In my life I have travelled into some deep rabbit holes onto the internet looking up crazy stuff. I remember growing up before the internet, and I was around 14 when high speed internet started to take off. It wasn’t until a couple years later that I realized I can literally look up anything I want. As a result, I have heard of pretty much every conspiracy out there.
One of the smaller niches in the conspiracy world is the toxins in our environment niche. It was here that I somehow came across an article talking about toxins in our deodorant. At the time I believe I was using Old Spice antiperspirant. I was getting tired of this stuff because it seemed to always be leaving some kind of stains on my shirts. I thought what the hell and gave the Tom’s natural brand deodorant a try.
The reason for this was that I was walking through whole foods and it looked like the most legit of all the other hippie brands that were there. I looked at the label and saw that it had hops in it. This struck me as funny as I am a fan of home brewing. It wasn’t until recently that I started looking at how hops may be estrogenic and I thought twice about applying it to my underarms.
This was the genesis of my one week no deodorant challenge. I figured why stop at one day? Go a whole week without wearing deodorant and document the results.
Save money by not buying deodorant
One of the things I’m trying to do more of in my life is to cut the stuff that I don’t need. Video games, television, alcohol, and energy drinks were among the biggest things I cut. I’m not doing this out of some idea that cutting these costs will help me with retirement or something, but more of a mental cleaning house. Hell, if I don’t need deodorant, why not cut that as well?
Deodorant is actually pretty inexpensive. It’s about 2 dollars for a stick that will last you around 1-2 months usually. However, your costs go up if you start buying hippie brand deodorant or that axe spray bullshit. These will run you anywhere from 5-7 dollars per stick. That brings us to around 24 dollars per year for regular deodorant and about 84 dollars per year for the hippie brands. I have no idea how fast people go through those axe sprays, but I assume it’s faster then regular deodorant.
Before you scoff at these low numbers, realize that the deodorant is an 18 billion dollar a year industry. Why is this? It’s because everyone is conditioned to apply deodorant every day to their underarms.
What causes you to smell?
Before we get into the pros and cons of deodorant, we should tackle what actually causes you to smell bad. What happens is that bacteria builds up on your body. Your sweat will interact with this bacteria and cause you to smell. That’s it pretty much. So the battle to not smell has usually attacked one area of that equation.
Deodorants work by masking the smell with perfume. Antiperspirants work by blocking your sweat glands stopping you from sweating at all. These are the two major ways of stopping the smell, but some hippie brands like Toms of Maine use hops to kill some of the bacteria. It does this by using hops which have antibacterial properties.
Toxins in traditional deodorant
For the purposes of this article, when I say traditional deodorant I just mean your Speed Stick and Old Spice type brands. Full disclosure, I am not a scientist. So take what I have to say with a grain of salt as I’m just some random guy on the internet. What I can say is that I am a certified Broscientist.
The first toxin I’ll talk about is aluminum. Aluminum’s use in deodorant is it’s ability to clog up sweat glands. This stops you from sweating. They are featured mostly in antiperspirants, but a lot of deodorants are actually both an antiperspirant and a deodorant. What happens is aluminum gets absorbed into the skin and picked up by estrogen receptors in the breast. Some believe this contributes to breast cancer.
Another toxin in deodorants are parabens. Parabens are used as preservatives in order to keep deodorant fresh? I’m not exactly sure why deodorant would need to be fresh, but who cares? This stuff gets into your body and mimics the hormone estrogen. This causes havoc for men by confusing their endocrine systems into believing they are actually women.
Finally, a toxin called propylene glycol is put in deodorants to keep the stuff from drying out. This stuff is also a neurotoxin that will destroy your liver and kidneys. The reason it’s allowed in is because it’s in such low amounts that it’s considered to be safe.
I haven’t done any tests to see if these chemicals were harming me. I have no idea if the stuff was disrupting my hormones or slowly killing my liver. That is the point. If there is any actual damage going on, no one can tell. It may just be a small amount that you don’t realize is hurting you, but after years and years perhaps the damage adds up.
