, I would be able to read!  The glasses came, and I eagerly put them on.  I could not read.  I was horribly disappointed.  Worse, I thought my father would be furious with me.  He had spent an enormous amount of money, and I was once again disappointing him. I had to do something, but what?

The real problem

When you are in 2nd grade, and your only point of reference is yourself, assessing a problem can be difficult.  Being unable to read hampered my ability to research solutions.  I was completely on my own. What were my observations?  It was very difficult for me to define letters.  I had classical reversals; b’s could look like d’s. I had a great deal of difficulty discerning individual words or sentences; “he said” looked like “hesaid,” and “It is sunny outside today” looked like “Itissunnyoutsidetoday.”  I also had trouble distinguishing between lines of text because they merged into a single line without separation.  When I looked at a page of text, it was one gigantic soup of symbols all bunched together, changing their shape at will. 

When other kids were thinking about lunch, I was thinking about the meaning of God’s injustice or why humans fought in wars instead of cooperating with each other.  In other words, I was already an odd kid who learned to hide my differences so I could fit in. Now I had the realization that my brain was malfunctioning, further separating me from my peers.  No one could know.  I had to hide this defect, just as I had to hide all the other things that made me different.  I wanted to be accepted not only by my peers but also by my dad.

The process

I had to come up with a solution; failure was not an option.  I knew that I had limited abilities.  I was clumsy and introverted.  I was blind in one eye, so I had no depth perception. I would compare myself to the other boys in the class who were more athletic, more social, and cooler. I did not measure up.  The same comparisons were done at home, with similar results.  But teachers kept on telling my parents how smart I was.  I could sit at the piano and play a song by ear that my sister had been practicing for weeks.  I was already designing experiments to test ideas that my mind would not let go of.  I saw connections in everything.

My miswired brain

My wife has joked with me in the past, telling me that I have an autistic brain.  She is a clinical psychologist, so there may be some merit in her musings.  My brain does seem to be wired differently; I don’t think linearly as most people do.  Instead, I see pools of information that intersect, merge, separate, and reconnect.  This crazy brain has both disadvantages and advantages.  Instead of me processing A + B = C, I see A + B = a dozen possibilities. My thinking process takes much longer than most.  Data acquisition is slower and sometimes more painful.  I remember taking a physics class in college.  I sat down on a Friday night (proof that I’m a nerd) to do my homework, and it didn’t make sense to me. I repeated the exercise on Saturday night. Still, it made no sense to me. Sunday morning, lightning struck, and the solution became abundantly clear as pools of data started to merge, separate, and merge again. The material became simple and logical.  One problem led to many solutions, and I became the person who broke the curve in that class, much to my classmates’ chagrin. 

The reading solution

Back to second grade. What to do?  I already got my glasses, and I was failing at the task.  If I told the nun that they didn’t help me, she might think I was really dumb, and I liked the fact that she thought I was smart. It made me feel special. I certainly could not tell my dad, he already had a negative opinion of me.  Reading had become an essential part of learning, but I was failing at it. The kids around me were breezing through the text, and I was seeing an alphabet soup that looked like Egyptian hieroglyphics. Think, Mike, think!  God would not give me the gift of intelligence and then cruelly deny me a way to use it.  But what to do? The answers eventually came in the backseat of our old Nash Rambler on the way home from church. 

I had taken the Sunday comics with me.  I couldn’t read them, but their story lines were graphically simple and enjoyable.  Could they be the solution to my reading problem? One cartoon stood out, “Nancy.”  This was a strip with a very simple storyline.  It used easy words, and the creator wrote in all caps.  Many of the speech balloons had only a handful of words, with generous spacing between them. With effort, I could separate the words, and over time, I could do this quickly. 

Nancy comics were easy to understand graphically and employed simple text, all in caps, and with good letter spacing.

After I mastered “Nancy,” I needed more material, but the options were limited. This was the 1960s, and parents didn’t buy kids books. We did have a bookshelf in our front hall that was loaded with ancient books of all sorts.  Old encyclopedias that schools had tossed out, a giant Bible, “The Lives of Saints,”  all were too advanced for me, but then I came upon what I needed.  On a lower shelf were several readers from the 1940s that had been discarded by schools.  It turns out that my oldest sister loved those books, which is why they were preserved.  They offered me the next step in my reading solution: three volumes, each representing a different reading level.

