A Healthy Dose of Sarcasm - Baking Soda: A Pit's Best Friend

I've been told my last post was a bit morbid so I decided to tackle a problem everyone faces: BO.

As a general statement: people stink. People stink more when they sweat. Here's why.

Body odor - or technically bromhidrosis, osmidrosis, or ozochrotia - is an unpleasant smell given off when the bacteria living on your skin break down the proteins found in sweat. Perspiration itself has no odor until the bacteria transform it into thioalcohol. Armpits stink more than other body parts because it’s warm, moist, and usually dark: party central for bacteria. Shoed feet have the same issue.

Big Vanity - corporations specializing in makeup, soap, deodorant,  toothpaste, etc. - produced a wide variety of products to keep humanity from an odorous existence. They approached the problem with antiperspirant, to keep you from sweating, and deodorant, to cover the smell.

According to WebMD, antiperspirants work by forming a chemical reaction with the water in perspiration to create a physical plug in your sweat ducts. Their answer is pretty simple - stop sweating. Deodorant masks the sweat making it through the chemically clogged perspiration plumbing.

Despite various reports linking antiperspirants to cancer, Alzheimer's, and kidney disease - the only common side effect to antiperspirant is occasional irritated or swollen skin. The few medical reasons for avoiding antiperspirants include kidney disease or those undergoing radiation therapy for cancer. The radiation beams will heat the aluminum in the antiperspirant causing burns.

After reading an interesting section in Baking Soda: House and Home, I decided to try another approach: kill everything living in my pits.

The book stated you can use Baking Soda like talcum powder, dusting it over areas generating more odor than socially acceptable. Armpits and feet are the most common areas for treatment. The book claims Baking Soda makes skin inhospitable to the thioalcohol-creating bacteria.

I’ve used it for a while now and there is literally no smell from my pits for days at a time. And when I say no odor, I mean it - even with my daily trips to the gym.

The benefits of Baking Soda over Big Vanity products include:

• No artificial perfume smell
• No gooey feeling from stick deodorants/antiperspirants
• A nice dry feeling upon application
• It's incredibly low cost

You can also use Baking Soda for:

• Toothpaste
• As an exfoliant in your bath
• To sooth rashes and bug bites
• In laundry to remove smells and sweat stains
• As a counter cleaner

So you can stay smelling fresh, brush your teeth, and clean the bathroom sink and counter - all with one substance. Pretty impressive for something that's been used by man since Ancient Egypt.

Baking Soda is cheap, available in large containers, and useful in the kitchen, bathroom, garden, and tool shed. You can even use it on pets to prevent fleas. Check it out if you want to give your pits a break from Big Vanity.

References:
Body Odor: Causes, Prevention, Treatments - Medical News Today
Antiperspirant Safety: Should You Sweat It? - WebMD (short answer - no)
Meet The Bacteria That Make A Stink In Your Pits - NPR
Baking Soda: House & Home - Amazon Link
“Baking soda is far more than a baking ingredient – it can be used in all manner of household tasks including cleaning, laundry, animal care, and health and beauty. This is the essential guide to maximizing the potential of this cheap, environmentally-friendly and multi-purpose product. Tips range from removing baked-on food from pans to making your own facial scrub, from getting stubborn stains out of your clothes to shampooing your dog. "Baking Soda" also gets the kids involved, with some fun science experiments and sweet treats, as well as providing culinary tips and a few tasty recipes for breads, cakes and cookies.”

A Healthy Dose of Sarcasm - Death Factor X

It’s an odd thing, growing older. New rules kick in once you reach age 40th. Middle age approaches like a steamroller, slowly plodding toward you. In the past, you may have laughed at the steamroller. Maybe you played chicken with your friends, running just in front of its ponderous path. But at 40, you find yourself trapped in a dead end alley with the steamroller at the mouth slowly eating up space, forcing you backward to the end of all things.
Cheery thought, isn’t it?
So, if you’re still with me, I’ll explain the reason for this short series of posts on health and wellness. At the end of 2015, I was given a death sentence by my doctor. He backed it up with test results explaining exactly how much space I had between my personal steamroller and end of the alley. This isn't unusual for people my age.
Around 45 your doctor begins looking for the most likely catalyst to shuffling off your mortal coil. I call this catalyst Death Factor X. The identification of Death Factor X isn’t a sure thing but, if you’re betting on the one thing that’s going to speed the steamroller, Death Factor X is the lead foot on the gas pedal.
Luckily - in an odd, somewhat ironic meaning of the word - doctors can identify Death Factor X more easily and with greater accuracy than in the past. There are batteries of tests used to determine your risk of heart attack, stroke, diabetes, etc. that are now easily available to most physicians. They don't simply look at your current metrics, but see into your past and correlate the data with your genetic predispositions. Ask your doctor about them on your next visit.
Part of this series will discuss selecting the right health care professionals. I believe I found a good doctor. For the purposes of this blog I’ll call him Dr. Buttons. He’ll get the joke.

