Long time readers of the Beauty Brains may be familiar with a post we wrote back in 2007 about “Why Body Mint is a Disappoint-mint.“ Based on references that we had seen at the time, we wrote that the product would not reduce all body odors as suggested by the product’s claims.
Body Mint revisited
Wow! That post unleashed a crap-storm of comments (almost 90 at last count.) You can click the link above to read all of them, but suffice it to say that discussion got a bit…ugly…at times. Regardless, based on these comments we took another look and found that indeed, as many of the readers said, Chlorophyllin (not chlorophyll) is the active ingredient in Body Mint and it does have some proven odor fighting properties. Specifically, the evidence shows that products like Body Mint can be used as an “internal deodorant” to help colostomy patients. We were remiss in not citing the research on fecal odor in our original post. We also should have been more specific that the active ingredient is not chlorophyll as we stated but a copper-containing derivative known as Chlorophyllin.
However, we still are unable to find any studies which suggest that Body Mint works on other kinds of body odor (like underarm stink or bad breath, as mentioned in the original question.) The mode of action on fecal odor reduction (the chlorophyll complex reacting with fecal material inside the colon) seems plausible. The same mode of action doesn’t seem to make sense for underarm odor where the “scent” is caused by the action of bacteria on sweat gland secretions. For Body Mint to get rid of body odor it would have to have some kind of antibacterial effect on the surface of the skin. We haven’t seen ANYTHING to suggest it works that way but again, we’d be glad to update this post if anyone can direct us to such studies. In the meantime, we remain skeptical of these claims.
The Beauty Brains bottom line
We’ll try to be more careful in future posts and we really appreciate when our readers point out where we have presented misinformation. We’re not perfect and we are always willing to reconsider our position based on new data. That’s what science is all about!
Updated references:
http://lpi.oregonstate.edu/infocenter/phytochemicals/chlorophylls/#therapeutic
Chernomorsky SA, Segelman AB. Biological activities of chlorophyll derivatives. N J Med. 1988;85(8):669-673. (PubMed)
Siegel LH. The control of ileostomy and colostomy odors. Gastroenterology. 1960;38:634-636. (PubMed)
Weingarten M, Payson B. Deodorization of colostomies with chlorophyll. Rev Gastroenterol. 1951;18(8):602-604.
Christiansen SB, Byel SR, Stromsted H, Stenderup JK, Eickhoff JH. [Can chlorophyll reduce fecal odor in colostomy patients?]. Ugeskr Laeger. 1989;151(27):1753-1754. (PubMed)
Young RW, Beregi JS, Jr. Use of chlorophyllin in the care of geriatric patients. J Am Geriatr Soc. 1980;28(1):46-47. (PubMed)
Yamazaki H, Fujieda M, Togashi M, et al. Effects of the dietary supplements, activated charcoal and copper chlorophyllin, on urinary excretion of trimethylamine in Japanese trimethylaminuria patients. Life Sci. 2004;74(22):2739-2747. (PubMed)
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{ 5 comments… read them below or add one }
I read the original article and I did my own research and compared them to all the references you put out… I am an equal skeptic. I’m all for herbal remedies, but nothing in body mint tells me it helps with overall body order. Chlorophyll does help temper bad breath and chlorophyllin helps fecal smell. I did find that fennel might help body order but I’ve yet to really look into it. To be honest, my friend with bad foot oder had tried it for a month with no identifiable changes. She still had to change her socks 5 times a day and wash her feet 3 times a day. You have my support BeautyBrains!
@Jessica: Thanks for the support. I should also mention that we found that chlorophyllin is effective against trimethylaminuria, a cause of a specific kind of body odor. It’s in the references but I didn’t call it out in the post.
This seems to me one of those cases where the current scientific testing criteria hasn’t caught up to being able to test the efficacy of a product like Body Mint’s ability to control non-fecal or trimethylaminuria related odor. As I understand it, this is what for years happened with steroids when they began to become a huge presents in commercial gyms, which initial testing methods determined to be ineffective. That changed when, at last, they were tested with quantities that gym rats where actually using (which were apparently significantly higher than what were being used in the initial lab tests.)
Also, although it’s yet another anecdotal instance, I think it’s important for me to share my successful experience with chlorophyll/chlorophyllin based products (not Body Mint) as from what I can see, my circumstances for coming to use them are a bit different from most of the people who’ve posted on this topic, and iit might be of real help to any women who have the misfortune of experiencing something similar.
About six months ago, I started experiencing symptoms of menopause, the worst being an absolutely horrific change in my body odor.
I’d wake up with the inside of my mouth tasting like I’d fallen asleep with a hoagie made with what I imagine week old dead dog and civil war pennies must taste like, and no amount of brushing would quash it. My underarms and (not to put too fine a point on it) genital region had taken on the aroma of hot cheese and garbage. A minimum of two showers a day and diligent use of external deodorant and antiperspirant did noting to alleviate any of this for long, and I can say without hyperbole that the smell of my own body had become utterly repulsive and completely foreign to me.