You may be wondering why I didn’t use the books I was given in school. I don’t have an answer to that, but I guess that they were too threatening, too traumatic.  I had already failed at using them, so I had to find my own path.  I needed a solution that allowed me to move at my own pace.  These primers were that solution. 

Two of the three primers that I used to teach myself how to read. These are from the early 1940s and I believe they cultivated my love for that period of time.

The books were immensely more complicated than Nancy comics, and I had to face all of the issues that I had faced before, but now I had success with the comics, and I didn’t have the pressure of having to read them in front of the class.  I came up with many solutions to my processing problems, from cutting out a window in a sheet of paper to isolate individual lines to reading shapes instead of letters.  It was agony, but then suddenly it wasn’t.  

The books were simple, but much more complicated than the comics. I had to employ other methods, such as creating a slit in a sheet of paper to isolate lines. I also focused more on the shape of a word rather than the individual letters. This seems to help (for some reason) my ability to separate words from one another.

Reading opened up my world and highlighted my talents. I couldn’t get enough information.  Those old encyclopedias became my launching pad.  The local branch library became my university. In the 4th grade, I took the state-wide achievement test and scored higher than anyone in my 1-8th grade school.  In some areas, I was scoring as high as a junior in high school.  Reading gave me that advantage. Now the nuns were telling my parents, “Michael is very special, God has plans for him.”  That was just the ego boost I needed to move forward and trust my instincts and myself.

But my reading has always been slow and ponderous.  I read slowly because I have to do a lot of gymnastics in my brain.  I no longer have to do all the tricks I originally needed, but I’m still processing a sea of data. I’m a slow reader, but I have excellent comprehension.  That can be a two-edged sword. 

My passions

I stated many times in past posts that I have always had three passions that constantly drive me.  I love to learn, teach, and create.  Every aspect of my life is centered on these three pillars. I have never stopped reading, but I tend to read things that deepen my understanding.  It matters not what that understanding is. One day, I may want to compare the Noah’s Ark story with its origin myth in the “Epic of Gilgamesh.”  The next day, I may be more interested in the design differences between two breadmakers.  It makes no difference to me.

However, such a drive can limit pleasure reading.  There are so many novels that are enriching, yet don’t offer overt data.  Of course, they offer so much more than just a story, as many question humanity, relationships, and drive on a level no clinical text can match. I know this, but textbook-type information is so much more accessible, so I tend to drift in that direction.  Oh, gads, this just came to me:  “Mike this is why people tend to eat ultra-processed food instead of healthy food.  It is concentrated and more accessible.”  See how my silly mind jumps from one topic and relates it to another.  That is what I have to deal with constantly!

Reading novels and other non-technical books.

I know that reading beyond informational materials would be beneficial to me, so I have made efforts in the past to do so.  I can’t say that I was ever a voracious reader of novels, as I’m a slow reader who tends to overprocess.  With that said, I found reading non-technical material was both enjoyable and broadening. I especially liked it when an author could introduce me to information that changed my opinion about something.  That was always exciting. 

The medical school dilemma

Medical school ruined my pleasure reading.  The first two years are didactic, and the amount of information that a student is expected to learn is astronomical. Tests are not based on broad concepts; they are based on footnotes.  Students are selected for their academic prowess, so the test discriminates at the level of minutiae. This was vastly different from my graduate student days, which were more focused on concepts rather than memorizing random facts. 

I found that I started memorizing everything I read, which ruined reading for me. That horrible process plagued me for many years.

The drive doesn’t end, and a new problem

I am always acquiring knowledge.  I am always learning.  I am always thinking.  I guess you would call me a dilettante, since everything interests me, and I go from one topic to another.  In my professional life, I had to be an expert; in my retired life, I can learn as much or as little as I choose to on any topic. This flexibility has been immensely pleasurable for me.

The Internet has opened up a world of data, and I have been greedily gathering it.  One day politics, the next making meals in a pressure cooker, the day after that quantum theory.  

