Homemade Deodorant

It's time to get a little personal and talk about deodorant.

For years, I have used an antiperspirant, even thought a while back I heard that it wasn't good for you, especially if it contains aluminum (which I assume most do). Every once in a while I have given a natural deodorant a try, but they never work. I have always gone back to my trusty old aluminum.

But after I started making all my changes around the house with my personal care products and cleaning products, I knew my stick of Dove had to go (not only does it have aluminum, but also many other nasty ingredients.)

*For more reading about deodorants, check out these articles:

Beware of aluminum in deodorant products
Top five ingredients to avoid in deodorant

So I had been given a homemade deodorant recipe last fall. I tucked it away for later, and then sometime in November or December I made a batch to give it a try.

I have been using it for about 6 months now and I can say that I love, love, love it and will never return to store-bought.

I waited to blog about it because while it was working just fine during the cold months, I needed to give it some Southern heat before making the final verdict.

And I can say that after a few hot days so far this Spring - which included doing some afternoon yard work - that this absolutely works better than my old stick of Dove. It's quite amazing (even by the following morning, I am still fresh as a rose).

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Homemade Deodorant

1/3 cup coconut oil
1/4 cup baking soda
1/4 cup corn starch
optional: a few drops of essential oil for scent

Heat through on the stove. Pour into a container with a lid (ideally a glass container).

With clean hands, scoop out a small amount with your finger and rub it on. 

The consistency will change depending on the season (it will be solid in the winter and much softer in the summer).

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I'm almost finishing up with my first batch now...and as I said, I started 6 months ago. And I'm definitely saving money this way.

So if you have doubts about the safety of your deodorant, give this a try and see how it works for you. You might be surprised.

Locally Grown Veggies

I just want to brag briefly about my husband.

Since we moved into our house 2 years ago, he has had visions of starting a vegetable garden in our backyard. And with lots of work since earlier this year, we now have a young, but strong garden!

He has put in a lot of time, but now very soon, we'll able to walk right out there and pick what we need for snacks, dinner, or whatever.

In the above photo is the bulk of it. We also have a couple other things planted throughout the backyard, and there is more on either side of the house.

Here's what we will have to enjoy:

Kale
Green Beans
Corn
Turnips
Beets
Bell, Banana and Jalapeno Peppers
Cherry, Grape, and Chocolate Cherry Tomatoes
Zucchini
Butternut Squash
Cucumber
Tomatillos 
Watermelon
Blackberries
Blueberies
Fig Trees
Strawberries
Herbs (Basil, Parsley, Cilantro)
Sweet potatoes (to come soon)

Our son, Luke, going to see what he can get into

Thanks, Sean for all your hard work in trying to feed this family right.

Good-bye Frizz

A few weeks ago, I wrote about going shampoo-free and switching to homemade options. The one I chose was using diluted baking soda, and then a rinse of diluted apple cider vinegar. Seems like a crazy way to clean your hair, but somehow it does seem to work.

In my previous post, I was mostly covering why commercial shampoo can be harmful to you, and then how to make your own instead. But I didn't say much about how it's specifically working for my hair.

(I want to say again that I know not everyone will get the same results when doing things homemade, so all I can speak to is my own personal experience with it.)

For as long as I can remember, I've been fighting against frizzy hair. I also have very thick hair, that is either heavy when worn long, or wavy and doing funny things went short.

6 years ago - used my hair straighener

Around 10 years ago, my sister-in-law gave me a gift of a hair straightener. I loved it and was able to have thinner-looking non-frizzy hair. I did that just about every day for 5 years. Then my daughter was born and I no longer had time to straighten it. So it didn't take long to start putting my hair back in a pony tail every day.

I stopped using my commercial shampoo 3 months ago. It took a good 3 to 4 weeks to get my hair's oil production back down to a normal rate. And since that has leveled off, my hair's texture is a lot better. It seems softer...but most importantly:

NO FRIZZ.

I wanted to break the pony tail cycle, so a few weeks ago I cut it short like I used to wear it in college. Now it's easier to wash with the natural stuff, it dries so much quicker, it doesn't get frizzy, and I can go 2 days between washing.

I truly believe that the store-bought stuff was damaging my hair and creating the frizz, along with the need to wash it every day.

I strongly encourage anyone to throw out their bottle of goopy toxins and try a natural solution (sure, you can buy something natural, but it's so expensive and tricky to find one 100% truly natural -  even "fragrance" is a harmful ingredient).

It may be a slight struggle in the beginning to find something that works for you, but do some experimenting because it's so worth it when you come out on the other side.

Is Fluoride safe?

In the past, I have heard things here and there about fluoride not being safe for us. But until now, I have never looked into it. I now see that there is quite a controversy over this topic, especially whether it should be in our drinking water or not (I must be living under a rock, but I didn't know there could be anything wrong with it in our water supply). But fluoride in our water is a separate issue; so let's just focus on toothpaste.