I of course hoped against hope that people wouldn’t notice, and was left with the illusion that they hadn’t for just over two weeks, until some of my coworkers, who also happened to be very good friends, pulled me aside and informed me that I had a problem (they were operating under the assumption that I was unaware.) They were very understanding after I explained the situation (I’m of course leeching this bit of all the emotional detail, as I was in absolute tatters over being ‘The Stinky One” for weeks before I was approached.)
The bottom line is, after of course researching online, I came across recommendations for oral chlorophyll/chlorophyllin. I purchased a no name brand of pills, took one twice a day for the first three days, and on the forth day I had no body odor to speak of. I don’t mean my scent reverted to what it had been pre-menopause, or that the much more recent and unfamiliar horrific stink had been muted to a manageable degree. I mean, I suddenly was devoid of body odor. As I was confident that this couldn’t be possible, I (very discretely) asked a few of the people who’d approached me at work to do things like give my breath a whiff, and two of them, God bless them, were willing to give my underarms a sniff. The unanimous verdict was that I was 100%, completely inoffensive to the nose. I could have cried from the relief, and have have followed the two pills a day regiment without fail ever since.
Who knows if they’ll always be this effective, but I can say without a doubt that for almost six months, they’ve worked for me. Amazingly so.
Ah the sequel….
Most of the comments from your previous blog were from people who seemed very satisfied with Body Mint. I don’t personally use the product, but it seems a lot of people do. In your first blog you stated some research and were proven otherwise. Now you spout more, and while it was me who was glad to prove you wrong the first time, I’ll leave it to someone else for now. Why? While I do enjoy things of this nature, my belief is that you have some other agenda against this product and whatever it is I’d rather not be a part of it.
Bottom line: You continue to imply this product is a hoax, but your only justification is that “we still are unable to find any studies which suggest that Body Mint works on other kinds of body odor”.
Well HELL, if YOU can’t find the research, then it mustn’t exist… because afterall your research skills are…. well, they are what they are.
To those coming here to learn about Body Mint, my advice is this. Go back and read the original blog post, then go ahead and read the 90 comments below it. This product may or may not be for you, but ask yourself this question: Who is more credible, a blogger whose NEVER used Body Mint, passing judgement on a product with research they were already shot down with, or actual people who’ve tried it?
Well I know I said that I wouldn’t, but go look up Dr. Franklin Howard Westcott.
His research was published in TIME Magazine in 1957:
[Chlorophyll, the complex substance that puts the green in grass, has been used for years to take cooking smells out of the kitchen. Occasionally it has been used to make putrefying wounds less obnoxious to patients and nurses. But until 1945 nobody thought of using it to make healthy people smell sweeter, inside & out.
Nothing was farther from the mind of Dr. F. (for Franklin) Howard Westcott, a New York City internist, when he started giving chlorophyll to his patients.
Dr. Westcott was trying to find a cure for certain types of anemia. He noted that the odors of vitamin B and of asparagus, usually noticeable in the urine, were greatly decreased when his patients were taking chlorophyll-A (one of the two major chlorophyll fractions). This gave him the idea that chlorophyll might work in the body, through metabolic processes, to deodorize bad breath and perspiration.
After the Bath. First he used a doctor and four nurses as human guinea pigs. They were trained while taking chlorophyll to use an osmoscope (smell measurer) on each other 24 hours after they had taken baths. Sure enough, they found that underarm odor was cut in half, or even abolished, for as long as 18 hours after a dose of chlorophyll. The results were confirmed in experiments with a group of twelve college girls.
Dr. Westcott found that onions present a tricky problem because particles get stuck in the teeth and release volatile oils for hours afterwards. When his college girls took onion juice, which left no particles, chlorophyll greatly reduced the breath odor and sometimes abolished it. The only effective treatment for onion eaters, Dr. Westcott concluded was to clean the mouth thoroughly and then use a chlorophyll mouthwash or suck a chlorophyll tablet. He found that ordinary bad breath, whether from food, drink, tobacco or an upset stomach, was easily controlled by chlorophyll.]
Now, you’ve established a difference between chlorophyll and chlorophyllin. Also, I’m aware that the study above references ‘chlorophyll baths’ and not chlorophyllin as an internal deodorant for body and breath odors. However, if we look at the very same Dr. F. Howard Westcott’s own US Patent Office filing #2794762 Titled BODY DEODORANT FOR INTERNAL USE, we can find the following exscript:
[I have discovered that certain derivatives of chlorophyll can be ingested without impairment of any body function and that when ingested in dosages running from about 15 miligrams to 200 miligrams of active ingredient, body odors are eliminated for periods of from 8-36 hours....
I have found that it is possible to prepare non-toxic preparations, small dosages of which when taken internally will inhibit, reduce or prevent body odors, but the appropriate treatment of natural chlorophyll or certain chlorophyll derivatives.... Preferably, however, I use chlorophyllins as a starting material, due to the much greater activity of the product prepared when they are used.]
…and one of the chlorophyll derivatives that he patented…. SODIUM COPPER CHLOROPHYLLIN.