Remembering that December When My Client Had Me Create A Line of Products I Called "Deo Dorant"

CONTINUED FROM MY NEWSLETTER, FULL BLOG POST BELOW ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ a ... client whose family members had suffered from hormonal chaos and other toxic effects from operating a commercial peach farm with all its omnipresent pesticides asked me to formulate products based on my Detoxifying Cream Deodorant http://www.anarreshealth.ca/deodorant for Christmas. I made:
Deo Dorant Cologne
Deo Dorant After Shave
Deo Dorant Perfume
Deo Dorant Body Milk
and of course, plenty of Deo Dorant Detoxifying Cream Deodorant
What didn't I make?
Do you think I regret nothing aside from not asking for royalties? I will tell you straight up.
I regret calling it Detoxifying Cream Deodorant http://www.anarreshealth.ca/product/deodorant-detoxifying-cream.
Specifically, the detoxifying part.
Very soon after going pro in the natural health field, I encountered an obsession with "cleansing" and "detoxing".
While people asked me for formulas to "clean" their intestines, I was learning about how we need to nurture and strengthen our gut microbiome.
While people saw their perspiration as "toxic", I saw it as detoxifying them.
I had come face to face with White Knight in Shining Armour Heroic Patriarchal Alternative Medicine.
Same menace minus the lab coat, writing out prescriptions for miracle cures on his leather-bound natural fibre note pad, preaching the virtues of leaving this "low vibration" Earth, and purifying our dirty dirty bodies.
It's a philosophy that the authors of the Inquisition would not have disagreed with. It's anti-feminine, anti-woman, anti-Earth, and anti-body.
It's worse to this old-timey anarcha-feminist than making women shave their armpits and genitals to be "clean" and "pretty". Hair wicks toxins out of the body. Shaving takes away this natural detoxifying power.

