Take two powdery green capsules a day and your breath will smell better, your underarm odor will be gone and foot perspiration will be zapped before it starts, “giving you the assurance that you still smell great long after your morning routine.”
This is what Body Mint, available at Whole Foods and Longs Drugs, promises on its bottle. Looks interesting, so I thought I’d see if it works. I should have read the warning label first.
I took my first Body Mint pill the night after eating a plate of ravioli in a garlicky cream sauce — a pungent challenge to test the pill’s strength.
The capsules countered with a pungent spell of their own, reminiscent of the insides of a fresh pumpkin. Each is coated in a dark dust that leaves your finger tips tinted green and contains 100 mg of chlorophyllin, a derivative of chlorophyll. Yes, that’s the same chlorophyll plants use in photosynthesis to obtain energy from light.
The website for Body Mint doesn’t explain exactly how the pills are supposed to help bad odor. It does say that the product was developed in Hawaii to help people who have halitosis and B.O. from the tropical climate.
A Body Mint rep said the company has done extensive testing on the product and found it is effective, but they don’t release results of the tests because they were not published in a peer-reviewed journal.
“From our perspective, we are a dietary supplement,” Body Mint manager Rona Yim said. “We don’t claim to be any kind of a drug or help any medical condition.”
Still, she would say that they sell tens of thousands of bottles of the product in Hawaii alone.
“People who take Body Mint have way more confidence about how they’re smelling at any given time, no matter what they’ve been through,” Lim said.
Too good to be true? I wouldn’t know.
By the time I took the second pill in the morning, the cramps already had started. And by noon, my stomach was in knots.
The bottle advises you to take this pill for a month before judging whether it works. I didn’t last a full day.
So I asked Dr. Wadie Najm, an expert in acupuncture, dietery supplements and mind-body medicine at UC Irvine’s Susan Samueli Center for Integrative Medicine, to weigh in. Here’s his take:
Chlorophyll is well known for its role providing the green pigmentation in plants. It is traditionally used for a variety of conditions such as improving body odors emanating from urine, wounds and colostomy bags. Interest in chlorophyll is also expanded to use in detoxification, support in certain cancer prevention or treatments, treatment of herpes and certain inflammatory conditions among others.
Although the use of chlorophyll for the prevention of body odors is supported by historical and popular use, science yields very sparse evidence to support this practice. A few small studies were reported in the 1950s and 1980s suggesting a limited benefit of chlorophyll in controlling body and fecal odors. At the doses used 75-200mg daily it was well tolerated without major side effects.
I contacted the company to discuss their work and the science in this area. Unfortunately by the time this was submitted I did not receive an answer from them.
At $19.95 for a bottle of 60 pills (with possible side effects of cramping and diarrhea), I wouldn’t waste your money. But if you do decide to take it (or give it as a gag gift to a friend) let us know how it works out.
About the Human Lab Rat
We test the products that seem strange, amusing or too good to be true so that you don’t have to. And we ask doctors for their take. Seen something you’d like us to try out? Email Human Lab Rat at jmuir@ocregister.com.
