@nothingclever, have you tried products containing urea or adding a low concentration of urea to your homemade formulas? Urea is unique in that it exfoliates and moisturizes. If I’m not mistaken, the Ray Peat inspired skincare line Saturée has at least 2 products containing urea. Another thing to consider is your thyroid function. Dry skin is a common symptom of hypothyroidism.

You’re welcome, @secondkelping. I’m so happy to hear you figured out the cause. It makes sense that your NDT stopped working for you because Forefront’s isn’t standardized so there’s no way of knowing how much hormones it actually contains from batch to batch. With synthetics like Tyronene and TyroMix, you know what you’re getting but with NDT, you don’t if it’s not standardized/USP like Armour, Nature-Throid, NP Thyroid, ADTHYZA, TyroMax etc.

@nothingclever said in natural deodorant:

Would love suggestions for smelly armpits. I have tried every natural deodorant under the sun and they now all seem to make my armpits irritated and sometimes break out in a rash. I believe I have some systemic fungal issues that may be contributing to this, which I'm working on. I've used just lemon with some success though it burns a bit.

I think you’re right to suspect an underlying reason for your smelly armpits. I notice a difference in my scent, depending on my diet and medications—I have no scent while taking antibiotics. On animal-based and starch-based diets my scent is musky but on a fruit-based diet, its sweet. I’ve done backpacking trips that involved intense climbs where I was sweating profusely and even without bathing for a week, all I and my companions could smell on me was a faint scent of melon. I was consuming a lot of cantaloupe during that time. lol When I still needed deoderant, I used witch hazel. I have sensitive skin and all other natural deodorants I tried like baking soda and magnesium caused irritation and rashing.

@Mossy, yeah, wild oregano from Greece is one the best and most potent. The carvacrol content of the one I had was insane. It should have come with a warning. lol Marjoram, savory and thyme are also good sources of the phenolic compound so even though they’re typically used for flavoring, culinary herbs are also medicinal. That’s one of the many reasons why I trust my tastebuds. Regarding knowledge, I found it ironic that the more I learned about health, the unhealthier I became. It took a lot of unlearning to gain actual knowledge., i.e., the wisdom that comes from experience and not from the pages of medical journals or theories from claimed experts.

@Mossy, I think you’re wise to go by what herbs appeal to you. That’s something I do and something even Dr. Morse, a man who has a love for all herbs, suggests. In regards to oregano’s potency, I’ve used pharmaceutical grade oregano oil from Greece that leaked and melted the plastic box it came in, it was that strong, and it was just as harsh on my insides (lol) so I understand what you mean. The only way I will take oregano now is in the form of an infusion/tea or the raw herb sprinkled in my food for flavoring.

Some assume the greater the potency, the greater the healing or that if it’s natural, it’s inherently safe, but that’s not always the case. One herb that comes to mind is belladonna. Prior to supplementing thyroid, when I still had gallbladder disease and daily gallbladder attacks, a friend I had on the old RPF asked Ray for suggestions and he said atropine to relax the bile duct. Belladonna contains atropine—it’s the source of the crude drug—but is highly toxic to domestic animals and at certain potencies has been shown to poison humans—early humans made poisonous arrows from it—so I bought some belladonna homeopathic pellets knowing that the amount of belladonna they contain is minute and they worked! It took thyroid to overcome the gallbladder disease—Ray said in an interview that anyone with gallbladder disease is without exception chronically hypothyroid—but the belladonna pellets brought relief until I was able to convince a doctor to prescribe me thyroid.

@Mossy, I think your plan is sound. If you find you aren’t tolerating bloodroot or even the Heal All tea, as mentioned above, there’s always oregano. It’s effective for oral conditions like gum disease and raising progesterone levels and in an email exchange, Ray said it’s one of the safest spices:

“[Oregano oil] It's one of the safest spices (low allergenicity, not mutagenic or carcinogenic), so if it isn't combined with harmful excipients it seems worth trying.” Ray Peat

https://expulsia.com/health/emailexchanges#Oregano_Oil

You’re welcome, @Mossy. Yes, solely from ingesting the Heal All. It works systemically, and we want it to work systemically because every symptom/condition is a manifestation of overall dysfunction within the body so, for example, if there is atrophied tissue like that of gum disease, there’s likely to be thyroid dysfunction, since the thyroid/parathyroid glands are the main glands responsible for the integrity of our tissues.

Dr. Morse includes bloodroot in his most aggressive formulas for conditions like cancer, and it’s the active ingredient in the potentially caustic drawing salve 'black salve.' People have used it to draw out tumors and left burns, holes even, in their skin, and it has strong laxative properties so you may want to use caution with it. In my experience, there are more forgiving herbs for oral health and progesterone production. Dr. Morse has endocrine formulas, and one specifically for women that raised my progesterone level, confirmed via blood work, just as well as high doses (a bottle a week) of Progest-E, but without the side-effects I get from Progest-E.

@Mossy said in Best remedies and interventions for receding gums?:

@Jennifer
Really appreciate the detail. Would you mind sharing the routine you used for your dog? I don't bark too loud, but I'm thinking of trying it!

Haha! Well, Bee was following the same program as me, even ate a similar diet, so humans can certainly benefit from it, too. He started out on the Heal All tea—about 1/4 cup added to his food 3x a day, then I switched him over to the Heal All glycerin tincture out of convenience. For dosing the tincture, there's a guide on the back that goes by weight. Bee was a little guy, a Maltese no more than 18 lb, so he got 1/4 of a dropper full 3x a day or 3/4 of a dropper full all at once, first thing in the morning, if I wasn’t going to be home to administer multiple doses. For comparison, at 99 lb, I was taking 1 dropper full 3x a day. His diet was composed of all his favorite foods that fit within Dr. Morse’s and Ray's dietary recommendations for dogs, as well as Dewitt's, a member on the old Peatarian forum whose family raised German Shepherds, and info I found on the website rationalmonofeeding.com. He ate melons, bananas, apples, squash, cucumber, carrots, green beans, sprouted peas, baby lettuces, young coconut meat, coconut cream, eggs, sea scallops and to drink, he loved raw coconut water, and I supplemented his diet with eggshell powder.

You’re welcome, @Aniciete.

@secondkelping, my pleasure. It could very well be your dose or even how you’re dosing it, i.e., dosing beyond a physiological amount of T3–more than 4 mcg per hour—or not taking it with food if you do? Do you feel a sense of calm and relaxation, even a need to nap, after a dose of thyroid? Along with a higher temp (including temp of extremities) and pulse rate, that’s usually a good indication that your dose is optimal, especially napping if stress hormones were compensating for poor thyroid function. The only other things I can think of as triggers are low blood sugar and allergenic and/or irritating foods, the latter circling back to lipopolysaccharides and serotonin.