My philosophy is:
Body Mind and Spirit are One.
Nature is our Cradle.
Plants are our Biological Ancestors.
The Earth is our Blessed Home.
The truth is, the liver and kidneys and lymph and skin detoxify us. 24/7. 13 moons a year. 365.24 days a year. Our. Whole. Lives. It's our job to enable and nourish them to do their jobs.
Why does my cream deodorant work? Each ingredient has a function. Nature knows its stuff. If we only can decipher the medicines that plants have made, we can apply these usefully to our lives as a gift. Because cypress can heal broken lymph vessels, the deodorant can relieve swollen and painful lymph nodes, and balance perspiration. The essential oil ingredients are naturally anti-biotic, anti-viral and anti-fungal. Oregano and clove are traditionally used to remove petrochemicals through the lymph nodes. If you want to know each detail, please participate in my next Deodorants That REALLY Work! workshop http://www.anarreshealth.ca/workshop/workshop-deodorants-really-work-0 You can request a date sooner than April - my October workshop sold out, so I am sure we can fill it as all workshops during the pandemic are semi-private.
In case you haven't heard enough yet, here are questions I have answered for customers and crafters.
Conversations about my Anarres Detox Cream Deodorant in Which I Nitpick Lush's Aroma Creme
Q: Hello, I am new to Etsy and really like it! I was wonder what are the ingredients for your detox cream deodorant? After reading that it clears your lymph nodes I got to thinking your product might work for me. Some deodorants have actually made my lymph nodes swell so I am a bit wary of buying deodorants, I don't want to have another bad reaction so I make sure to look up all the ingredients.
A: So glad you are interested. All of the ingredients are listed in the materials. No secrets! The base ingredients are natural soda, vegetable glycerine, and organic corn starch. The remaining ingredients are essential oils, many of these organically grown, most wildcrafted. The oregano and clove are there specifically to clear the lymph of petroleum by-products.
Q: Hi. I bet this smells delicious, eh? I'm sad because I fell in love with Lush's Aroma Creme that smelled so divine and worked amazing...and then it gave me a nasty pit rash. *sniff* I'm hoping your cream would be kinder to my skin and still work well. Any sensitivity reports?
A: Lush combines real healthy ingredients with the same old petroleum by-product, cheapo chemical crap. Your deodorant has plenty to get irritated and sensitized by. They do not list their products on the Cosmetic Safety Database for a reason! (I am an approved Signer with the Compact for Safe Cosmetics, but I have not had my products listed due to the cost and time, unfortunately.) Here are the ingredients of Lush’s Aroma Creme and my comments:
Sodium Bicarbonate = I use USP #1 aka natural soda
Shea Butter (New name: Vitellaria paradoxa Old name: Butyrospermum parkii) = I use fairly traded natural grade
Almond Oil (Prunus dulcis) = good if you are not sensitive to nuts
Lychees (Litchi chinensis) = I don’t use this
Magnesium Carbonate = Hazard Score of 1
Lesser or emerging concerns for this ingredient: Endocrine disruption, Organ system toxicity (non-reproductive), Data gaps
Perfume = code for petroleum by-product could be carcinogenic among other things
Ylang Ylang Oil (Cananga odorata) = I use this, must be ethically sourced
Cassie Absolute (Acacia farnesiana) = solvent extracted, so I don’t use this
Benzyl Alcohol = Hazard Score of 6!!!
yes, weak Cancer
yes, weak Developmental/reproductive toxicity
yes, moderate Violations, restrictions & warnings
yes, moderate Allergies/immunotoxicity
Other moderate concerns for this ingredient: Neurotoxicity, Organ system toxicity (non-reproductive), Irritation (skin, eyes, or lungs)
Lesser or emerging concerns for this ingredient: Endocrine disruption, Data gaps
*Benzyl Salicylate = Hazard Score of 4!!!
yes, strong Allergies/immunotoxicity
Lesser or emerging concerns for this ingredient:
Organ system toxicity (non-reproductive), Data gaps
*Benzyl Benzoate = Hazard Score of 3!!!
yes, moderate Allergies/immunotoxicity
Other strong concerns for this ingredient: Occupational hazards
Other moderate concerns for this ingredient: Organ system toxicity (non-reproductive)
Lesser or emerging concerns for this ingredient: Data gaps
Eugenol, *Geraniol, *Isoeugenol, *Farnesol, *Linalool = These are all chemicals derived or synthesized from essential oils. They are used because they are cheap, but unlike whole essential oils, are prone to causing side effects
Coumarin = Hazard Score of 5!!!
yes, moderate Cancer
yes, weak Developmental/reproductive toxicity
yes, strong Allergies/immunotoxicity
Other moderate concerns for this ingredient: Organ system toxicity (non-reproductive)
Lesser or emerging concerns for this ingredient: Neurotoxicity, Endocrine disruption, Miscellaneous, Data gaps
Hydroxycitronellol = Hazard Score of 1
Lesser or emerging concerns for this ingredient: Irritation (skin, eyes, or lungs), Data gaps
So in short, the Lush deodorant is possibly a skin irritant, and a toxin to the endocrine and nervous systems and to non-reproductive organs.
My deodorant contains only natural soda, vegetable glycerine, corn starch and whole essential oils in non-irritating proportions. It is possible to have a reaction to my deodorant if you are allergic to any of the ingredients as foods (ex corn, or coriander, or citrus fruits). Otherwise, you are quite safe!
One client loves the scent so much she had me make a perfume from it that I called “Deo Dorant”.
It works like a demon, too.
I hope my long-winded answer helps!

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~There's no question that my Detoxifying Cream Deodorant http://www.anarreshealth.ca/product/deodorant-detoxifying-cream has been a hit since before Anarres officially began.
It's always in the top 30, if not the top 10 in sales.
It's the product people buy for their friends the most.
Most weeks, we make 16.67 years worth.
People order it from around the world.
And it's imperfect, it still needs stirring, and can't be mass-produced.