YouTube has been both a blessing and a curse. Its algorithms draw me in by presenting one topic after another.  I can get trapped in hours of viewing, but if I stay too long on the platform, it seems to have a deadening effect rather than an enlightening one.  It is very hard for me to stop watching, which has affected me on multiple levels. My viewing can prevent me from doing necessary household chores, exercising, or exploring creative outlets like photography or writing.  I call this the ice cream phenomenon.  A bowl of ice cream is delicious, but a carton of ice cream makes me feel sick.  Yet there are times when I want a carton of ice cream, and I have to use willpower to keep myself from eating it. Like eating a carton of ice cream, I have had to use psychological techniques to limit my YouTube use. A little YouTube enlightens me, but a steady diet of it actually dulls me and prevents me from living my life.

The sleep issue

I used to be a deep sleeper, but this changed with the birth of my first child over 40 years ago.  Suddenly, I would wake at a pin drop.  This has continued to this very day.  My sleep is always disturbed, but usually manageable to some degree. 

When I was working, I had sleepless nights, but I thought that would change when I retired, since my days would be mostly stress-free.  However, my sleep can still be terrible, often waking for hours in the middle of the night. Something had to be done.

As you can tell by the preamble, I’m a problem solver, and I explore possible explanations for any given problem. What was the cause of my insomnia?  I don’t drink caffeine products in the evening, and I do the usual sleep hygiene things. Yes, I may need to get up to use the bathroom once or twice, but I have developed ways to make that less obtrusive.  I also know a number of psychological tricks to fall back on when I wake, but I’m often too lazy to incorporate them.  If I could identify a root cause, I might be able to find a solution. 

One thing I did was watch YouTube videos before bed.  Initially, I thought the videos were relaxing as I would fall asleep watching them.  However, I soon realized that they were stimulating my brain in unwanted ways. The bright blue light from my laptop screen wasn’t helping, nor was YouTube’s algorithm, which always seemed to hook me into watching the next video.  When I woke up at night, I sometimes opened my laptop and watched more videos.  It was a never-ending cycle. 

I started to notice a pattern: my wakeful periods were getting longer and longer, sometimes lasting from 12:30 AM to 4 or 5 AM.  Initially, this insomnia would last a day, and I would sleep well the next day. However, they eventually transitioned into several consecutive days.  

I had some ancient Klonopin in my medicine cabinet.  The pills were over 10 years old, and in desperation, I would bite off a bit of the pill in an effort to reset my sleep. This would work, but I soon found I had to do it for several nights in a row to reset.  Eventually, the pattern would return. The Klonopin was not the solution, plus I only had a limited supply.  I needed to explore other options.

Options and solutions

I intuitively knew that YouTube was a major contributing factor, but I didn’t want to give it up.  In some ways, it was a bit of an addiction. The more I watched it, the more I wanted to watch it. Depending on the content, it could really crash my mood. This was especially true of political shows. Yet, YouTube gave me a lot of good things, too.  Clearly, I needed to take control.

My solution was simple and consisted of both biochemical manipulation and behavioral intervention. I knew that Klonopin had to be an emergency-only option. I decided to take a dose of magnesium and a microdose of melatonin at night. Neither had a dramatic impact, but they seemed to be calming.   

I also knew I needed to give up late-night YouTube for a multitude of reasons: the content was too stimulating, the algorithm was too engaging, the computer screen was too bright, and the screen refresh rate (60-120 Hz) was too aggravating. 

Instead of looking at this as a problem, I decided to approach it as an opportunity. Stopping nighttime YouTube cold made little sense.  I needed a substitute, and that substitute was reading. 

I love technology, so it was a no-brainer to go with an e-reader instead of a physical book.  E-readers use a different method to control their lighting and a different screen technology called e-ink.  E-ink only refreshes when you change pages, not at 120 Hz like computer displays.  E-readers illuminate the front of a page like a physical book, not the page itself, as on a laptop.  Front illumination is more natural. 

E-readers offer an unlimited number of reading options, including many free and inexpensive ones. I could download books from my library using Libby, get free out-of-copyright books from sources like Project Gutenberg, or buy books from online bookstores like Amazon, Kobo, or Barnes & Noble.

At this time, I am reading “50 Masterpieces You Have to Read Before You Die” from Amazon.  These 50 books are all out of copyright, so the entire collection was less than $2 to download.  

An e-reader was the solution to my reading problem as it combined technology with reading. It also gave me flexibility, as I could download virtually any book and adjust any parameter of that book, from the font size and type to the screen brightness.

