How Does Deodorant Work? - Big Questions (Ep.3)

Hi, I'm Craig. My armpits emit a pleasant essence of lilac, and this is Mental Floss on YouTube

Today I'm going to answer Zara Lure's big question. I've got a question for you. How does deodorant work in terms of antiperspirants and B.O

Well Zerolure, you actually mentioned two substances in your question. Deodorant is a product that masks body odor or B.O. Antiperspirant does the same thing, but it also prevents sweating, which deodorant does not do

And today I'm going to talk to you about both of them. Let's get started. First things first, let's talk about sweat

Let's talk about sweat, baby. Your sweat comes from sweat glands found in different regions of your body

You have millions of these, but we're going to focus on the armpit because that's probably, slash, hopefully, where you're primarily putting deodorant or antiperspirant

The sweat that emerges from those glands actually doesn't smell. Sweat is mostly just water and some minerals like sodium, potassium, and calcium

Body odor comes from the bacteria that lives on your skin, like corine-based, corine bacterium, which breaks sweat down into acids. Unfortunately, these resulting acids

including propionate, well these acids, I'm not going to try to pronounce it. These acids

smell and the hair in this region only amplifies the problem So let move on to how we solve that problem There are a lot of different products with different ingredients out there but I going to explain what in most standard deodorants and antiperspirants Deodorant typically has a fragrance and alcohol The alcohol and deodorant kills the

pesky bacteria that's making you smell. Generally, alcohol will make me smell. Like alcohol

Or vomit, depending on the night. Sometimes deodorant also contains triclosan, which is a compound that slows bacterial growth too. So deodorant is masking the odor

and fighting the bacteria on your skin. Antiperspirants usually also have fragrance and alcohol, but in

addition to those ingredients, they contain an aluminum compound, usually aluminum chlorohydrate

which reduces sweat. These actually clog those sweat glands I described earlier, and that's how

antiperspirants are able to prevent sweating. Just so you know, there are some urban legends

out there that blame aluminum compounds for things like Alzheimer's disease and breast cancer

but there's no evidence that that's true. It is true that they were created by aliens

though. Another note, it's the aluminum compounds in your antiperspirant that causes yellow sweat stains

Ewe, but at least now you know that your sweat isn't yellow. If you have a big question of your own that you'd like answered

leave it below in the comments. Thanks for watching Mental Floss on YouTube. Smell you next week