After reading quite a number of publications, contradictions, and even more publications regarding the Aluminum base in deodorants and antiperspirants, I’ve decided to go through a trial and error with natural alternatives to the traditional brands which heavily use as their active ingredient aluminum zirconium or aluminum chlorohydrate. The issues are related to the over-time aluminum toxicity which has been linked to issues ranging from brain function to cancer.
On the note of the back and forth where contradictions are flying left and right depending on what you read, I figure that this stuff should fall under the same darn rule as much everything else – let’s be safe rather than sorry. I feel that my kids are the most important beings in my life and it just kills me to think of what they would go through if they were to lose either their mother (me) or their father to illness or accident. Because of this, we try our best to eat right, fit time for fitness into our lives, filter our water best way we can, and provide safe environments for us and our kids. This deodorant thing is just another step in that direction.
Just a tiny bit on the “science” and your body’s reaction. Deodorants that I’m familiar with use these aluminum bases. A person’s body reacts in such a way that it causes our skin to swell a bit. This swelling causes the pores to be closed off which prevents the leaking of sweat from those pores. Something about this doesn’t sound right though… I’ve known individuals who perspire a little TOO much, but should all of us be preventing our body’s built-in cooling system from at least trying to do its job? I’d rather something that can absorb and neutralize any scent rather than shutting down my body’s ability to vent water from my pores.
So the experiment is on.
To give you an idea of who I am and my body-type, I’m a petite woman, around 120Lbs (~55 Kgs) standing at 5ft 3inches. I’m moderately active, and I have just started commuting to and from the work place which includes about 15 minutes of walking, plus break-time walks around work. When I’m at home, yard work happens and I do enjoy going shopping from time to time – I don’t want to go all-natural, no deo. I don’t want to nor do I want anybody else to “smell my pits”.
My husband is going along with this experiment too, and he’s not petite like me, standing at 6ft 3inches, not as fit, but not overweight either (not telling you his weight because I frankly don’t know it). He feels that he’d like a little muscle toning and a little less around the middle. I think he looks healthy – not close to “fat” at all.
We are both human, and we perspire, especially when we exercise or get a bit warm.
So that’s us.
So far, I’ve tried 4 brands deo alternatives.
Tom’s of Maine natural deodorant
I’ve tried 2 different Tom’s deodorants, and they’re not bad… but I’m finding the need to use the stick about every few hours (or else…) My under-arms aren’t liking it too much either. Whenever I apply this, I’m feeling a bit of a razor-burn even though I have none.
Though this does work, it’s not what the label says, “Long Lasting” or maybe it is? Perhaps their measurement of time isn’t the same as mine? Maybe their previous line only lasted 30 minutes? By that measurement, 3ish hours truly IS “long”. My husband had a different scent of Tom’s, and didn’t need to use it quite as frequently as me. He got about 4 – 4.5 hours. Not too shabby.
For me… Tom’s just isn’t cutting it.
Jason Natural - Deodorant with Aloe Vera
Jason Natural Deodorant – with Aloe Vera
This line of deodorants is fairly extensive. This gave me a good feeling. If they’re successful enough to sell more than 1 scent, perhaps… perhaps these guys are onto something. So I picked up their main product – their aloe vera stick. This had a pleasant but not too strong scent and seemed to go on pretty smoothly.
Sadly, 3-4 hours later, after several days of use, and I’m having to reapply… and the B.O. is worse than Tom’s. Gladly, I didn’t have the same “Razor Burn” feeling when wearing this, it felt nice – but was a dud… for me.
Jason’s deo didn’t do the trick for me.
Nature's Gate - Spring Fresh
Nature’s Gate – Spring Fresh
While I was trying the Jason brand deodorant, my husband was trying the Spring Fresh scent put out by Nature’s Gate – partly because to me, it had a scent which wasn’t really “spring”… it smelled almost like a really light good smelling cologne.