I was inspired by Lavilin. A tiny bit of that cream from that crazy expensive little pot, and I was odour-free sometimes for two days. Crazy?
I decided to experiment on my high school friend and made him a cream deodorant with a hodgepodge of essential oils with an awful lot of lime I'd bought off eBay, in a base I concocted of glycerine, baking soda cornstarch. Voila!
It worked!
And then he got armpit hives.
I was crafty, but I was no aromatherapist then.
I had very little clue about what essential oils DID aside from come in little bottles and smell.
The following year, I started studying to become a Registered Aromatherapy Health Practitioner and Certified Natural Health Practitioner with Jan Benham at her Institute of Aromatherapy, School of Holistic Health.
In her definitive recipe book The Creamy Craft of Cosmetic Making, I found the Wild Woman Deodorant recipe. It was a spray deodorant. It worked for me about 8 hours, but I wondered if my cream base would work with it.
So I asked my teacher. In her elegant English way she said hmmm and moved on. This is what she said about the miraculous powers of vanilla, too, so I wasn't dissuaded.
I put my inspired base together with the Wild Woman Deodorant's combination and proportions of essential oils, tweaked it to grams and drops, Turtle Island-ed it a bit (key lime, need I say more?) and
Voila!
This is the Detoxifying Cream Deodorant http://www.anarreshealth.ca/product/deodorant-detoxifying-cream that I've been making and teaching ever since.
It's even sparked an international business or two! I was the one who sold reflexologist, Debbie Cohen, a deodorant the SLOWEST artisan's fair the world has ever known, and after selling her deodorant wholesale for years, finally taught her how to make her own, and formulated a handful of varieties. Debbie writes on her thriving website MyNaturalDeodorant.com:
In her 30's she took a mishmash of entrepreneurial jobs to survive, including working in reflexology for ten years... After visiting a bazaar and coming across a natural deodorant, a new business idea began percolating in her brain. Long story short, as a healer Debbie found her passion (for) natural products, became a raving fan, bought some deodorant wholesale, started a tribe of natural deodorant users, took a workshop on how to make it, spent years perfecting the formulas, built a lab, dragged her husband into the business and gave him time to fall in love with it. Fast forward 5 years later they now serve thousands of natural lifestyle customers worldwide. My Natural Deodorant is now in 555 retail locations in North America!

If only I had bargained for royalties!

Meantime, back at Anarres, a client whose family members had suffered from hormonal chaos and other toxic effects from operating a commercial peach farm with all its omnipresent pesticides asked me to formulate products based on my Detoxifying Cream Deodorant http://www.anarreshealth.ca/product/deodorant-detoxifying-cream for Christmas. I made:
Deo Dorant Cologne
Deo Dorant After Shave
Deo Dorant Perfume
Deo Dorant Body Milk
and of course, plenty of Deo Dorant Detoxifying Cream Deodorant
What didn't I make?

Do you think I regret nothing aside from not asking for royalties? I will tell you straight up.
I regret calling it Detoxifying Cream Deodorant http://www.anarreshealth.ca/product/deodorant-detoxifying-cream.
Specifically, the detoxifying part.

Very soon after going pro in the natural health field, I encountered an obsession with "cleansing" and "detoxing".
While people asked me for formulas to "clean" their intestines, I was learning about how we need to nurture and strengthen our gut microbiome.
While people saw their perspiration as "toxic", I saw it as detoxifying them.
I had come face to face with White Knight in Shining Armour Heroic Patriarchal Alternative Medicine.
Same menace minus the lab coat, writing out prescriptions for miracle cures on his leather-bound natural fibre note pad, preaching the virtues of leaving this "low vibration" Earth, and purifying our dirty dirty bodies.
It's a philosophy that the authors of the Inquisition would not have disagreed with. It's anti-feminine, anti-woman, anti-Earth, and anti-body.
It's worse to this old-timey anarcha-feminist than making women shave their armpits and genitals to be "clean" and "pretty". Hair wicks toxins out of the body. Shaving takes away this natural detoxifying power.

My philosophy is:
Body Mind and Spirit are One.
Nature is our Cradle.
Plants are our Biological Ancestors.
The Earth is our Blessed Home.

The truth is, the liver and kidneys and lymph and skin detoxify us. 24/7. 13 moons a year. 365.24 days a year. Our. Whole. Lives. It's our job to enable and nourish them to do their jobs.

Why does my cream deodorant work? Each ingredient has a function. Nature knows its stuff. If we only can decipher the medicines that plants have made, we can apply these usefully to our lives as a gift. Because cypress can heal broken lymph vessels, the deodorant can relieve swollen and painful lymph nodes, and balance perspiration. The essential oil ingredients are naturally anti-biotic, anti-viral and anti-fungal. Oregano and clove are traditionally used to remove petrochemicals through the lymph nodes. If you want to know each detail, please participate in my next Deodorants That REALLY Work! workshop http://www.anarreshealth.ca/workshop/workshop-deodorants-really-work-0 You can request a date sooner than April - my October workshop sold out, so I am sure we can fill it as all workshops during the pandemic are semi-private.

In case you haven't heard enough yet, here are questions I have answered for customers and crafters.