Switched to Tom’s of Maine brand deodorant
Tom’s of Maine brand is a company that markets products to people concerned about their health, hippies, and conspiracy theorists everywhere. I looked on the label of their deodorant and found that the only toxin they have listed from above is propylene glycol. Not as bad as the traditional brands of deodorant, but still a toxin.
I looked further and found that Tom’s of Main contains hops. They put this in to fight the bacteria that interacts with your sweat causing bad odor. The problem with that is that hops are considered to be estrogenic. What this means is that like soy, it gets in your body and mimics the hormone estrogen turning you into a girly man. Like I was mentioning earlier, as a home brewer I was intrigued. Digging a little further, I found some old quotes about the use of hops in beer, and it was very enlightening.
Interestingly, when hops finally DO appear in written history as a preservative in beer, its medicinal purposes are turned on their heads. The Abbess Hildegard of Bingen wrote about hops in the 1150s AD in the “Physica Sacra,” the first documented use of hops in the Germanic region and the first time in history hops were acknowledged as a preservative. She writes, “[The hop plant] is warm and dry, and has moderate moisture, and is not very useful in benefiting man, because it makes melancholy grow in man and makes the soul of man sad, and weighs down his inner organs. But yet, as a result of its own bitterness it keeps some putrefactions from drinks, to which it may be added, so that they may last so much longer
This revelation made me rethink using Tom’s of Maine brand because if it contains estrogen mimicking chemicals just like traditional brands to, what is the point of switching over at all?
Considering Tom’s brand is more expensive and frankly doesn’t last nearly as long as the traditional brands, there really wasn’t any point to using it at all. The only benefit is that it won’t stain your shirts nearly as bad as the traditional ones.
Commonly held beliefs
Due to the internet, a number of commonly held beliefs by people have been decimated. The power of the internet is that it gives everyone a little bit of authority, and at the same time diminishes some authority from the former lords. Some commonly held beliefs are that steroids are bad for you, getting married is a good idea if you are a man, and working a 9-5 for 40 years til retirement is a guarantee.
Another commonly held belief is that you have to wear deodorant every day in order to not stink like shit. Unfortunately this message is taken way too far by hippies who never shower. That is gross. You will hear people spout things on the internet about this or that, but without testing, what is the point? The theory that you don’t need deodorant is nice, but what happens when you actually test it?
I decided after looking at the Tom’s brand ingredients that I wasn’t going to put it on that day and see what happened. This turned into me doing it for a whole week to document the findings.
Conditioning
Besides being a neat and useful little experiment, one of the reasons I decided to try not wearing deodorant was because of conditioning. How is it that everyone learns to use deodorant? The way I learned was that my parents told me to start wearing it because I smelled. But was this really the reason or was it just something they always did?
People didn’t always rub deodorant under their arms, so how was it that we went from then til now where everyone does it? How much of that transition was a marketing campaign from corporations that may or may not be in your best interests? How much of the transition was due to group think? Everyone is doing it, so it must be correct, right?
I’m generally a contrarian minded person, when I see some activity that people are doing without thinking about it, red flags usually go up for me.
Preface to experiment
Full disclosure: I don’t sweat that much. I currently weigh around 170 lbs and have always been on the skinny side. I have had full workouts where I didn’t sweat at all. I know there are some people who tend to sweat more than the average person. If you are someone who sweats profusely, this may not apply to you 100%. Do your own experimentation with my findings.
Experiment parameters
I went through a number of scenarios in the last week in order to get different ideas of what I would smell like. I didn’t want to just do what I normally do, which is sitting at my desk and typing all day. Some days I did just that, but other days I was out playing sports, and I even went to a dance club and cut it up on the dance floor. All in the name of science.
Results
I found the results to be very interesting. I found that my armpits definitely smelled worse than if I was using deodorant for the day, but the difference was so small that in order to tell the difference you would have to stick your face right into my armpits and take a big whiff.