Dr. Buttons digs in and provides relevant data to back up his diagnoses. He also doesn’t candy coat things. In my experience, a doctor's coddling doesn't lead to great health results.

In the ‘Healthy Dose of Sarcasm’ series, I’ll describe how I found Dr. Buttons and the lifestyle modifications that put it in reverse.
My hope is to keep these posts as light and humorous as possible while presenting actionable information. I hasten to add that this information is based on my conditions and predispositions. As with anything regarding health, <insert standard disclaimer about seeing your doctor - you’ve heard it before>.
Speaking of doctors, you might want to fire the one you have now. More on that topic in a few weeks.
Next week we’ll discuss Men (and Women) of a Certain Age aka The Steamroller is Closer Than You Think.
Until next time - stay healthy, my friends.

References:

Top 10 Deadliest Diseases - Healthline

Comprehensive List of State-of-the-Art Tests - Boston Heart Diagnostics

A Letter to Zack

Dear Zachary,

From the first day of your birth, I knew you'd be an amazing young man. Why? Because it was the first day anyone ever called me Zack's Dad. Of all the titles and names used for me, this is the one I am proudest of.

You've grown into an amazing young man. You are one of the funniest people I know and make me laugh all the time. You don't see all the smiles that follow you when you say 'Hi' to people.

You have a way of making people's day. You brighten peoples lives and they like being around you. As for me, the best part of my day is when I come home and you run out to hug me. In that instant, all my problems go away and I'm just Zack's Dad. I love it.

You have a big heart and care a lot for others. In my opinion, this is your greatest gift. You're going to make the world a better place just by being in it - just like you make my life a better life because you're in it.

Keep the gift of caring. Not everyone has it. Use it to make a small difference in people's lives every day. All those small differences will turn into big changes in the people around you.

You're a good and creative speaker. I saw it from an early age when you would get on stage for performances. Sometimes as we get older we let fear keep us from our talents. In acting and public speaking, we call this stage fright. It makes our tummies all weird before we get in front of people to talk. Don't let the fear of failure keep you from practicing this. You're really good at it.

Like stage fright for speaking, some of us are afraid to show people our writing because they can make fun of it. Don't let this stop you from writing. School is all about learning tools to use later. Writing is one of those tools. Not everyone is great in the beginning but everyone can learn to do it. Write, become good at it, and show it to others. Take their comments to make your writing even better.

You're learning many things about writing good stories with your night writes. Try to apply these lessons to all your stories. The goal of story craft is to give information and make people feel things like happiness, sadness, anger, love, hate, or excitement. You'll be a great story teller once you learn to give information and make people feel at the same time.

Use your gifts in your writing. Let it show how much you care for those around you and be creative and funny all at the same time. You'll write things that people want to read, can't wait to finish, and will leave wanting more.

Love,
Dad

Getting Scrivener Working in Wine 1.6

I had a similar problem with broken dependencies when trying to install wine and acroread, and a complaint when trying to install ia32-libs-multiarch, just after upgrading to 12.04 from 11.04 (passing over 11.10). It seems that some ppa's I had in 11.04 installed newer versions of applications in the system. After upgrading, the remains of these apps seemed to do some mess in the dependencies.

The solution that seems to work (until now), was found on a german ubuntu board (http://forum.ubuntuusers.de, posts from user Lasall):

First a downgrade is required and done with the following: create the 'preferences' file:

sudo vi /etc/apt/preferences

and insert the following lines:

Package: *       
Pin: release a=precise*
Pin-Priority: 2012

enter :wq to write the file. Pin-Priority must be greater than 1000.

Then you may downgrade the offending applications with:

sudo apt-get dist-upgrade

Then you may install packages that complained about dependencies, like sudo apt-get install ia32-libs-multiarch, or sudo apt-get install ia32-libs.

Finally, you should remove the file you just created:

sudo rm /etc/apt/preferences

because else no new updates would be found.

Hope this helps you too!

Halo and Dragons

My son has become a fan of the Halo game. He plays it as much as we allow. Since the Xbox is our primary form for entertainment - with Hulu, Netflix, and Amazon Prime - we have to kick him off fairly often.

He's also a fan of the Eragon books. He's reading, or claims to be reading, a thick one with a green dragon on the cover. He likes dragons. Part of the reason could be my unused D&D collection that serves as a dust attractor.

So recently I asked him if he'd like for me to write a story for him. He replied that he wanted one about Halo soldiers fighting dragons. Seemed right up my alley so I started a short story that I hope to complete soon.

Here's the first few paragraphs.

My name is Sergeant Augustin Xavier Montpellier. For you folks that don't speak Old Earth French, that last name is pronounced Mont-pe-lay. Yes, I know it has an ‘R’ at the end. Think of it like someone’s ugly baby. You see it. You just don’t say it. 

Most people call me Sarge. I’m a Spartan with the Void Hammers. For you Old Worlders not familiar with New Space lingo, Spartan is another word for mercenary. I get paid take care of problems.