First of all, the warning on all toothpastes should give us a clue:

Keep out of reach of children under 6 years of age. If more than used for brushing is accidentally swallowed, get medical help or contact a Poison Control Center right away.

With a warning like that, why is everyone not questioning whether or not this should be in our toothpastes - where swallowing can occur, especially for our children?

As we all know, the purpose of fluoride is to prevent tooth decay. Whether it does this or not (there is evidence that it might not even fight tooth decay very well...see article linked below), we are ignoring the fact that it is toxic for us and can have many negative effects on our health.

A very informative article was written by Dr. Mercola just a few months ago:

You’re Still Told Fluoridation Prevents Tooth Decay, but Science Proves Otherwise

I would recommend reading through it for comprehensive information on this. He goes into great detail about the harmful effects and how the bad vastly outweighs the good.

Towards the bottom of this article, Dr. Mercola posts a video of an interview with Dr. Osmunson, who is a dentist fighting against the use of fluoride. This is a very informative video. Please watch...


I'm only siting from one source, so I encourage you - if you have never researched it - to look further into this. To me, fluoride seems to be something to stay far away from, but it's only from hearing the studies which show that it's not effective on our teeth and that it's harmful to our bodies.

Toothpaste: Synthetic Chemicals vs. Natural Ingredients

A couple of months ago, my husband and I stopped using toothpaste.

Well, we still clean our teeth, just not with the store-bought stuff that we have all used since we were about 2 years old.

Even though we don't swallow it, the ingredients in our toothpaste still get absorbed through our mouths. And with 1 1/2 to 2 minutes twice a day for a lifetime, that will sure add up.

Do you have any idea what's in your toothpaste besides fluoride? I took my old tube of AIM Cavity Protection Ultra Mint Gel and did some research on the ingredients.

Aside from Sodium Fluoride, everything in there is either for sweetening, thickening, emulsifying, lathering or coloring. And two of them (Sodium Lauryl Sulfate and PEG-8) could possibly be contaminated with 1,4-dioxane, which is a carcinogenic by-product made during the manufacturing process.

Here are two others who have written about common toothpaste ingredients:

What's in Toothpaste?
Do you know what's in your Toothpaste?

If you want to look up your own brand and its overall safety, you can look on either goodguide.com or cosmeticdatabase.com

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Fluoride

Before continuing, I want to note that I am going to do a separate post about fluoride. In doing my research on toothpaste, I discovered that fluoride is a huge topic and quite controversial.

I have learned a lot about fluoride that I didn't know before, and have concluded that I want nothing to do with it (unfortunately, I have no choice that it's in my tap water). For anyone to leave fluoride behind in their dental care, it needs to be done as an informed decision.

But I will move forward with this post with the understanding that fluoride is NOT essential in dental care.

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Going Natural

Because of all the synthetic chemicals in toothpaste - some more harmful than others - we decided to ditch the tube and make our own.

There are many ways to make your own - including using coconut oil - but we settled on baking soda and sea salt (with peppermint for flavor).

How are these ingredients effective?

Baking Soda: Make Your Own Natural Fluoride-Free Toothpaste

Baking soda is used for two reasons. First, it's a mild abrasive that provides a gentle cleansing. Second, it's alkaline. Being alkaline, baking soda can neutralize acids in your mouth that are often at the root of tooth decay. Baking soda also absorbs odors and helps produce sweet breath.

Sea Salt: Is Your Toothpaste Toxic?

According to Dentist Robert Nara, in his book, How to Become Dentally Self Sufficient, using real sea salt in your oral hygiene routine can treat or prevent most tooth and gum issues. Real sea salt contains a lot of trace minerals, many of which your teeth need to stay strong. Direct application of these minerals can benefit teeth and gums. Regular table salt does not work in the same manner and is not recommended for brushing.

When we first started using our homemade toothpaste, it took me several days to get used to the saltiness. We even reduced the salt in our second batch, but realized that it wasn't working as effectively. So we knew the salt was necessary.

After switching to the baking soda/salt, my mouth has felt fresher and cleaner after brushing. My teeth also feel smoother and the fresh breath seems to last longer. I certainly prefer this method to commercial toothpaste. I don't ever see going back.

Originally, I worked off of this recipe, but I have tweaked each batch until I got it how we like it. So of course, you may do some tweaking as well.

Cookie Monster fork used for scooping out our homemade toothpaste.

Homemade Toothpaste

1/3 cup baking soda
1/2 tsp sea salt
1-2 tsp peppermint extract (or peppermint essential oil, but only a few drops)
4-5 tsp water

Mix ingredients and put into a container with a lid (a small glass jar/container would be ideal). Use some sort of utensil/stick to scoop it out and apply to your toothbrush.