Transitioning to reading at bedtime was initially difficult. The experience was too slow-moving and not stimulating enough. I wanted to watch YouTube. My first few nights were frustrating, but that is now improving.  

I don’t feel a need to stay up all night reading, and I find that reading a chapter or two is usually sufficient.  Currently, I’m reading “The Jungle” by Upton Sinclair, which he published in 1906 (it actually was serialized in 1905, but it was published as a book in 1906). It is a story about immigrant abuse and the horrors of working in Chicago’s stockyards at the turn of the last century. I’m a Chicago Soutsider, so the stockyards are very familiar to me. The topic is timely as we continue to deal with immigrant abuse in 2026.

It appears that my sleep is slowly normalizing and that my treatment plan was correct.  I’m very grateful for that.  This solution highlights another point.  We never need to wallow in problems when there are solutions at hand.  Those solutions may vary based on time, situation, and need. Lastly, solutions can do more than just solve a problem.  They can expand our knowledge and experience.  They can enrich our lives and help us grow.  That is, if we let them.

We live in a world of instant gratification.  A time where we can have what we want without problem-solving.  This will likely get worse as AI becomes more prevalent.  However, as humans, we need to grow and solving problems is part of that process. Friedrich Nietzsche said, “What doesn’t kill me makes me stronger.”  A quote to remember.

Images are my own or from the internet and are used for educational purposes only.

health, psychology/psychiatry, Uncategorized

The History Of BO

I recently wrote a post on hygiene hacks and confessed that I did not use a traditional antiperspirant. I use alternative measures to ensure I am “daisy fresh,” so there was no need to hold your nose in my presence.

I watched a new episode of “The Great American Baking Show” yesterday. I was bombarded by commercials showing people spraying a total deodorizing spray not only on their armpits but on their saddle area, feet, back, neck, and just about everywhere else. I always felt that these areas were handled with simple soap and water.

I remember the push in the 1970s to get women to use “Summer’s Eve” vaginal douche, which led to all sorts of problems, from dryness to infections.  I was surprised to discover that vaginal douching, a bad idea unless medically necessary, had been pushed by advertisers for some time before that.  Lysol (the cleaning product) encouraged the use of a Lysol douche with ads with titles like, “She was the perfect wife except for one neglect.”  By 1911, there were several reported deaths and poisonings due to this practice. Lysol responded by telling women to continue using Lysol, but dilute it first! Keep those customers coming, who cares if you are poisoning them!  Doctors will tell you never to use vaginal douches unless directed by a healthcare provider. You will mess things up.

My father was born in Chicago in 1910 in a home that initially didn’t have a modern bathroom. When he was younger, he remembers being bathed in a washtub.  As he got older, he went to a community bathhouse where you could buy a sliver of soap and the use of a towel for a few pennies. This would be a once-a-week event. I asked him if people smelled in those days, and he said no, people did a daily wash-up to ensure they were clean. 

The first time that I traveled to Europe was in the 1980s.  I remember hearing that no one used deodorant and expected my nose to be assaulted. I did not encounter smelly people on that trip.  They were doing other things to clean themselves. Today, most Europeans have converted to commercial deodorants, likely due to advertising.

Although modern bathing and showering are the result of indoor plumbing, keeping oneself clean and good-smelling has been documented as far back as Egyptian times and has been recorded among just about any group since that time. Some used religious cleansing as the reason to keep clean; others had communal bath houses where they could socialize and bathe. Egyptians used simple soaps, while the Romans and Greeks cleaned their skin with scented oils. Other cultures relied on water or mild abrasives to clean away the stink.

We often think of Medieval times as odoriferous, but people from then were concerned about cleanliness and tried to keep themselves smelling nice. Then, as now, the more wealth you had, the greater your access to hygiene options. 

Yes, there have been times when people thought bathing was unhealthy or a sign of moral degeneracy, but many still did their best to smell better by wearing pungent spices or perfumes.

Dirty clothing often causes a stink; in the past, cleaning clothes could be difficult. People would beat or brush out dirt, air out clothing, and sometimes remake outfits to remove stains. There were no dry cleaners in those days! 

