“ The first consideration should always be: Does it work?” — Nathan Donley
I VEHEMENTLY disagree with this statement. In my opinion the first consideration should always be: Is it safe and is it natural?
The rule of common sense that I follow is this: Never put anything on your skin that you wouldn’t put in your mouth and eat! Whether you put something on your skin or in your mouth and swallow, it is absorbed by your body. (Why do you think nicotine patches work?) Would you pour yourself a cup of DEET and drink it? It’s the same as slathering it on your skin except that the poisons work a little faster when you drink it.
(The same goes for sunscreen. Would you put a heaping tablespoon of sunscreen in your mouth and swallow it?)
(The same goes for deodorants and anti-perspirants.)
The Native Americans of the Great Plains of Turtle Island have been using an effective and NATURAL mosquito repellent for hundreds, if not thousands, of years. It is sweetgrass. They wove dried sweetgrass into braids and when they burned the braids mosquitoes would run for the hills. They also distilled the sweetgrass into sweetgrass oil which they applied to their skin, their teepees, their clothes, and their horses. They did this because it worked and also because it was a natural remedy given to them by Mother Nature.
But there is not a single health pundit on the internet who dares to mention this. Why? Because it is natural and because it is not manufactured in the chemical laboratories of Big Pharma. No one is making a profit from it and therefore it is not worth mentioning. The internet health pundits want you to believe that all the answers can be found at the pharmacy rather than from Mother Nature.
And then there are bananas. Banana trees produce a NATURAL mosquito repellent that they put into their fruit to keep mosquitoes from laying eggs in the fruit. Every time you eat a banana you are consuming a very NATURAL mosquito repellent. So eat at least one banana every day in the summertime and this can significantly help to repel mosquitoes — provided, of course, that you don’t complement that banana with tons of junk food. Mosquitoes are attracted to humans who eat a lot of junk food.
I could go on and on…. Always use what is most natural. Mother Nature has a remedy for everything. But we in Western Civilization have been conditioned since childhood to ALWAYS reject Mother Nature in favor of something concocted from toxic chemicals in a laboratory.
But protecting ourselves from mosquitoes goes far beyond mere chemistry. There are mental aspects, spiritual aspects, attitude and emotions, and even linguistics. (Yes, that’s right; linguistics.) But I won’t go into that here. I’ve already covered these perspectives in a story I published here on Medium last year. It’s a story you can read here: Bite Me. It’s a story about a teenage girl who was viciously attacked by mosquitoes but the wisdom of the story can be applied to any human. I urge everyone to read it before your next trip to the pharmacy.
