Earth Clinic Mobile: Home Remedies for People and Pets

White Vinegar for Body Odor

100%

Traveler (Santa Barbara, Ca, Usa) on 06/27/2010:
5 out of 5 stars

I've never had extreme body odor, but since I have gotten off of Depo Provera (birth control) two years ago, and stopped using conventional deoderant/antipersperant about a year ago, my body odor has definitely been interesting at times. Lately, and it might just be related to crappy eating and having a really bad viral cold, my armpits have been giving off a distinctly spicy food smell-- sometimes I smell like some Indian people who eat a conventional indian diet. Which isn't as awful as some BO that I've smelled, but it smells weird to me and definitely when I'm going to work in a bar (and there's no more smoking to mask one's smell) it's not something I want to continue. The past couple nights I've worked, I've had to take a break, take my shirt off and go to the ladies room and wash my underarms with soap and water. The spicy body odor would come back within an hour or so.

I did use a natural deoderant for awhile that I got from Whole Foods and smelled like a creamsicle-- I liked that a lot. It would fail probably after four hours and smell a little musty but it was good. But I think that eventually I left it in the car too often and the heat degraded the ingredients' ability to kill off the armpit bacteria.

Anyway, so last night, after I got out of the shower, I figured I'd come here and check out some options. Zinc didn't work for me. I thought I saw a difference supplementing with zinc, but over time, no dice. I also got some zinc baby bottom paste and that just made my armpits smell musty. I had tried vinegar once, just running out the door and it did kill the smell but I never tried it again, for whatever reason. So I looked at the different options for immediately killing BO for the night, and decided on white vinegar.

I had already showered so I didn't want to shower again, so even though I shaved my armpits and was wearing a halter top I braved the possibility of angry red bumps, and took a cupped handful of white distilled vinegar and applied it to my pits, slightly rubbing it in. I let it dry while doing other stuff.

I am pleased to report that over six hours, the vinegar did not fail me, despite sweating and air drying several times. I detected a slight vinegary smell, but it was nothing compared to the humid spicy food-type wall of body odor that was coming from me before, and easily covered with a couple of sprits of body spray. So yeah-- rock on white vinegar!

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