Often, their clothes were made of wool or linen, two natural fibers that are bacteriostatic and odor-resistant.  They also wore layers of clothing so that their outer clothes never touched their skin. Their “underwear” was frequently changed.  If you were wealthy, it was changed daily.  If you were poorer, it was washed several times a week.

Research gains in the late 1700s and 1800s made the mass production of inexpensive soaps possible. Pears translucent soap was introduced in 1807, and Lever Brothers (now Unilever Corporation) introduced Sunlight soap in the late 1800s. During this time, soap went from a luxury item for the elite to a product that just about anyone could afford. In Germany, detergents were invented in 1900 and found their way into multiple products, including self-care items like Dove soap, a syndet (detergent) bar introduced in 1955. 

Dial soap, which has antimicrobial agents, was the first deodorant soap and was introduced in 1949 with ads that stressed, “Dial stops odor before it starts!”  Deodorant soaps have used a variety of antimicrobial agents that have been banned over the years.  More recent studies have shown that consumer deodorant soaps are no different from regular soaps in reducing skin bacteria and pose a danger to the environment.  Dial is still a popular soap; it uses an anti-bacterial agent called benzalkonium chloride, and I’m unclear why.

Liquid soaps were invented in the mid-1800s, but most current liquid soaps are not soaps but detergents. Softsoap brand hand soap (a detergent) became popular in the 1970s, and shower gels (also detergents) became popular in the late 1980s. 

There are several methods to deal with odor. The first one is to clean your body regularly. In the US, this means taking a bath or, more likely, a shower. In other places with less access, it could mean a trip to the river or a sponge bath. Other methods are to use a masking smell, like a perfume, to hide offensive odors or to block sweat production in odor-causing areas. 

I went on a hiking trip with a close friend. I stayed at base camp and did day hikes while my friend and his son did a five-day trek over the mountains.  My friend is typically very clean, and I have never noticed him to have an odor problem.  However, he wore the same clothes on this hike and had minimal opportunities to wash. It was sweltering hot, and he sweated quite a bit. When I picked him and his son up, I could only describe the odor as similar to a garbage dumpster.  After a shower, he was as good as new, but I suggested he burn his hiking clothes.

Our bodies have two types of sweat glands: eccrine glands, which are located all over the body. When you sweat, your body uses evaporation to cool itself off. Most people can’t smell this type of sweat, but some can, including me. Eccrine sweat doesn’t smell bad at all; it smells like people, and I rather like it. 

The other glands are the apocrine glands located in the scalp, breasts, armpits, and groin. These glands produce an oily sweat that serves as food for certain bacteria.  The waste products from these bacteria give people body odor, or BO.  

Feet only have eccrine glands, but sweaty, unclean feet trapped in shoes can generate odors due to different bacterial by-products.  That is why smelly armpits and stinky feet have different types of pungent aromas.

I remember TV commercials from the 1960s in which a person would be identified as smelling bad, and the announcer would say, “He has BO!” But instead of him saying BO, a loud fog horn would blast, “BEEEEE OHHHHH!!!” That had to be a pretty effective commercial because I was just a young kid, and I still remember it vividly. It let me know that BO was a bad thing.

A fun fact is that many East Asians (Chinese, Japanese, Korean) don’t wear deodorant due to a gene mutation that impacts their apocrine glands. They don’t produce oily sweat, so those smelly bacteria can’t grow. 

This history of deodorants is fascinating and has modern and historical components. People have used various methods to reduce odor, from Europeans who wore masking perfumes and spices to South Asians using alum-based products like the Thai deodorant crystal and Filipino Tawas powder. Alum is bacteriostatic; in other words, it slows down the growth of bacteria. Fewer bacteria mean less odor.

Washing your body is the primary way to reduce BO. Additionally, there are two ways to control underarm smells: deodorants and antiperspirants. 

Commercial deodorants used to have antimicrobial agents, but they have mostly been removed due to health and environmental concerns.  Now, most commercial deodorants are just masking agents; they are cheap-smelling perfumes for the armpits.

Antiperspirants use aluminum salts. These salts plugged up sweat glands, so there is no sweat for odor-causing bacteria to eat, and so there is no odor. Antiperspirants are the most effective way to control malodorous underarm smells. 

There is a fear that antiperspirants can contribute to Alzheimer’s disease and breast cancer.  These fears have been debunked many times and are not true, but they persist from self-proclaimed health gurus, often for their benefit. 