Nature’s gate is a brand which I’ve used in the past for lotions and they were quite nice, so I had hope… but the price point being around the $4 mark made me a bit leery. It seems that most natural products of quality, tend to be more pricy (but they also last a whole lot longer than the standard consumer product, so it makes up for the cost).
This stuff, for him, was a no-go. Part of it, he’s not a “gel” type of deo guy. It was odd to him. He’s used to and prefers the stick. So he maybe didn’t use enough – or it just wasn’t right, but after 3 days of use, he said that it gave him only 3 hours of protection and he had to run out to the car to re-apply another “smearing” of deodorant to keep the B.O. away.
I didn’t give it a try, so I can’t say whether it works for me… for my husband, the frequency of use was a deal-breaker.
Arm & Hammer Essentials - Natural Deodorant
Arm & Hammer Essentials – Natural
At this point, I’m beginning to wonder if we’re going to find anything that works. There are still quite a number of brands out there, but the best we could find at this point was Tom’s. My husband had been to the doctor who asked about the rash on the skin in his armpits… he hadn’t been feeling the “burn”, but his skin still wasn’t reacting well to the deodorant’s contents.
I was grocery shopping and just took a glance while at Top Foods. I saw that Arm & Hammer had a deodorant. I trust their brand for a myriad of reasons and use baking soda for cleaning, drain unclogging, and cooking, and also use their toothpaste after reading in a dental magazine article about their brand being the only consumer brand which doesn’t scratch up enamel in their whitening line of products.
So… I had a bit of hope. They had several different ones – but I picked up the one whi
ch said it didn’t have aluminum and parabins.
First day… it was so-so. 4 hours in, and I needed to reapply. But day 2, I applied a bit more carefully in the morning and went the entire day.
With my personally success, I told my husband. So he gave it a try, and on the first day, he had all-day success!
The WINNER!
So that’s that! Arm & Hammer, you’ve won me over, yet again. I love your products and will continue to use your natural alternative to the standard consumer deodorant. But Arm & Hammer… why oh why did you stop selling your chewing gum? I miss it. It was the only gum that I could chew which didn’t hurt my jaw. Bring it back!
For those of you who are looking to do the same, I hope my quest helps your discovery process. If anybody that I work with is reading this… well… maybe you didn’t want to know about my little secret experiment.
As described in my previous post, my husband got as a late mother’s day present, an incredible 27-inch apple cinema display. There were a whole lot of hoops to jump through so that we could get it to work. The last of which was the lack of control over the brightness – the thing by default was quite dim. Compare it next to any of my existing screens and it was like someone had put a pair of shades over my eyes, but they were special selective shades which only dimmed the screen.
Since I do a lot of work which is very color specific (plus, it just seems wrong to not see the colors vividly on such a nice screen), it was QUITE important to get this issue resolved. This screen – unlike most other monitors – does not have physical controls. It’s like a laptop screen which has it’s brightness and contrast controlled by the keyboard’s FN key – but I’m not on a laptop and therefore cannot control these settings from my keyboard (though I looked to see if I could find some sort of hardware which would allow just that functionality)
After a few days of searching, we FINALLY discovered a solution.
It’s all about BootCamp. See, Apple doesn’t appear to support the practice of allowing PC users to use their hardware, but they do support allowing people to install windows on their intel based systems. But wait – I’m on an AMD processor!
That seemed to be a limitation, but even after we got through that hoop, we still had difficulties.
It turned out to be something crazy simple.
The bootcamp exe file for the control panel (called AppleControlPanel.exe) is all which is needed. You don’t have to install anything, it takes next to no time to run, and it has the control built in. By running this and clicking on the “Brightness” tab, I have full control over the brightness settings.
We actually found the files for this by looking through forumthreads on hardforum.com.
All this just to do a simple thing like increasing or decreasing brightness on the 27″ Apple Cinema monitor.
Unfortunately, the above links no longer work, however, due to the high demand, someone has built an application dedicated to being able to fill the needs of those like myself using this awesome display on a PC.
