Tag: Flora - Organic Lifestyle Magazine

There are two things to ask yourself if you have a problem with body odor:

Am I healthy?
Am I using the right soap and skin care products?

You may have noticed “Do I shower often enough?” was left out. That’s because when the body is healthy, showering is about removing dirt and odors from sources other than our body. Objectionable body odor is a result of imbalanced PH, imbalanced hormones, a heavy toxic load, damaging skin care products, and/or imbalanced gut flora.

Health

First let’s talk about health. If you are not healthy or your body is toxic, it will affect your body odor. Vaginal infections can produce a foul odor and body fluids, including sweat, may give off a foul odor when you are ill, just as sinus infections or infections in the mouth can produce bad breath. If you are healthy, your sweat will not smell foul. It will actually smell good.

Clean up your body from the inside out. Eat a healthy diet that consists of 80% fresh, organic, raw fruits and vegetables. The fiber will cleanse your digestive system, sweeping out old rotting food and debris while working as a prebiotic that helps maintain a high level of beneficial bacteria in the gut. Detox twice a year. Get those chemicals, parasites, and the extra yeast out of your body. (For more information, see the links below.)

Bathing and Showering

This is such an individual decision that should be based on need, not someone else’s idea of cleanliness. In the U.S. our cultural norm is a daily bath or shower, those some shower morning and night. If you are healthy and you aren’t actually dirty, daily showers or baths are not necessary. Some may argue that even with toxin free skin care products, daily washing does more harm than good due to washing away healthy flora that develops on skin and controls body odor. Bathe or shower as often as necessary–not more.

Why You Should Use Organic Soap

There are two reasons you should use organic soap. First of all, our skin soaks up most of the chemicals we put on it. When we use conventional products, those chemicals are pulled into our bloodstream. Read the labels on soap scrubs and bar soap and ask yourself if you would want to eat those ingredients, because in a roundabout way, that’s exactly what you are doing every time you use them. Secondly, organic soaps are better for your skin and they stop the body odor cycle caused by conventional products.

Our skin is part of the body’s first line of defense against pathogens. Not only do we produce natural oils to keep our skin healthy, our skin is host to many beneficial bacterial, just like our gut. Conventional soaps, especially anti-bacterial soaps, are the greatest cause of body odor because they disrupt the body’s natural defense against bad bacteria. Conventional , anti-bacterial soaps strip the skin of natural oils and kill the bacteria. The problem is, they kill the beneficial bacteria that naturally keeps the bad bacteria (the smelly bacteria) in check. You bathe, you kill off the good bacteria. You sweat, the bad bacteria start to multiply and there aren’t enough good bacteria to keep them in check. You bathe, the cycle continues.

This is the same process we experience with deodorants. Any time we strip natural oils and kill off beneficial bacteria, we set up an unhealthy cycle that merely perpetuates the use of conventional products. We smell worse, we use more and more. This is how they make money.

Organic soaps maintain the natural balance of bacteria on your skin. As the days pass, you will notice that you have less body odor. You will no longer need to use deodorant. You just don’t smell bad anymore. You may find that you only need to bathe every other day, every three days, or maybe only once a week. Even if you maintain the habit of a daily bath or shower, your skin will be happier and healthier. If you’re ready to get rid of body odor without the chemical cover-ups that damage your health, it’s time to Balance Your Gut Flora and Balance Your Hormones.

Recommended Supplements:

We are host to somewhere between 300-1000 different species of bacteria, each of which has one goal—to survive and multiply. While they live and thrive in our gut, beneficial bacteria provide many necessary and health-related functions. They help us digest our food. They line our intestinal wall, providing a physical barrier against bad bacteria and fungi that may damage or inflame the tissues. Some produce vitamin K and B vitamins, while others aid in synthesizing vitamins. They produce 95% of our serotonin as well as other neurotransmitters. They make up 80% of our immune system, and more. The by-products of their lifecycle benefit us through a harmonious, symbiotic relationship.

We classify bacteria as bad bacteria when their byproducts or functions can harm our bodies. For example, most of the E-coli bacteria strains are harmless. In fact, the harmless strains help prevent colonization of pathogenic bacteria and produce vitamin K2, whereas the pathogenic E-coli strains cause a variety of infections and may even cause death.

Related: Candida, Gut Flora, Allergies, and Disease

Aside from illness, researchers are learning that specific species of bacteria exert different influences on their host bodies. One example is our metabolism. The bacterial makeup of a lean person is different than the bacterial makeup in someone who is obese.

