#bakingsodausesforahealthyandcleanbody
Baking Soda Uses for a Healthy and Clean Body
Reviewed By: Carol DerSarkissian, MD
Not Just for Your Kitchen
You may know it as the orange box that lurks in the back of your fridge to take out bad smells. Or as a pantry staple that helps your baked goods rise. But baking soda, aka sodium bicarbonate, deserves a spot in your medicine cabinet, too. Here's how it helps keep your body healthy and clean.
Green Teeth Cleaner
Baking soda works great to physically remove plaque, the sticky film of bacteria in your mouth. Over time, a plaque buildup hardens into tartar and can lead to gum disease. Dip a wet toothbrush into the powder and brush as usual. It doesn't have the fluoride you need to protect against tooth decay and cavities. Many public water supplies have added fluoride. Even so, brush with regular toothpaste as well to be safe.
Inexpensive Mouthwash
Swish a teaspoon of baking soda in a half glass of water and rinse your mouth.
That garlic aioli pasta was delish. But now your breath is keeping even your dog away. Swish a teaspoon of baking soda in a half glass of water and rinse your mouth. It doesn't merely mask the smell with a minty scent like most mouthwashes do. Baking soda actually banishes the odor altogether.
Body Deodorant
Most things that stink have acidic or basic odor molecules. Baking soda brings them to a more neutral, odor-free state. No wonder sewage plants and feedlots use the stuff. It also works on your body odor. Dust a little under your arms in the morning. If you don't care for the powdery residue on your clothes, use stick deodorants that have baking soda. Look for ones that list sodium bicarbonate as a main ingredient.
Helps Your Kidneys
These organs remove waste and extra water from your body. If you have chronic kidney disease from diabetes, high blood pressure, or other causes, acid can build up in your body.Sodium bicarbonate can bring the acid levels down and may help slow bone loss and build muscles. It's important to work closely with your doctor if you want to try this. Scientists are still figuring out exactly when and how this works.
Helps Fight Cancer
Emergency rooms and hospitals stock sodium bicarbonate as a treatment for cardiac arrests, poisoning, and other cases. It also helps to counteract the acidic properties of chemotherapy medication for cancer. Some studies show that lower acid levels may slow certain tumors from growing and spreading.
Soothes Your Skin
Baking soda can relieve minor irritation, pain, itching, and redness.
Bitten by a mosquito? Brushed up against poison ivy? Baking soda to the rescue. It can relieve minor irritation, pain, itching, and redness. Mix up a paste of 3 parts baking soda to 1 part water. Smear it on your skin and leave for 20 minutes before you wash it off. Or soak in a bath with a half-cup of baking soda added to the water.
Eases Pain.
Sodium bicarbonate may boost the pain-killing powers of lidocaine used in epidurals. Researchers are studying whether it might help ease pain from cancer. If you're hurting from sunburn, soak a washcloth in a solution of about 4 tablespoons of baking soda per quart of water. Gently dab it on the affected areas to soothe your skin. It can help for other minor burns as well, including windburn.
Tamp Down Acid Reflux
Sodium bicarbonate helps fight the extra acid that might rise from your stomach up to your throat and even your mouth after you eat. You can buy it over-the-counter as a chewable tablet. Or drink your own homemade antacid by mixing a half-teaspoon of baking soda in 1/2 cup of water. Talk to a doctor before you give it to kids under 6, or if you start to use it regularly along with other medication.
Facial Scrub
Baking soda is mildly abrasive. Use it as a gentle face cleanser. Wash and rinse first with soap and water. Then, make a paste of three parts baking soda to one part water. Rub it in carefully in circles for a deep clean. Rinse with water.
Clarify Your Hair
Mix a teaspoon of baking soda with your favorite shampoo to remove buildup from sprays, gels, conditioners, and other products. Your hair won't just be cleaner, it may become easier to style, too.
Soften Your Skin
Add a half-cup of baking soda to your bathwater. It will neutralize acids, wash away sweat and oil, and leave your skin silky smooth. Bonus: After you dry off, you can use a bit more of the stuff to scour the tub clean!