To note: I have nothing to do with this app. This is something built by someone other than myself. As always, be safe when downloading anything which is open source. Most often, open source is fantastic but on occasion, you find that someone is exploiting people’s affections and trust in open source items. Now, I’m not implying that the below link is, but I don’t personally know for certain. I truly mean no offense to the community member who shared this with everyone.
My husband brought home a new shiny last week. A 27″ apple cinema display. Oh my oh my. So pretty.
The initial attempt to plug it in resulted in us discovering an issue with compatibility of ports. My graphics card was an ATI Radeon 5870, which has a mac compatible display port, but not the mini version, which is what this screen supports.
We ordered an adapter which says it converts the signal. A week later, we first test the screen on my husband’s laptop, which has the same display port that my computer has. Bingo, it works! Sweet. So we plug it in on my system and sadly, we didn’t get the same positive response. Instead, the system constantly makes a disconnect reconnect sound from Windows and flickers the screen on and off along with the audio. My system does pick up the icam, speakers, and usb hub which is built into the screen, but not the screen itself. *sigh*
After a bunch of digging and research, we discover that we essentially have 2 options.
Pay around $200 for an active converter (the adapter was a passive converter)
Find another graphics card which supports the darn mini-display port.
We researched option 1 already and didn’t like the whole idea on principal (my graphics card was the same price. I’m not paying $200 just to make this darn screen work on something which has no other function. That’s a lot of dough for the return), so we started looking at option 2. We found graphics cards which are supported for around $230. Looking on ebay for how much my current card is going for, it looks like we’ll be able to essentially exchange cost for cost. My card sells for MORE than the new card, and the new card has similar capabilities.
Sweet.
So new video card it is.
Installed the card and yay! It works! So now I’m on this amazing screen and need to figure out what to do with my existing wide-screen.
I really like the idea of having it standing tall to the right of the lovely cinema display. It would be both useful for reference while working on projects as well as be appealing, but the stand which it is on isn’t one of those which allows for it to tilt and stay on its stand. So back to Amazon. After reading a ton of reviews, I found this little guy which was just over $15.
Amazon is swift. I ordered it on Monday. Today is Wednesday and it arrived around noon. I was just at a pausing point with a project, so I thought, “What the heck?” and proceeded to install it.
All was well. My stud finder (which always tells me there’s a/c in any part of a wall… ) was quite consistent with its reporting of where a stud was. I marked, measured, leveled, and got everything ready.
Part of this was the concept of where the darn screen would be exactly. This swivel can extend, go left and right, and tilt, but it can’t go up and down, so I need to figure out exactly where vertically this will be placed. Not too high and not too low.
My first attempt to mark exact placement was to take chalk and thickly put lines where the bracket will need to attach to the back of the screen. I took the screen and rubbed that on the wall… nope. There’s a lip that prevented the chalk from touching the wall.
Second attempt was to put the screws partially in, and mark the screws with chalk… but the screws are the shiny kind which wouldn’t even take the chalk dust.
Attempt number three, I take double sided tape, put that on the ends of the screws and try to get it to stick to the wall – and they liked the screws a little more than they liked the wall.
Last attempt, I combined both concepts and drew with the chalk directly on the tape, and then took the chalked, taped, screw ends which were partially screwed into the screen, and rubbed that on the wall where the screen needed to be. THAT actually worked.
Next on the order of business was the installation itself. There were heavy wood screws in the pack that came with the wall mount. So after double checking my leveling and marking exact placement of the mount, I started getting this thing into the wall. Halfway through screwing these wood screws in, the top one’s head started stripping. I slowed down and tried to get the screwdriver as perfectly placed as I could, but the screw wouldn’t stop breaking down. It got beyond turning… it was just too mangled up and not screwed in enough to call it good.
I’ve heard that a screw with stripped threads would be removed by drilling into the middle of it and slowly removing the drill bit which would release the screw. I didn’t think it would work in this case but I was willing to give it a try (I figured the threads were entrenched too much in the wood, but who knows?)
So I get out the drill bit and start trying to drill and *SNAP* the entire thing just snaps in half. It didn’t even leave a devit in this darn screw.
