Return to this week's Bulletin
24 August 2001
The Science of Armpits
I have an ongoing project on hands, which, I believe, would be good to put to the attention of the people more knowledgeable than I. At http://www.killbo.com/H/ there is detailed description of what exactly has happened. Let me tell the same story briefly.
You probably know about axillary malodor, or armpit odor. It drives a huge economy of antiperspirants, deodorants and brutal operations.
The odor is believed to be produced by certain strains of Coryneform bacteria, colonizing underarm skin. Closely relative germs cause officially recognized infection diseases, some just because they create bad odor, or colored spots. The armpit odor-producing critters are considered non-pathogenic, although nothing seems to be particularly good about them, except their unique ability to sell personal care products and services.
Accidentally, then intentionally I treated armpit malodor as a symptom of trivial skin infection. First I exterminated it on my skin using non-prescription commodity fungicides (this may seem to be new, but, in general, Coryneform bacteria are known to be susceptible to substances like clotrimazole). Then I replaced all my underwear, and lived without armpit malodor for a while without encountering opportunistic infection or any other problem. Repeated infection occurred only as I returned to my old cloth. BTW I strongly suspect that not everybody have it, even between Caucasians and Africans.
My wife volunteered to be another laboratory animal with similar results. At least in most cases it was found to be possible to clean the infected cloth with household antiseptics, and we keep trying to fill the gap.
I put this information on the web expecting to find out that this is a well-known piece or junk science. Now people started reproducing this experiments, sometimes doing crazy things. I have never thought that some can be just desperate to get rid of their perfectly normal armpit odor.
It may be too late to stop the site, and doing so I may only bury this method. I am not a scientist (not even an amateur). Medicine and personal care industry are far off my professional field. Interdisciplinary journals reject this material without consideration. Indeed, it’s not a scientific work in a modern understanding of such. Rather I debugged this situation in a way I would debug a faulty computer system.
I currently believe is that this is a viable invention, even having some commercial potential it the future. Now it takes form of a self-help technique, which, must be not good for everybody. I would much prefer such a method to be brought to the public as reasonably perfected, and proven to be safe to use. Not that I expect anything terrible to happen, I am just not sure if public experimenting is a right thing to do in this case. It does not contribute to the method. The followers are defining the limits and preconditions of applicability. Some people may find themselves off the limits, and pay unreasonably high price for that. Nevertheless, even from a legal standpoint I am not in a position to run a research, or offer advice.
Once again, the actual story is at http://www.killbo.com/H/, and I tried to make it an easy reading. The rest of the site is relevant too.