Homemade Sunbutter

We've been avoiding peanuts and tree nuts in our house for almost 2 years since finding out about our son's allergy. The one thing that I was the saddest to part with was peanut butter.

An easy replacement for peanut butter is sunbutter (it does taste different...so it's not an exact replacement). The jars at the store are expensive, so for awhile now I've been making my own.

Even if you don't have a peanut allergy in the house, I'd still encourage you to try making this. It's a delicious addition to a snack. It goes well with apples, bananas, celery, crackers, toast (with or without jelly), and of course a sunbutter and jelly sandwich.

When I make a batch of this, it doesn't last long because my kids just eat it up!

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When I first started making this, I was going off of this recipe. I've adapted the proportions a bit, so I'm going to re-post it according to how I make it.

I buy my sunflower seeds from our local shop that sells mostly dried goods (The Pantry Shoppe). I buy them shelled and unsalted.

Also, all the recipes I've come across use a food processor for making sunbutter. If you make it in a blender and it works, comment and let us know.

Sunbutter

2 cups sunflower seeds (shelled and unsalted)
1 tsp salt
2 Tbsp honey
4 Tbsp olive oil

Toast the seeds:

Spread the sunflower seeds out onto a large baking sheet. Bake them in the oven at 275 for 20-25 minutes (you don't want them too toasted, or they will dry out too much). Let the seeds cool completely.

10 Minutes in the Food Processor:

Combine the seeds and salt in the food processor. Let it run for about 5 minutes, stopping to scrape the sides down as needed.

At this point, the oils in the seeds have started to come out and it gets thicker and moister. Now add in the honey.

Let it go longer, continuing to stop and mix it up if it builds up on the sides. After about 7 to 9 minutes from when you started, add in the olive oil. Let it run for another 2 or 3 minutes. It should be really creamy.

Store in a container in the fridge. It will thicken a little, but it shouldn't get completely solid (should still be spreadable).

The FDA and Triclosan

Back in February, I wrote a blog post about hand soap. It was a long post, describing in detail the toxic ingredients contained in most hand soaps, one of which is triclosan.

Triclosan is used for its antibacterial properties. But it also has harmful effects on the human body, mainly that it's an endocrine disruptor.

According to Wikipedia, endocrine disruptors "are chemicals that at certain doses, can interfere with the endocrine (or hormone system) in mammals. These disruptions can cause cancerous tumors, birth defects, and other developmental disorders. Any system in the body controlled by hormones, can be derailed by hormone disruptors.

Skin Deep's Cosmetic Database gives triclosan a score of 7 (10 being the worst). Reasons given for the score are that it's an irritant, an endocrine disruptor, and has organ system toxicity. But to top it all off, when triclosan is mixed with the chlorine in tap water, it forms chloroform gas. The Cosmetic Database gives chloroform a score of 10 and it's "reasonably anticipated to be a human carcinogen."

You can read more about triclosan here: PERSONAL CARE PRODUCTS: Triclosan Comes under Scrutiny

Bottom line: DON'T USE ANY PRODUCTS CONTAINING TRICLOSAN

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The FDA

Most Americans are probably under the assumption that all products and ingredients on the store shelves have been thoroughly tested for safety and given a seal of approval by the FDA. Because they are certainly watching our for our health, right?

Well, yesterday I came across an article on the home page of naturalnews.com:

FDA finally gets around to conducting safety review on toxic antibacterial chemical triclosan, already in consumer products for four decades

I encourage you to read the whole article, but I will take a few excerpts from it:

After more than 40 years of complete inaction in evaluating the potential side effects of the antibacterial chemical triclosan, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) is finally getting around to conducting a review of this pervasive chemical additive, which is now found in more than 75 percent of all conventional hand soaps. 

A 2007 (University of Michigan) review found that, based on independent data compiled from 30 different academic sources, triclosan is no more effective at preventing illness or reducing bacteria on hands than plain hand soap. "At this point, it's just looking like a superfluous chemical."

...the FDA never actually approved the chemical for use in consumer products. In fact, a draft review compiled by the agency back in 1978 stated that triclosan was "not generally recognized as safe and effective."

Even though it lacked the proper safety data to do so, the FDA did, in fact, approve the use of triclosan in Colgate Total toothpaste back in 1997. But to this day, the agency has never shown that triclosan actually works as claimed, and its website even admits that the chemical still has not been shown to work in soap as an effective sanitizer.

Going back again to the Cosmetic Database, triclosan is in 91 of their products. Good guide has it in over 450 products, including in hand soap, hand sanitizer, body wash, facial cleanser, bar soap, toothpaste, moisturizer, dish soap, lipstick, eye shadow and many others.

Thanks for keeping us safe, FDA. Keep up the good work.

