How to Choose the Best Natural Deodorant

This article was updated on January 22, 2024

So, you’ve made the decision to start using safer, more natural products in your life.

Or you’re at least thinking about starting to get ready to make that switch. Way to go! I know how hard it can be to make a change in your routine, especially with products like deodorant that you’ve used since you hit those rough adolescent years.

Think about it - if you’re in your thirties or beyond, you’ve probably been using the same toxic deodorant for decades. That’s 20, 30, or 40 years of chemicals and toxins building up in your body, eager to cause damage in every way possible.

Even with the desire to protect your body from toxic ingredients, making a lasting change can be downright tough.

How do you find the best natural deodorant? Which one will work for you? What ingredients actually have the power to stop your body odor?

In the past, these questions might have stopped you from making the changes you knew were best for your body, but not anymore! I have all of the answers you need to start using the best all natural deodorant and liberate your body from dangerous toxins.

Why Does Our Sweat Stink?

Our body is equipped with two unique types of sweat glands. The first, eccrine glands, help lower our core temperature and cool our body by bringing fluid to the surface of your skin. We know this fluid as the clear, salty, odorless sweat that drips from our forehead during an intense workout or sweltering summer day.

Eccrine glands are located all over the body to equalize the cooling process, which explains why it’s not just our forehead that sweats, but our back, legs, and arms too!

The second type of sweat gland, the apocrine glands, aren’t scattered across our body like eccrine glands. Instead, they’re only located within areas of dense hair growth like our armpits and groin. They release a milkier type of sweat into the hair follicles sitting under the surface of our skin.

The dark, warm, moist environment of our armpits offers the ultimate habitat for bacteria. As we go through our normal day, bacteria thrive and reproduce in the underarm region. Once oour body temperature rises, all of that bacteria immediately breaks down the sweat produced from our apocrine glands.

Bacteria produce a substance called thioalcohols when they break down oour sweat. Unfortunately, thioalcohols carry a pungent and unpleasant odor as they evaporate from oour armpits. The result? Body odor that we desperately want to eliminate.

The Rise of Deodorants and Antiperspirants

Deodorant and antiperspirants weren’t always so easy to find on the store shelves. They were actually inspired by a surgeon from Cincinnati who invented a liquid product to keep his hands sweat-free in the operating room.

That surgeon’s daughter, Edna Murphey, discovered the liquid also stopped her armpits from becoming so sweaty and smelly, so she launched a company to sell this innovative antiperspirant she dubbed Odorono.

In their early years, deodorant and antiperspirants used harsh and inconvenient ingredients, and most men and women were hesitant to even try them. Odorono was a bright red acid formulation that could eat its way through clothes or severely irritate sensitive skin. It’s main competitor, the deodorant Mum, was a thick cream that left a sticky, greasy residue on skin and clothing.

Despite its downfalls, Odorono managed to weasel its way into the marketplace by labeling excessive perspiration as an embarrassing medical ailment. In fact, Odorono developed an entire marketing campaign to convince women that sweating was a social faux pas that caused unpopularity.

It didn’t take long for other companies to mimic Odorono’s marketing strategy of exploiting female insecurities. As anti-sweat technology evolved, so did these companies. You can see the results simply by walking down the personal care aisle of your local drugstore. We have so many deodorant and antiperspirant options, and while they at least don’t use acid formulations anymore, many ingredients like aluminum are still dangerous to our health.

What Are the Benefits of Natural Deodorant?

Sales of natural deodorants are climbing steadily, and when you consider the major benefits of these aluminum-free products, it’s easy to see why!

Using natural deodorant isn’t just a way to buck the huge corporations and their $18 billion monopoly on toxic personal care products. It’s also a way to improve your own health and embrace more confidence in your body.

Natural Deodorant Is Free From Toxic Ingredients

If you’re currently using a regular name brand deodorant, I dare you to glance at the ingredients on the label. Sure, that deodorant might keep your pits dry and smelling powder fresh, but at what cost? There’s an ugly truth lurking within standard deodorant ingredients.

Aluminum

Most deodorants are also formulated as antiperspirants, which means they block sweat production in your underarms by plugging your sweat ducts with aluminum.

This is bad news! Your body is designed to sweat through the armpits as one of many important detoxification outlets. When you can’t sweat, your body can’t purge toxins. Instead, your antiperspirant traps those toxins inside, where they travel into your lymph nodes and contribute to harmful cellular changes.