*sigh*
Got a pair of locking pliers and plied the sucker as tight as I could and was able to very slowly but steadily remove the darn screw.
What I don’t get is why the heck the manufacture would send sub-par screws like this. The stripping of the head was rediculous. Their guide said in red italic text that this needs to be mounted directly into a stud. Since they knew it was going to be in wood and under a lot of torque, why the heck would they include a screw with soft metal?!
Anyway, I had a long solid set of wood screws in the garage, easily installed with that and got the screens set up.
Last on my list is to figure out how to control the brightness of the screen. It’s system driven like a laptop’s screen is. I’ve read that drivers can be found on an OSX Leopard disk within the bootcamp area. I truly hope that is true because this screen is quite dim.
Will post an update with what I discover.
Thanks for reading!
UPDATE
I discovered how to control brightness on my 27″ apple monitor and posted what we discovered:
As the first post after mentioning my intent to change the tone of content here on Facing Blend, I’ll kick it off with one of my new “obsessions” – new healthy stuff to try. Now, this isn’t really a new thing. I enjoy hearing about ways that I can change what I am doing to improve the health and well-being of my and my family’s life. This has taken me down so many roads from different and fun new physical activities to improving the food that we eat. (It also includes new ways to improve the health of my pets)
The latest change that we’ve been slowly integrating into our life is the use of yogurt. The health benefits are numerous.
Up until recently, yogurt has been in basically 1 form: A lovely plastic cup which contains fruit and occasionally granola. Sometimes it comes in a tube for my kids – but the contents and “application” of yogart has always been essentially the same.
Well that’s changed a bit. I read an article on either Yahoo or MSN (can’t remember which, sorry!) which was one of those picture “articles” which listed 10 things which should be eaten more to improve your health. Well, yogurt was one of them. The article mentioned the use of yogurt in other ways than just the cup of fruit – to use as part of the base for mashed potatoes.
So I decided to experiment. I headed to the grocery store and picked up some plain WHOLE yogurt (not non- nor low-fat… I’ll talk about that in another blog), and proceeded to do just what the article mentioned – using yogurt as a replacement for the milk and butter.
What I found was that it was quite tasty – and a bit surprising. It tasted like I added sour cream to my potatoes rather than the yogurt taste I was expecting.
Since my initial experiment, I’ve altered the quantity of yogurt. Replacing ALL of the butter and milk was quite unbalanced in taste. Instead, I add 2-3 tablespoons of yogurt and add butter and milk until I get a consistency which was appealing. It’s certainly not an exact science, so if you try it, you’ll have to use your judgement.
Since, I’ve been trying different things with yogurt.
Cheese sauce (pouring over broccoli)
Cheese, Broccoli, Chicken & Potato soup
White sauces in general including a lovely fettuccine sauce over shrimp & crab ravioli
The mashed potatoes mentioned before
home made ranch dressing (I still use some sour cream)
I’ve not discovered anything else where it sounded like yogurt could be used, but I’m still exploring this new ingredient to my cooking.
Oh, and btw: So far, all of the dishes have been kid tested and over the top approved. My 1 yr old enjoys the food and my 5 year old asks for seconds!! (That almost never happens) My daughter’s absolute favorite is when I make the cheese sauce and mix it in with rice, broccoli, carrots, corn, and shredded chicken(after boil-cooking it).
When I last actively blogged on Facing Blend (not counting the random occasional post with crickets to fill the silence of months between), life was quite different. Between pregnancy discomfort and working at a job that no longer challenged me (after years of attempting to work every angle I could so I could find challenges to overcome) – I wasn’t the happiest.
(No hard feelings towards the company. Even the director 2 bosses up from my own wrote me a letter of recommendation expressing how I’ve grown out of the company’s ability to keep me challenged.)
Things have changed – a lot. I now am working for an amazing company that is nothing but challenges (and fun!) from project to project. I’m even finding time to connect with people that I feared I wouldn’t ever again… I’m finding myself to be quite happy and moving forward on lighter feet.