Homemade Alfredo Sauce

Our kids love noodles. And when we need a break from the red sauce or our butternut squash pasta sauce, we go for the Alfredo.

Until now, we've always relied on the jar. But we finally decided to make our own and it was delicious. Sean worked from a recipe on allrecipes.com:

Quick and Easy Alfredo Sauce

I'll let you get the recipe from there. We had only two minor changes, listed below.

Homemade Alfredo sauce with sauteed onion and zucchini

The recipe calls for a 1/2 cup of butter. To make it healthier, we substituted olive oil (about 2 tablespoons).

Also, from our local farm stand, we are able to sometimes get white sweet potatoes. We baked one, pureed it and added it to the sauce. It gets hidden in there pretty well, and it gives the kids a little extra nutrition. 

Partially Hydrogenated Oils

When you're looking through an ingredient list on food packaging, you may shrug off any vegetable oils as being fine, like soybean oil. But when it has the words "partially hydrogenated" in front of it, you need to put it back on the shelf.

What is a hydrogenated oil?

Any oil can be hydrogenated, either partially or fully. A majority of the time in processed foods, they use soybean oil (which most likely is genetically engineered).

The process of hydrogenation is to take these oils in their natural state and raise them to very high temperatures and then force hydrogen gas into them at high pressure.

This changes the consistency from liquid to solid or semi-solid.

Why hydrogenate?

Companies prefer this type of oil for a few reasons.

First, it's cheap (and that always wins). It also prolongs the shelf life of the product, enhances the flavor, and creates a desirable texture in baked goods.

Why should you avoid it?

One of the main reasons to avoid this type of oil is that once it goes through this process, it now contains trans fats.

We have all heard that trans fats are bad, but do we specifically know why?

According to the article Soybean Oil: One of the Most Harmful Ingredients in Processed Foods, these unnatural, man-made trans fats are linked to:

• Cancer
• Diabetes
• Decreased Immune Function
• Reproductive Problems
• Chronic health problems such as obesity, asthma, auto-immune disease, and bone degeneration
• Heart disease
• Increasing "bad" cholesterol, while lowering "good" cholesterol

A list like that makes me want to stay far away from it. This type of oil is widely used in processed foods, which makes getting large doses quite easy for the typical American.

Watch out for the loop-hole.

Since 2006, the FDA has required trans fats to be listed on the label. But they also allowed any product with up to a half a gram to be rounded down to zero trans fats.

So what some companies have done is to get their serving size down small enough that it is half a gram or less.

If you see a serving size of 5 chips, or 1 cookie, then you know they're probably hiding something.

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With hydrogenated oils having so many benefits to the manufactures, they have been used in thousands of food products. Don't let them bully you into eating them. Pick products without these oils...or better yet, grab a carrot :)

For more reading:

The health dangers of trans fats have been known for decades, yet food companies still poison customers with hydrogenated oils

What in the world are we eating?

It's an obvious statement to say that in general, Americans have a diet consisting mostly of highly processed foods. We hear all the time about things that are bad for us: high fructose corn syrup, genetically modified or engineered ingredients, trans fats, preservatives, pesticides. We hear about so many things causing cancer, diabetes, heart disease, high cholesterol, etc.

We hear all this, but we're still eating tons of processed foods without much thought behind it. Some people may truly not care what they put in their bodies, while others pay a great deal of attention to it and only eat "real" food.

A majority will fall in the middle somewhere: caring about their health, but at the same time probably fooled by the food industry, causing them to make poor food choices.

Advertising and food labels can be terribly misleading, even downright lying. Most of the options laid out in front of us in the supermarkets are "foods" boxed up with a list of 25 ingredients, leading people to believe that eating this way is our only option. We also have a false sense of security believing that the FDA is looking out for our health (I don't believe they are) and that if it passes the test and is on the shelf, then it can't possibly harm us.

I think that the general public is vastly uninformed about what they are eating. I have only begun in the past few years to pay very close attention to what I eat, and I'm upset that it took me this long to care.

The message has seemed to get out that we need to always check the ingredient list before buying something. The problem is, even when you glance over the list, you're probably only going to know what a handful of the ingredients actually are. So you recognize a few things, ignore the unpronounceables and put it in your cart anyway.

Not many of us take the time to learn what these ingredients are: what they are made from, how they are made, and what health affects they can have.

What I'm going to do (maybe weekly?) is take a common ingredient that I - and probably most people - don't know a thing about and elaborate on it. I want to learn right along with you. And even if you don't remember all the details of what I write, maybe the next time you see it listed, you'll know that it's generally a bad thing and needs to be avoided.

First up will be Partially Hydrogenated Oils...

*note: the ultimate goal should be to stop buying processed foods altogether. But I realize cutting them out 100% is a hard thing to do. I haven't even gotten there yet, so let's at least be educated on what's out there.