How do you know when you’ve crossed the line to full out barefoot hippie? How can you distinguish between the pseudo-science of using crystal energy to cure pneumonia and the actual enzymatic production of hydrogen peroxide in honey, rendering it a mild antiseptic?
If you’ve ever Googled a recipe for homemade/DIY anything, you’ll already be aware that almost all of the results come from “natural health” blogs, damning the “bad chemicals” in various products and linking them to cancer, Alzheimer’s disease, etc. etc. Essentially, posts by well meaning, but often very misguided individuals that don’t fully understand the science behind the thing they claim is bad.
To be fair, the internet is full of click-bait headlines like “Scientists link aluminum compounds found in deodorant to higher cancer rates.” News sources, even relatively reliable ones, are also notorious for paraphrasing new scientific studies to sensationalize the otherwise boring content. In the case of the aforementioned headline, the studies actually cited were two conflicting experiments that are now 13 and 15 years old, both of which had major flaws according to the oncologist interviewed by the writer, Dr. Philippa Darbre, of the University of Reading. These studies examined the correlation between aluminum, parabens, other estrogen-mimicking compounds, and the growth rates of cancerous cells caused by excess estrogenic compounds. But attempts to link these factors in human subjects instead of petri dishes is still inconclusive, over a decade later.
With decade-old studies being cited, I really didn’t care. In the attempt to create zero waste, my only criteria for homemade deodorant were no packaging and the requirement of no special tools. Yet everywhere, the only recipes are from those well-meaning “green mommy” blogs. Not very promising.
So I went ahead and tried them all anyway, with wildly different results. Most of the recipes are some ratio of a starch (corn, potato, arrowroot, whatever), baking soda, oil (shea, coconut, olive, and a number of others I swear they made up), and some kind of scent like an essential oil. Some variations included beeswax so it would form a solid bar, while others worked as a paste.
My kitchen cupboards already contained olive oil, baking soda, and cornstarch, so I mixed those three and poured it into an old, empty deodorant tube, which promptly leaked all over the table and made right mess. This was 1:1:1 oil to starch to baking soda.
In the second attempt, I had an idea as I spotted an Ikea candle on the table, thinking, “beeswax can’t be that different from paraffin, all it’s doing is thickening the mixture.” Ha. Hahaha. It thickened it, to the point where applying it left chunks of waxy goo. On me, on my shirt, and on the container. It was gross; 0/10 do not recommend. The worst part is that the candle wax was just soluble enough in the oil that with body heat, it would melt into clothes, then harden, then melt, then harden, etc. I learned the hard way that wax will not come out of cloth. Same 1:1:1 ratio, just with some shredded wax melted and mixed into it.
The third attempt was preceded by getting beeswax and some other form of oil with a higher melting point. I was lucky enough to find a honey vendor in a certain farmers’ market here in Waterloo that also sold beeswax by the brick; however, those decorative beeswax candles will also work. The beeswax definitively made all the difference in the consistency, in addition to using coconut oil in the place of olive oil, as it remains solid below 25C. This version had less oil, more starch, as well as approximately a tbsp’s worth of shredded, melted beeswax.
If you take away nothing else: don’t smear candle wax with olive oil on your armpits. It will not be a fun time. That, and those “green homemaker” blogs often have good ideas for the wrong reasons.
Leave a Reply