I found that my natural smell isn’t that bad at all, and it makes me wonder what I was trying to hide all these years.
When I was sitting at my computer all day typing, there wasn’t really any difference in smell between using deodorant and not using it. My armpits had no smell at all.
When I was out playing football and running routes, it was only a little bit worse, but nothing that was noticeable to other people. No one was saying I smelled bad, believe me I asked.
When I was out at a nightclub dancing with a bunch of other sweaty people, it got a little worse as well, but again only marginally. I was only able to tell when I took my face right next to the armpit. In order to make sure I wasn’t just glossing over my own funky smell, I asked this girl to give me a smell. After asking me why, I explained my experiment to her. She took a whiff and said I smelled like I didn’t put any deodorant on, but that she couldn’t tell until I asked her.
The worst smell was when I tried to take it as far as I could. I purposely didn’t shower for a day to see how bad it would get, and on the second day it got really bad. If you go without showering it will unquestionably get noticed by other people. The key here is that if you are going without deodorant, you have to absolutely make sure you shower every day and wash well under your arms with soap. I realize that a lot of the same toxins that are in deodorants are in soaps as well, just make sure you use a soap made from coconut oil or something.
Bottom Line
My analysis is that if you are showering every day, using deodorant is mostly useless. Why waste money and face possible long term health hazards by using deodorant if it will only give you a marginal enhancement in the way you smell?
I may go back to using deodorant here and there if I know I’ll be at an event where I will be sweating, like a wedding. Other than that, I think I’ll just skip using deodorant from now on. It’s just not necessary for me.
For you, you’ll need to do your own experimentation and your own risk/benefit analysis, but for me, I find deodorant to be highly overrated.
I agree. I haven’t used deodorant in 4 and a half years now as a result of reducing the amount of toxins I put on and in my body and no one can tell the difference. only times I use deodorant is when I’m going to weddings. I think because I have relatively good hygiene (shower daily and no underarm hair) rarely need it.
That’s funny you should mention that because I recently started juicing. Could have a serious positive impact on my odor.
You are *just a little* off the base on your description of propylene glycol, there, bro.
Propylene glycol, a diol / essentially a doubled alcohol molecule — is not a toxin in any quantity you could absorb through deodorant. In fact, it’s commonly used as a solvent in medicines, be they injections, oral, or topical. It is in your ice cream, your soda, your BEER. It is the smoke in smoke machines in dance clubs… it is the ‘vape’ in e-cigarettes…
Your body processes PG just like it does alcohol, though you never consume it in amounts anywhere near the amount of alcohol you get in just one can of PBR.
The recognized minimum toxicity level for PG is a 4g/L blood plasma level. This is impossible to reach without quite literally drinking a jug of the stuff. As a food additive it is limited to 1g/kg of product. A 160lb man has roughly 5L of blood plasma. I am larger, just over 200lb, so let’s say I have 6L of plasma. That means that to reach the minimum level at which PG *might* cause some toxicity, I’d have to eat about 25kg of food all at once containing the absolute maximum allowable amount in every bite.
Just pointing out that you need to fact-check, being so very wrong about one item in your list makes me question the validity of your other claims.
Thank you for pointing that out. Feel free to question the validity of all my other claims.
There are also studies that show that people can be reactive to the propylene gycol in regards to skin reactions and sensitivities. There are also studies that have shown results with increased toxicity with repeated ingestion or skin contact over a period of time. So he isn’t completely wrong. He is just trying to say that there really isn’t anything good in conventional antiperspirant for a person’s body. I personally, just think that we need to be careful with that area considering it is a sensitive one where there is bound to be a level of chafing that doesn’t otherwise exist with say, your shin.
And btw, that’s a fallacy in your argument–that because he was wrong on one tertiary point, that his whole theory is wrong. Is it just being right and smarter than everyone in the room, that is so important? I’m sure you have never made an incorrect statement in your life.
