Gear review: All Terrain natural products protect you from menacing bugs, flora and fauna

All Terrain Products

There is no disputing that the amount of time you spend outdoors has a direct correlation to your health. Exercise, fresh air, absence of stress, the sounds of birds instead of honking car horns, it all adds up to a healthy lifestyle.

Why not heighten your healthy lifestyle with healthy skin products? All Terrain offers a full line of high-performance skin care for hikers, bikers, backpackers, campers, kayakers, skiers and anyone who spends time outdoors that protect skin with chemical-free options.

I tested the following All Terrain products this spring, and here’s what I think:

Herbal Armor Insect Repellent

Herbal Armor Insect Repellent: So much to say about this DEET-free and water- and sweat-resistant bug spray, but not enough time to go on and on and on.

Just to see if a natural insect repellant was effective, I sprayed my left arm and leg with Off (with DEET) and my right arm and leg with Herbal Armor and sat outside on the grass at dusk when the mosquitoes were most prolific. I ended up with a mosquito bite on the back of my neck and the right side of my body was considerably less offensive-smelling.

No appendages had sustained visits or bites from the Culcidae family members of the Diptera order.

My test concludes that Herbal Armor is just as effective as anything with harsher chemicals. The active ingredients are the oils of Citronella (12%) peppermint (2%), cedar (.5%), lemongrass (1%) and germanium (.05%). Inert ingredients are 83.45% water, beeswax, soybean oil, vegetable glycerin, sorbitol, potassium sorbate, citric acid, Vitamin C & E. It should be no wonder that Herbal Armor smells more like Lemon Pledge than a Union Carbide disaster.

Ditch the Itch Cream

Ditch the Itch Cream: If you use the Herbal Armor Insect Repellent, you’d think you wouldn’t need this, right? Wrong. It’s not just creepy-crawlies and flora and fauna that cause your skin to itch. Rashes, eczema, bug bites, two-day old sunburns and phantom itches whose origins offer no reasonable explanation.

Ditch the Itch relieves the itch, any itch and all itches, inside your house, in the back yard, up in the Boundary Waters. I didn’t do any direct comparisons with Ditch the Itch and Cortisone cream because Ditch the Itch did its job—without the harsher chemicals.

Poison Ivy/Oak Cream

Poison Ivy/Oak Cream: This one was a toughie to test. Each time I ventured into the vicinity and presence of poison ivy, my primordial sense of poison ivy avoidance, and memories of previous encounters, won over the temptation to roll around in it for gear testing purposes (Sorry).

But it contains four percent Kaolin Clay for drying and one percent Zinc Oxide to protect skin. Based on my experience with Ditch and Itch and Herbal Armor and the other products I’ve used, I’m confident it will work just as effectively as anything you buy at Walgreens—sans the unnecessary extra chemicals.

Antiseptz Gel

Antiseptz Gel: You can make a concerted effort to avoid cuts, nicks and scratches indoors and out, but many times, your efforts will be Sisyphean at best.

On a mountain biking trip to the Black Hills of South Dakota, I crunched my shin against my pedal and created a semi-gaping wound that bled. It stung (a lot) but cleaned the wound and prevented it from turning into an oozing, festering, infected mess.

I have a lower tolerance for pain than most people so it’s possible that my reaction was more Drama Queenish than reality. This should be in your backpack, your Camelbak, your pocket, and your medicine cabinet.

My overall opinion of All Terrain products? Love ‘em. There’s no reason to not use them. They work just as well, and smell a heck of a lot better, than anything on the market made with harsh chemicals.They are also reasonably priced, too.

Our bodies encounter harsh chemicals every day, most of times without us even knowing about it, so it makes sense to take advantage of any opportunity to use products that are a healthy alternative.

If you live in Minneapolis, you can find All Terrain products at the following retail locations:

• Valley Natural Foods (Burnsville. 952-891-1212)
• REI (Bloomington, 952-884-4315)
• Mississippi Market (St Paul, 651-310-9499)
• Fresh N Natural Foods (Bloomington, 952-228-2840)
• Everyday Goods (Bloomington 952-829-0590)
• Seward Co-op (Minneapolis, 612-338-2465)
• Linden Hills Co-op (Minneapolis)
• North Face (Minneapolis)

If you can’t find specific items at any of the above retailers, you can buy online at All Terrain.