I can’t tolerate antiperspirants because they make me itch.  However, dermatologists now say to put these agents on at night to plug up sweat glands and shower them off the skin in the morning to eliminate skin irritation.  I have not tried this as I already have another odor-controlling method that works very well. I’ll talk about that in the next paragraph. 

I mentioned that some Asian cultures have used alum salts for hundreds of years to control body odor.  These salts were marketed in the US starting in the 1980s as magic deodorant crystals, and I started using them in the early 2000s.  These contain aluminum in compound form, but it is a different compound than those used in antiperspirants.  Alum salts don’t block sweating; they are bacteriostatic and inhibit odor-causing bacteria.  For me, they work like a charm. Ads say to wet the crystal and apply; I rub a dry crystal on my damp underarms after I shower. This method wastes less of the mineral and gets the job done.

Commercial deodorants were introduced in the late 1800s under the Mum brand, and antiperspirants were marketed in the early 1900s under the name Odorono. Neither was very popular for several reasons. Victorian era people felt it was improper to talk about such things as body odor, and they also felt that washing their underarms and wearing perfume worked well enough to keep odor at bay. The early deodorants and antiperspirants had many drawbacks including being irritating and staining clothes. 

Edna Murphy’s father was a surgeon who developed an aluminum chloride solution to keep his hands dry during surgeries; she saw its potential to stop underarm sweating.  Due to Victorian sentiment, she wasn’t very successful selling her antiperspirant until the 1912 Atlantic City Exposition, where she had a sales booth. 1912 had an especially hot summer, and visitors were especially smelly.  She sold enough products at the exposition to hire the advertising agency, J. Walter Thompson Company.  They assigned a new hire, James Young, to the campaign. Mr. Young was a former door-to-door Bible salesman without training in advertising.  However, he was the man for the job. James Young is considered the father of shame-based advertising and could make potential customers worry about things they didn’t worry about before.  He started to run ads for women saying that men would not love them unless they used Odorono, and sales took off.

From a 1937 ad:

You’re a pretty girl, Mary, and you’re smart about most things, but you’re just a bit stupid about yourself. You love a good time, but you seldom have one. Evening after evening, you sit at home alone. You’ve met several grand men who seemed interested at first. They took you out once, and that was that. So many pretty Marys in the world never seem to sense the real reason for their aloneness. In this smart modern age, it’s against the code for a girl (or a man) to carry the repellent odor of underarm perspiration on clothing and person. It’s a fault which never fails to take its own punishment—unpopularity.

 He applied the same strategy with men during the great depression, stating that no one would hire them unless they used Odorono.  Men then started to use the product. He turned a product that no one wanted into one that grossed 28 billion dollars in 2025.

There has been some backlash against commercial deodorants and antiperspirants, which has prompted companies to create green-washed products and home cooks to develop DIY concoctions. Let’s take a look at the marketing hype and ingredients used.

One is to continue to promote false claims that commercial antiperspirants cause dementia and breast cancer.  To repeat, this is not true.

The other is to create fear about “unnatural” chemicals used in commercial products.  You may be sensitive to a random chemical, but it is not thought that these agents are more dangerous than other deodorizing methods.

The term Natural has absolutely no real meaning.  Frankly, the often criticized aluminum salts used in commercial antiperspirants are completely natural as they come from nature.  Please don’t get hung up on this term, as it is used to manipulate you.

Antiperspirants are the most effective way to control underarm and foot odor due to excessive sweating.  Natural deodorants use a variety of other agents to control odor and bacterial levels.  Some work for some and not so well for others.  Men sweat more than women and frequently work in more physically demanding jobs. Therefore, it is much more likely to hear women in office jobs claiming good results from a natural deodorant, where a man working in the field may be less enthusiastic. Here are some common ingredients used in natural deodorants:

Baking soda is a natural deodorizer, but it may worsen your BO as it is basic (remember acids and bases from high school chemistry?).  The bacteria that cause BO in your underarms prefer a basic environment, and baking soda can encourage their growth.  Plus, it can be irritating.

Essential Oils- Some essential oils, like Tea Tree, have mild bacteria reducing properties and may reduce odor-causing bacteria.  However, all fragrances, including essential oils, can irritate sensitive skin, causing skin breakdown and more problems.