Redefining “Facing Blend”
The meaning behind Facing Blend was a bit shallow, but I am about to give it a greater and more personal level of depth. Its original meaning surrounded my struggles and triumph as I went from an Adobe and Web standards background to something more interactive by way of learning how to use Expression Blend.
But underlying all of this was a much deeper meaning that I was constantly wanting to blog about, which wasn’t specific to expression blend, the software. That deeper meaning being the struggle that I think many have in many industries – the challenges surrounding the blend between work and family.
I’m the one who created Facing Blend – so why not blog about all sorts of “Blend”? Work and Family, Design and Development, and anything in between. So from now on, not only will there be work related, design or development related, content, but also other types of content. Will anybody be interested in the content? No clue. But I sure hope so!
Today – I am officially going to turn a new leaf on Facing Blend.
As of late, aside from work (the stuff I’m actually paid to do), my brain has been consumed by 2 things: My kids, and a windows phone app that my husband and I are working on.
I’m not going to go into great details regarding the app until our first release (hopefully in the next two or three weeks), but I really wanted to blog about the windows phone 7 potential.
So… I love blend. I can create magic with expression blend – but now I can create stuff for the mobile space? Cooooooool…
My husband received 2 of the windows 7 phones (or is it windows phone 7? What order are these words supposed to be in?!) For the purposes of this blog, I’m going to rename it “Wisiph”. It’s just easier to type.
Anyway, my husband received these phones to test. What is it about married couples? Oh yeah – what is mine is his, what is his is mine (there are more mean versions of that saying…). So guess what? I get to play with the Wisiph too. Sweeeet.
So first of all – I like it. The interface is over-archingly a fun interface and easy to figure out. Not quite as simple as the iphone, but a whole freakin lot more so than the droid (sorry Google. Lots of love to you, but the usability needs more work). I thoroughly enjoy the commercials for the phone, I enjoy how the phone navigates between apps – it’s just simple! I enjoy how accessible various areas of apps are set up and how there’s a menu system which isn’t really a menu system like windows typically has. It has a whole lot of the feeling that I loved from the Zune and very little of what I HATED from the old windows mobile operating systems.
The things which could be improved upon:
The camera. If I have to look online to figure out how to take a dang picture, then it’s not intuitive enough. When I finally DID find it, I felt stupid – and that’s exactly my issue with it. When using a device, I should never ever get the feeling that I’m stupid. I should feel empowered and smart enough where I can just pick up the device and use it with very little of a learning curve.
For those who get the phone and haven’t figured it out, the little button on the right side of the screen (when looking at the screen) both brings up the camera taking app as well as takes the image, so 1 hit of the button to use the view finder and 1 hit of the same button to take the picture. None of that is directly on the screen.
Also to mention, the software for the camera needs fine tuning so the pictures turn out better. I think the camera is likely more capable than the software built for it can utilize.
The marketplace. This things rocks, but for about 2 weeks, I was frustrated because I couldn’t find any way to search the place. Well that’s kind of lame. I did locate a “Marketplace” search tool app to install, but who ever heard of a place for application downloads without a search engine?
Well – there is one, but I’m going to come back to the “I felt stupid” comment. There is nothing on-screen for searching. That little search icon which in most circumstances brings up the default search engine, in the marketplace, is reprogrammed to search the marketplace.
The 3rd big bad thing is just the Wisiph’s infancy. There are too few apps out for the device, but I’d be willing to bet that by the time the 2nd generation of phones comes out, there will be plenty. Every day more and more apps are released.
Speaking of – Silverlight Simon is up on the marketplace, released by David Kelley and right now is ranked as the #28 in most downloaded apps!
Tom’s of Maine natural deodorant
As the first post after mentioning my intent to change the tone of content here on Facing Blend, I’ll kick it off with one of my new “obsessions” – new healthy stuff to try. Now, this isn’t really a new thing. I enjoy hearing about ways that I can change what I am doing to improve the health and well-being of my and my family’s life. This has taken me down so many roads from different and fun new physical activities to improving the food that we eat.