Thanks Ruth. That guy may be completely right about propylene glycol, but he missed the disclaimer at the beginning of the section. “Full disclosure, I am not a scientist. So take what I have to say with a grain of salt as I’m just some random guy on the internet. What I can say is that I am a certified Broscientist.” What I’m saying is there are a lot of toxins in the enviornment, and something that may only effect us a little may add to the total toxic load our bodies incur. Of course, how little or how much it effects us depends on how much you trust the authorities who make the rules and tell everyone it’s ok. Myself, I like to experiment and go with my own experience. That was how this article came about.
I haven’t been using deodorant/antiperspirant in about a year and found that my pits sweat less and don’t stink at all. My armpits are definitely drier. Antiperspirant was never a 100% sweat stopper for me. I stopped using it because I developed a rash in one armpit. I switched to Tom’s and it seemed to get better, but then the rash came back. I noticed a small amount of itch in the other armpit as well. My SIL had told me of her allergy/rash to antiperspirants and her desperate search for one that wouldn’t cause her to react. I decided to instead to do away with them altogether. I am so much happier and feel freer. I can’t believe that they rarely sweat even in the summer!
I got a news flash for you anti-deodorant people. You smell. Horrible. The people in your lives are trying to be nice by not saying anything. I am not one of those people. You stink. And the reason your parents told you to put on deodorant, are the same reasons I told my teenage son to wear deodorant. Because he stunk.
There’s probably something funnier than the theory on estrogen and deodorant. Probably.
Embrace my warm musk Travis.
Just found your blog, and love your writing style. Still in the process of getting my site and products ready to launch. But this response just gave you another subscriber. Cheers Tate.
Thanks Aidan, more to come. Let me know your site and I’ll check it out.
That is not always the case. Sometimes, genetically, people don’t smell at all. Asians for example. Statistics show that Asians smell less than members of other races. And there are also many other natural alternatives that might also be right in your house.
Hmm, very interesting. I wasn’t aware of that aspect of Asians. As for natural alternatives, check out this other article I wrote. https://strivingforfreedom.com/best-deodorant-alternative/
I loved this article and THANK YOU! I saw so many articles about how ‘dirty’ people who don’t wear deodorant are, it’s insulting that some assume that a person who doesn’t wear deodorant is somehow less clean. Most likely we would shower more often. Lol Either way, there will be people who complain about those who go against whatever cultural norm exists. I wonder WHY it makes them so mad?? Again, thanks for this article.
It’s not the deodorant use that is the problem, it’s showering. I know that there are people who don’t wear deodorant that smell really bad, but it’s most likely because they also don’t shower. Some people are mad because they like getting mad. Usually they are bored.
I used to sweat a lot more when I wore aluminum antiperspirant/deodorant combos. I have used Toms and several other organic ones. Some work better than others for me. Actually, I smell better with an organic deodorant. They deodorize the sweat better. An antipersiprant/deodorant leaves me soaked and smelling like BO. Very unusual that the traditional method is less effective, personally speaking.
Hey thanks for commenting, I wrote a follow up article testing the power of using baking soda as deodorant. Baking soda blows everything away. You’ll still sweat, but there will be absolutely zero odor. My mind is still blown how effective this is. Here’s my article – https://strivingforfreedom.com/best-deodorant-alternative/
I’m in my mid-fifties, and I have never been in the habit of wearing deodorant. I think I put some on once or twice years ago, when I was in sales. But other than that, it never occurred to me to spend the time and money on chemicals for my body. Soap is enough. Nobody complains about my smell, and in my work they definitely would say something if it were a problem.
Hey good article , stumbled upon this looking for some info , I stopped using deoderant for a few weeks with no problem smelling but I developed a rash under the arms ,maybe it’s detoxing ,can’t find any info on it people usually develop rashes when using then stop
Hmmm interesting. I didn’t develop any rash so I can’t really speak on it. If you’re looking for an awesome alternative to deodorant, try baking soda. It’s incredible!