Coconut oil is used as a base that also has bacteria-reducing properties.

Arrowroot powder is a moisture absorber that may keep the underarms drier.

Corn starch has the same function as arrowroot powder, but is likely more irritating.

Activated charcoal- can reduce odor, but it can be irritating and staining.

Alcohol is often used as a preservative, but it could have some bacteria-reducing properties.

Magnesium salts have some bacteria reducing properties.

If you are a heavy sweater, natural deodorants are likely to be less effective. Additionally, they often cost significantly more than mainstream deodorants. You can buy an antiperspirant at Dollar Tree for $1.25 or a name-brand antiperspirant for about $4, while a Native brand natural deodorant starts at $13 (Walmart prices as of 4/2025).

There are many DIY recipe hacks for making your own deodorant, many using coconut oil and baking soda (see caution above).  There are also several deodorant substitutes. Here are some of them:

-Spray or scrub rubbing alcohol under your arms. It reduces bacteria, but it is skin-drying.

-Use essential oils directly; this mostly masks odor, but can be very irritating to the skin.

-Use baking soda directly, it may cause overgrowth of harmful bacteria and can irritate.

-Apply glycolic acid directly; it reduces bacteria growth as it is acidic, but may be drying.

-Milk of Magnesia may reduce bacteria.

Some people have bacterial overgrowth problems that aren’t controlled by typical methods, and some dermatologists might recommend washing underarms several times a week with an antiseptic agent like benzoyl peroxide (PanOxyl), chlorhexidine gluconate (Hibiclens), or povidone iodine (Betadine). They would be instructed to wash their underarms with these agents and then leave the solution on for a few minutes before thoroughly washing it off.  These cleansers can all dry out skin, so they should not be used daily.  Most would use a daily antiperspirant or deodorant on top of this.

Whole body deodorants were introduced in 2017 with the brand Lume.  Lume’s active ingredient is mandelic acid, which (like its cousin glycolic acid) makes an area more acidic and less friendly to smelly underarm bacteria.

Lume created a whole new market using funny but shame-based advertising; there are now many competitors.  I recently checked out some at Walmart, and most seem to just be rebranded deodorants.  Marketing is everything!

The Lume commercial makes people worry that they have offensive butt odor.

I’m a psychiatrist, meaning I’m also a licensed medical doctor.  In my years of practice, I have been the medical director of several inpatient programs that required me to do a comprehensive physical exams…that is a head-to-toe exam, when a new patient was admitted to my unit.  My nose has been very close to several thousand people so I feel I can honestly assess the need for a whole body deodorant.  In my opinion, they are entirely unnecessary and could potentially disrupt the skin’s natural biome. 

The vast majority of patients I have examined over my 40-year practice have smelled fine with basic hygiene. The ones that didn’t smell so good resulted from being dirty or having dirty clothing (or most likely both).  They returned to being non-smelly with a shower and clean clothes.  

For your saddle region, use gentle soap and water (or sometimes just water for women’s genital region). Your body cleans your internal structures automatically. 

For stinky feet, change out shoes allowing them to dry, wear fresh socks, apply absorbent foot powders, and consider antiperspirant creams for severe cases. 

If the above doesn’t help in those regions, it is best to see a doctor to determine if you have something that needs medical attention, like an infection.

Of course, there are other reasons why some people smell bad. We all know what we smell like when we eat garlic chicken or have a few beers, but those are temporary problems. Additionally, some illnesses, medications, and infections can cause odor problems. These are best sorted out by a healthcare provider. Lastly, some individuals have metabolic issues where they excrete malodorous scents. These individuals are rare, and I have never encountered one during several thousand physical exams.

For most people with odor problems, regular soap and water and clean clothing is the place to start, along with the application of an underarm deodorant or antiperspirant. If you don’t want to use anything under your arms you can try “washing up” a few times a day. 

I’m not here to change anyone’s mind or to get them to start or stop any agent.  If you are happy with your current hygiene routine, so be it.  I’m here to educate, inform, and hopefully tell an interesting story.  

Peace,

Mike

Sources for this post include the Smithsonian web page and other internet sources.  Images are from the internet, and all content is used only for educational purposes.  This post is not medical advice.  See your doctor if you have medical or odor concerns.