I never realized how deep and insightful the lyrics to Smelly Cat are. If you have no idea what I'm talking about, either click here or go watch the entire Friends series now because it is really excellent. I'll wait for you to finish. Okay, done?
So Phoebe sings a silly song about a poor cat who is smelly because of his diet. I guess I always assumed that smelly cat was smelly because he was gassy because how else would your diet make you smelly?
Here's the crazy thing: my diet was making me smelly and I had no idea! I mean, I had an idea that I was smelly, of course, I just had no idea that it was from my food.
The smelly saga started a few years ago. I had read about how terrible antiperspirants containing aluminum are for you. Switching to an aluminum free variety seemed like such an easy thing to change! So I went out and bought a tube of Toms and happily applied it. As I went throughout my day, however, I became less happy with my choice as I began to sweat and give off a stench. I called off the whole experiment and went back to my terrible aluminum containing antiperspirant.
A couple of years later I was reading about natural deodorants again and read that it can take your body a couple of weeks to adjust to being off of antiperspirant. The aluminum in antiperspirant prevents you from sweating, but your body still feels the need to sweat and up regulates sweat production. So when you stop using the antiperspirant, you are producing more smelly sweat than you did before you started. I decided to try again. However, after a couple of weeks my body had not yet down regulated the smelly sweat and my natural deodorant was doing almost nothing to deodorize me.
So Phoebe sings a silly song about a poor cat who is smelly because of his diet. I guess I always assumed that smelly cat was smelly because he was gassy because how else would your diet make you smelly?
Here's the crazy thing: my diet was making me smelly and I had no idea! I mean, I had an idea that I was smelly, of course, I just had no idea that it was from my food.
The smelly saga started a few years ago. I had read about how terrible antiperspirants containing aluminum are for you. Switching to an aluminum free variety seemed like such an easy thing to change! So I went out and bought a tube of Toms and happily applied it. As I went throughout my day, however, I became less happy with my choice as I began to sweat and give off a stench. I called off the whole experiment and went back to my terrible aluminum containing antiperspirant.
A couple of years later I was reading about natural deodorants again and read that it can take your body a couple of weeks to adjust to being off of antiperspirant. The aluminum in antiperspirant prevents you from sweating, but your body still feels the need to sweat and up regulates sweat production. So when you stop using the antiperspirant, you are producing more smelly sweat than you did before you started. I decided to try again. However, after a couple of weeks my body had not yet down regulated the smelly sweat and my natural deodorant was doing almost nothing to deodorize me.
At this point I was committed to no longer regularly use aluminum containing antiperspirant. I had an emergency tube of it in the medicine cabinet for emergency stinky situations, but decided to use it only if the need was dire. So for the last several months I have kept a tube of natural deodorant in the medicine cabinet, in the guest bathroom, in my desk, and in my car. I always had a tube nearby in case of deodorant failure. Unfortunately, deodorant failure was occurring an unacceptable amount of the time, and even my nearby tubes were unable to bail me out of stinky situations. In desperation, after reading a blog that suggested that you detox your pits to reset your body, I rubbed bentonite clay under my arms. 20 minutes later I washed it off, and guess what? My pits still smelled.
I was getting to the point of believing that I might just have to embrace my au natural scent for the rest of my life, until this past week when I cut out all sugars, even the natural ones in fruit, in an attempt to get my gut flora back into a healthy balance. After going through a week of pretty significant die-off symptoms, I finally started recovering and returned to my recent baseline. But one thing was different and was way better than baseline. I completely forgot to apply deodorant and realized that I was magically odor free! Since then, I have been obsessively smelling my arm pits (and sticking my arm pit into Dr. Dad's face and saying way too enthusiastically, "Smell my arm pit!"), and I am essentially stank free.
In a different part of the smelly spectrum, I have noticed that my breath tends to be nice and fresh pretty much all of the time, except when I consume my less than 1 tsp of honey daily. Immediately after consuming honey I now have to go brush my teeth because my breath gets smelly in a hurry.
This all makes so much scent! (Okay, that joke stinks. Haha! I promise, I'm done now.) My flora was messed up inside and out. The abnormal flora in my gut was causing digestive and immune problems. The abnormal flora on my skin was causing me to break out and was making my arm pits smell bad. And the abnormal flora in my mouth was causing my breath to smell bad if I didn't brush after eating sugar.
Smelly cat: you are a visionary. I salute you.
I was getting to the point of believing that I might just have to embrace my au natural scent for the rest of my life, until this past week when I cut out all sugars, even the natural ones in fruit, in an attempt to get my gut flora back into a healthy balance. After going through a week of pretty significant die-off symptoms, I finally started recovering and returned to my recent baseline. But one thing was different and was way better than baseline. I completely forgot to apply deodorant and realized that I was magically odor free! Since then, I have been obsessively smelling my arm pits (and sticking my arm pit into Dr. Dad's face and saying way too enthusiastically, "Smell my arm pit!"), and I am essentially stank free.
In a different part of the smelly spectrum, I have noticed that my breath tends to be nice and fresh pretty much all of the time, except when I consume my less than 1 tsp of honey daily. Immediately after consuming honey I now have to go brush my teeth because my breath gets smelly in a hurry.
This all makes so much scent! (Okay, that joke stinks. Haha! I promise, I'm done now.) My flora was messed up inside and out. The abnormal flora in my gut was causing digestive and immune problems. The abnormal flora on my skin was causing me to break out and was making my arm pits smell bad. And the abnormal flora in my mouth was causing my breath to smell bad if I didn't brush after eating sugar.
Smelly cat: you are a visionary. I salute you.
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