Clean Your Child's Toys
>You can use baking soda instead of harsh chemicals to get grime off your baby tray, highchair, and toys.
You can use baking soda instead of harsh chemicals to get grime off your baby's tray, highchair, and toys. Remember that it doesn't kill germs. But you can pair it with vinegar, which works as a disinfectant. Be sure to rinse well.
Freshen Dentures
Dissolve 2 teaspoons of baking soda into a cup of warm water. Then just soak your dentures to loosen food, get rid of odors, and freshen any lingering bad taste. It also works for retainers and mouth guards. For a more thorough job, clean them with some bicarbonate and a toothbrush.
For Some Young Drivers, Smartphone Use Is One of Many Bad Habits
Young drivers who cruise down the highway with a cellphone in hand probably exhibit other risky behind-the-wheel behaviors, a new study suggests.
Talking or texting on a smartphone while driving correlates with a whole range of dangerous driving practices for many young, novice drivers -- from intoxicated driving to speeding, unsafely passing other vehicles or running red lights, said researchers from Lero, the Science Foundation Ireland Research Centre for Software.
They surveyed 700 young drivers in Germany about smartphone use and driving behavior. Their average age was 21. Germans can drive a car alone at 18.
"In Germany, young people are twice as likely to be involved in and cause vehicle accidents compared to their older and more experienced counterparts," noted study author Tim Jannusch, a researcher at the Institute for Insurance Studies of TH Köln in Germany and a PhD student at the University of Limerick in Ireland.
"What the research tells us is that a major issue here is driver distraction. And this issue became much more important since a smartphone became a focal part of young people's everyday life," he added.
Though the study focused on young drivers in Germany, it may point to potentially risky behavior in other countries, including the United States.
The World Health Organization calls car crashes the leading cause of death for people age 15 to 29. Smartphone use is a significant contributing factor, according to the study.
Study data showed a moderately strong correlation between driving about 12 miles per hour over the speed limit in urban areas and talking on a cellphone. Also, a sizable number of young drivers hid their phones while driving, deliberately disobeying the law, the European researchers said.
These attitudes can have fatal consequences for the drivers themselves and others on the road, they noted.
A high percentage of young drivers used their phone to play music in the car, Jannusch said. He said the fact that drivers are allowed to change the car stereo while driving implies that changing or searching for music is safe. It's not, he added.
"Those behaviors, especially the use of smartphones to manage the music, may be much more distracting than just a phone call while driving because the issue now is you need to focus your eyes on the phone, your hands away from the steering wheel on your phone, and also your cognitive distraction on your phone," Jannusch said.
He noted that countermeasures are needed.
Jannusch would like to see big tech companies use sensors to block specific applications for young drivers when their vehicles are in motion. Insurance companies can financially nudge high-risk young drivers to adapt their behavior, researchers said. Car manufacturers bear a responsibility, too, he said -- building entertainment systems into vehicles sends the wrong message.
It's important to have public education and behavior modeling that helps make talking and texting while driving as socially unacceptable as drinking and driving, said David Reich, public relations director for the National Road Safety Foundation in New York City.
Making that happen comes down to tough laws on cellphone use while driving, enforcement and public education, said Reich.
"As much as people seem to know and understand that distracted driving, that cellphone use, even hands-free cell phone use, is a distraction, people also have to understand that distraction is so much more than cellphone use," Reich said.
"It's things like changing the station or changing music on the radio or the iPod. It's eating and drinking while you're in the car," he said. "And I think the biggest distraction is talking to other people in the car, and this is especially true for young people, for teen drivers, for new drivers."
This is why many states have graduated driver licensing laws that restrict teens from driving with other teens for a period of time, Reich said.
Parents' actions are important, too, for modeling safe driving to their kids.
"That's one way that parents and adults can help create a new generation of safer drivers by being good and safe drivers themselves," Reich added.
The study results were published recently in the journal Transportation Research Part F.