Conversations about my Anarres Detox Cream Deodorant in Which I Nitpick Lush's Aroma Creme

Q: Hello, I am new to Etsy and really like it! I was wonder what are the ingredients for your detox cream deodorant? After reading that it clears your lymph nodes I got to thinking your product might work for me. Some deodorants have actually made my lymph nodes swell so I am a bit wary of buying deodorants, I don't want to have another bad reaction so I make sure to look up all the ingredients.

A: So glad you are interested. All of the ingredients are listed in the materials. No secrets! The base ingredients are natural soda, vegetable glycerine, and organic corn starch. The remaining ingredients are essential oils, many of these organically grown, most wildcrafted. The oregano and clove are there specifically to clear the lymph of petroleum by-products.

Q: Hi. I bet this smells delicious, eh? I'm sad because I fell in love with Lush's Aroma Creme that smelled so divine and worked amazing...and then it gave me a nasty pit rash. *sniff* I'm hoping your cream would be kinder to my skin and still work well. Any sensitivity reports?

A: Lush combines real healthy ingredients with the same old petroleum by-product, cheapo chemical crap. Your deodorant has plenty to get irritated and sensitized by. They do not list their products on the Cosmetic Safety Database for a reason! (I am an approved Signer with the Compact for Safe Cosmetics, but I have not had my products listed due to the cost and time, unfortunately.) Here are the ingredients of Lush’s Aroma Creme and my comments:

Sodium Bicarbonate = I use USP #1 aka natural soda

Shea Butter (New name: Vitellaria paradoxa Old name: Butyrospermum parkii) = I use fairly traded natural grade

Almond Oil (Prunus dulcis) = good if you are not sensitive to nuts

Lychees (Litchi chinensis) = I don’t use this

Magnesium Carbonate = Hazard Score of 1
Lesser or emerging concerns for this ingredient: Endocrine disruption, Organ system toxicity (non-reproductive), Data gaps

Perfume = code for petroleum by-product could be carcinogenic among other things

Ylang Ylang Oil (Cananga odorata) = I use this, must be ethically sourced

Cassie Absolute (Acacia farnesiana) = solvent extracted, so I don’t use this

Benzyl Alcohol = Hazard Score of 6!!!
yes, weak Cancer
yes, weak Developmental/reproductive toxicity
yes, moderate Violations, restrictions & warnings
yes, moderate Allergies/immunotoxicity
Other moderate concerns for this ingredient: Neurotoxicity, Organ system toxicity (non-reproductive), Irritation (skin, eyes, or lungs)
Lesser or emerging concerns for this ingredient: Endocrine disruption, Data gaps

*Benzyl Salicylate = Hazard Score of 4!!!
yes, strong Allergies/immunotoxicity
Lesser or emerging concerns for this ingredient:
Organ system toxicity (non-reproductive), Data gaps

*Benzyl Benzoate = Hazard Score of 3!!!
yes, moderate Allergies/immunotoxicity
Other strong concerns for this ingredient: Occupational hazards
Other moderate concerns for this ingredient: Organ system toxicity (non-reproductive)
Lesser or emerging concerns for this ingredient: Data gaps

Eugenol, *Geraniol, *Isoeugenol, *Farnesol, *Linalool = These are all chemicals derived or synthesized from essential oils. They are used because they are cheap, but unlike whole essential oils, are prone to causing side effects

Coumarin = Hazard Score of 5!!!
yes, moderate Cancer
yes, weak Developmental/reproductive toxicity
yes, strong Allergies/immunotoxicity
Other moderate concerns for this ingredient: Organ system toxicity (non-reproductive)
Lesser or emerging concerns for this ingredient: Neurotoxicity, Endocrine disruption, Miscellaneous, Data gaps

Hydroxycitronellol = Hazard Score of 1
Lesser or emerging concerns for this ingredient: Irritation (skin, eyes, or lungs), Data gaps

So in short, the Lush deodorant is possibly a skin irritant, and a toxin to the endocrine and nervous systems and to non-reproductive organs.

My deodorant contains only natural soda, vegetable glycerine, corn starch and whole essential oils in non-irritating proportions. It is possible to have a reaction to my deodorant if you are allergic to any of the ingredients as foods (ex corn, or coriander, or citrus fruits). Otherwise, you are quite safe!

One client loves the scent so much she had me make a perfume from it that I called “Deo Dorant”.

It works like a demon, too.

I hope my long-winded answer helps!
http://www.anarreshealth.ca/deodorant