How does natural deodorant actually work?
If you’re a first time Woohoo-her or perhaps still sitting on the fence about making the switch to natural deodorant, then get comfy.
Today we’re going to school you on how natural deo works and why your pits will LOVE it.
DO sweat it
Sweating is your body’s natural way of cooling its temperature.
As your temperature soars, your super-clever sweat glands spring into action, releasing beads of sweat.
But for this cooling process to work, the sweat must evaporate. This is where body heat becomes the hero. It converts beads of sweat into vapour, which does an awesome job at cooling you down.
Yet, despite the fact that sweating is a good thing, it still gets a bad rap.
Why?
Well, people tend to associate sweat with body odour (AKA B.O.). Even though it’s the bacteria on your skin that causes the pongy smell and NOT the sweat itself.
Y’see, your skin is covered in trillions of little microbes, also called your ‘skin flora’.
The “good” bacteria – staphylococci – don’t make much of an odour, but the “bad” kind – corynebacterium – are responsible for odour. They munch on the proteins and fats in your sweat and create a pungent odour.
So for healthy and non-smelly armpits your goal should be to have more of the good bacteria than bad bacteria, because they help keep the bad bacteria from running rampant (even when you’re not wearing deodorant).
It’s likely that your regular antiperspirant could be making your BO worse!
At the first whiff of stinky BO, people tend to reach for the strongest deodorant or antiperspirant they can find.
But did you know that traditional antiperspirants tend to clog pores and make it harder for your body to sweat the way it needs to?
That’s because they use ingredients such as aluminium salts to stop your body’s natural sweating process temporarily.
As well as blocking your sweat glands, the aluminium salts also tend to reduce the amount of good bacteria on your skin’s surface, leaving the smellier “bad” bacteria to become dominant.
This means that antiperspirant can actually make you smell WORSE in the long run.
Using natural deodorant to combat armpit whiff
Natural deodorant, on the other hand, helps to prevent odour by creating an environment that the bad bacteria either (a) can’t survive in, or (b) can’t consume the proteins and fats in your sweat (so there’s no resultant smell). This allows your body to sweat the way it should, minus the odour.
Woohoo All Natural Deodorant calls on the burly stink-busting and dampness-sopping strength of magnesium, activated charcoal. Diatomaceous earth, and bicarb soda.
Together these ingredients make your skin too alkaline for the bacteria to feed on the proteins and fats delivered through your sweat — so, no smell!
The natural ingredients make it less likely that you'll have skin irritations, and the lack of pore-blocking ingredients means that good bacteria works better and may prevent odour even when you have no deodorant on at all.
Check out this Review of Woohoo Deodorant