Just thought I’d share something that works for me. I’m a female, hairless underarms (laser removed aka not naturally),I’d say I sweat low/medium and I live in a hot climate. I no longer use deodorant not only for similar reasons to you but also they simply gave my underarms a weird smell and discoloration. In fact, it seemed the overload of deodorants were causing more bacteria. Now I clean with baby soap and a little peroxide and pat on a dash of baking soda. It works amazing. Literally zero smell even after a jog in 90 degree weather. My ad hoc science? Peroxide kills bacteria (and bonus lightens dark armpits a bit if needed), baking soda kills odor, and baby soap is…well…soap. any soap would do I just.like baby soap, low in scented junk and cheaper than hippie soap. I shower 1X a day usually. The bacteria cause smell, sweat has almost no smell. I agree that a veggie/ fruit rich diet helps big time too.
Tanya, great advice. I have started using just baking soda and it works pretty damn good. Masks all odor for at least 24 hours. Only a couple bucks for a box that will last you literally years.
I don’t use deodorant, but I use vodka under my armpits each morning, reapply once during the middle of the day and once at night if I’m going out.. and I use a tiniest dash of perfume on my clothes. People always say I smell nice. Even random people come up to me and say I smell good.
The smell of alcohol evaporates immediately (when it dries), but since vodka kills 99% of bacteria, it eliminates ALL smell. So when I wear perfume, I only smell clean and the notes of the perfume can come out without being overpowered with other deodorant smells.
Vodka is the shit, people!
If you’re the kind of person who gets super sweaty, just spritz on more vodka. Or if you still feel dirty take a cave man shower in a handicap toilet or any lockable toilet with a sink… (just take off your top and wash your armpits with soap) dry off and you’re good to go again.
Rather do that once a day than get breast cancer.
Very interesting method you have there. Give baking soda a chance to compare the two next time you get a chance. Works great for me!
I used to use Tom’s religiously. Switched to Lavilin last year – WAY better.
Nice, you should give baking soda a try, works wonders!
I work at a restaurant and there was a gentleman who smelled up a good 15 foot perimeter around him in the ourdoor patio. Now that is impressive body funk.
I haven’t been using deoderant on a regular basis for at least a decade.
I haven’t gone as far as trying alternative deoderants, alcohol, baking soda like others. A stick of old spice can and will last me over a year. I usually shower right before work. In the off chance i work hard enough to get musty im already headed home or anticipated it and put some deoderant on.
A shower and common sense goes a long way. Fortunately i am thin and swaet minimally.
Hahaha some people have no idea. Give baking soda a try next time you take a shower. I’m blown away at how well it works.
Cool article, I love to see people questioning ingrained notions of what it means to be “hygienic.” I haven’t used deodorant in over a year and I’ve used just about every natural alternative that’s out there– baking soda, vinegar, witch hazel, peroxide, fancy organic deodorants, and so on. The one that works without fail for me is a slice of lemon. It keeps odor away for at least a day. You still sweat, which is healthy, but have no odor. It works because the bacteria that creates odor cannot survive in an acidic environment, which the lemon creates. And it’s a lemon, so it’s about as natural as it comes. Baking soda also works well but many people find their skin becomes irritated after prolonged use.
Hmm a lemon, nice! I think that would produce a very nice smell as well. I’ve used baking soda for a while now and haven’t found it irritating yet, perhaps I’m just lucky. It could also be that others are rubbing it in too hard.
All you need is to replace the smelly bacteria with one that doesn’t seem to have much odor if none at all. I found this out by accident with Natto. I found shortly after I ate Natto sushi at a sushi bar that my need for the annoying deodorant was no more. It’s been say 5-6yrs that I’ve not had to use deodorant and I’m glad.
So if you eat Natto a lot, you don’t smell? Interesting, I’ll have to look into it!
i dont use “deodorant” …..stopped a long time ago. The only thing I use is coconut oil….works wonderfully. There is more to it though I believe. I am a believer that nutrition plays a huge part in your body odors.
That’s interesting because I think coconut oil has a similar anti bacterial property to it that baking soda does. So I wonder if it’s doing the same thing in killing the bacteria that causes odor.