One study showed that Enterobacter, an endotoxin-producing bacterium, taken from the gut of a morbidly obese human, induced obesity and insulin resistance in healthy mice. In a volunteer with an initial weight of 385 lbs, Enterobacter made up 35% of the gut bacterium. After 23 weeks of a diet of whole grains, traditional Chinese medicinal foods, and prebiotics, the volunteer lost 113 lbs and all traces of Enterobacter. The conclusion was that this endotoxin-producing bacterium creates inflammation that causes insulin resistance resulting in weight gain.

Another recent study showed a direct correlation between a high or low level of bacterium in the gut and the subjects’ weight. A high level of bacterium, with a high level of diversity, was linked to a healthy weight, whereas a low level of bacterium was linked to overweight individuals.

Related: Gluten, Candida, Leaky Gut Syndrome, and Autoimmune Diseases

The amount of bacteria in the gut relates to more than weight, it is also an indicator of overall health. Our actions affect the amount, the diversity, and the ratio of good to bad bacteria. For example, antibiotic use indiscriminately kills bacteria. Antibiotics do not just target the one pathogen causing an infection in our body; they kill off much of the bacteria in our gut as well. Not only do we need the good bacteria to do its work (including keeping the bad bacteria in check), we need to maintain the delicate balance between bacteria and fungi. Candida is opportunistic. Given a chance, it will quickly mass-produce, wreaking havoc in the digestive tract and, in time, the entire body.

As research continues to reveal that diversity in gut bacterium is essential to good health and can influence bodily functions such as serotonin production (a huge factor in depression) or metabolism (a factor in weight control), researchers are learning more about which particular bacteria are beneficial and which bacteria have an unhealthy effect on the body. The day may soon come when we choose our probiotics to manage our weight, to maintain our mental health, or to treat a variety of diseases. Until that day arrives, our diet choices can and will alter this internal balance.

We do have a basic knowledge of which foods promote beneficial bacteria and which foods and medications promote bad bacteria, and we know how to increase the beneficial organisms to crowd out those that do not serve our health.

Related: Hypothyroidism – Natural Remedies, Causes, and How To Heal the Thyroid

The first and most important step to increase health inducing bacterium in the gut, is to eat a diet rich in prebiotics—in other words, lots of raw vegetables and fruit. A large salad each day, filled with a wide variety of vegetables, provides the healthy bacterium in our gut with the food it needs to thrive. Insoluble fiber also houses good bacteria, giving it a structure upon which to multiply. Raw, whole, organic vegetables and fruits (more vegetables than fruit) should always comprise 80% of our diet.

We not only know what to feed good bacteria, we know what feeds or promotes bad bacteria: processed dead foods, acidic foods (factory raised meat and dairy), pasteurized foods, irradiated foods, sugar, antibiotics, antacids, and anti-inflammatory drugs. Choose only organic grass fed beef, organic free-range chicken, and raw dairy. Never eat farm raised fish. Avoid all GMOs, including second generation GMOs from animals raised on GMO feed.

If we were to believe the advertisements, one or two servings of sugar filled, pasteurized, yogurt (often with other ingredients added to thicken, stabilize, preserve, and/or add artificial flavor) would provide all the beneficial bacteria we need. If any beneficial bacteria from this yogurt survived our stomach acid and made it to our intestines, the dairy and sugar content alone would negate its benefits (pasteurized dairy and sugar feed Candida and “bad” bacteria). There are better ways to include probiotics in our diet.

Related: How to Kill Candida and Balance Your Inner Ecosystem

Probiotic foods such as coconut kefir, kombucha, sauerkraut, kimchi, and raw, organic apple cider vinegar all increase healthy bacterium in the gut. There are also excellent probiotic supplements formulated with very strong bacteria strains that have the ability to make it past the stomach acid before releasing the bacteria into the intestines. These probiotics are rare; most on the market are useless. But the good ones are powerful and can help reset your ecosystem. Remember, while probiotics can be very helpful, more benefit is gained from prebiotics, vegetables in particular. Conversely, if your appendix has been removed, you may need a daily probiotic supplement for the rest of your life. FloraMend Prime by Thorne Research is a very strong and stable probiotic that we highly recommend.

Every choice we make to detox, cleanse, and properly feed our bodies will affect the microbes in our gut. Though we were born with a particular balance of bacteria, it has been influenced throughout our lives by toxins, antibiotics, vaccines, and the foods we have eaten. But we do have the power to change it. We can increase the amount and the type of bacteria in our bodies primarily by the foods we choose to eat and the foods we choose to avoid.

If you want to reduce Candida and harmful bacteria in your gut be sure to check out Gluten, Candida, Leaky Gut Syndrome, and Autoimmune Diseases, and we recommend the following:

Recommended Supplements:

Eliminate Body Odor With Diet