Even worse, research links aluminum to a range of health complications and diseases, particularly gene instability in breast tissue that may promote the growth of tumors and cancer cells. In fact, the use of aluminum-based antiperspirants has caused aluminum to be measured at higher levels in breast structures than in the blood. Such potent levels of aluminum are believed to increase the invasion of human breast cancer cells.

Could this partially explain why more than 40,000 women in the United States are expected to die each year from breast cancer? Could it shed light on the fact that breast cancer is one of the two most commonly diagnosed cancers among American women?

Aluminum is also closely linked to Alzheimer’s disease and other forms of dementia. Research shows that aluminum functions as a neurotoxin in the following ways:

• Sneaks into the brain using other transport mechanisms
• Accumulates in selective tissues in the brain
• Promotes inflammation in the brain
• Causes cellular energy deficits
• Triggers neurodegenerative hallmarks that define dementia

So what does all of this boil down to? When we use standard deodorants and antiperspirants, we are literally plugging our body with aluminum, the exact substance linked to severe health complications and diseases. I don’t know about you, but this doesn’t sound like the greatest plan to me!

The best natural deodorants don’t include any aluminum, so you can stop your armpit stink without endangering your body.

Triclosan

Triclosan is an ingredient added to many common consumer products, especially personal care products like deodorant and toothpaste. Proponents of triclosan claim that it reduces or prevents bacterial contamination, but research shows that the dangers of triclosan outweigh any potential benefits.

Even the FDA has stated that triclosan is “not generally recognized as safe” due to insufficient proof of its long-term benefits. Studies show the potential for triclosan to nurture antibiotic-resistant bacteria and interfere with thyroid hormone production and bacterial growth in your gut.

Parabens

Parabens are artificial preservatives found not just in your standard deodorant but also in moisturizer, sunscreen, hair products, and countless other personal care products. Just like aluminum, parabens are estrogenic chemicals, which means they mimic estrogen as they interact with the hormones in your body.

One study reported that parabens were found in 160 tissue samples collected from 40 mastectomies, while another study found parabens in 18 of 20 tissue samples from human breast tumors.

Sure, these findings can be labeled as “coincidence” by nay-sayers since scientists haven’t yet established a definitive link between parabens and cancer, but the evidence is extremely concerning. It’s enough to make more and more men and women select natural deodorant for the first time.

All Natural Deodorant Is More Effective

I meet so many people who are apprehensive to try all natural deodorant because they assume it won’t be strong enough to handle their body odor. If you’re one of those people, you’ll be surprised to learn that natural deodorant is actually more effective than standard aluminum-based deodorant! You just need to give your body a few weeks to adjust.

Think of it this way - if you decided to improve your eating habits and suddenly switched from Burger King and McDonald's to wholesome home cooked meals, your body wouldn’t transform into the picture of perfect health overnight. You’d need time to reverse the damage caused by years of poor eating choices, right?

The same goes for your armpits! When you start transitioning to all natural deodorant, your pores and cells will need a few weeks to detox aluminum, parabens, and other common chemicals lurking in your old deodorant. It takes time and patience, but it’s completely worth it in the end to enjoy a deodorant that delivers results without harming your health.

Deodorant and Antiperspirants Might Actually Make You Smell Worse

I know, it sounds crazy, but don’t roll your eyes at me just yet.

Since deodorants use antimicrobial substances to kill bacteria and antiperspirants plug sweat glands with aluminum-based compounds, they both alter and impact the natural bacteria living in your underarms.

While it’s true that those natural bacteria cause your armpits to smell, recent research suggests that messing with the bacteria could make odors worse in the long run! As you kill bacteria and block sweat, you directly change the habitat of your armpit bacteria, potentially causing worse, even smellier bacteria to appear.

Studies have found that antiperspirants kill off the “nicer”, less potent bacteria and allow aggressive bacteria to dominate in their place with much harsher odors. This creates a vicious circle of dependency on the products that are cause the problem in the first place!

There’s only one logical solution: detoxify your sweat glands with natural deodorant. New skin cells take about one month to develop, so don’t be alarmed if it takes that long for all of your extra-smelly sweat and bacteria to work its way out of your body. If you can survive those few weeks, you’ll be able to enjoy the rest of your life using safe and effective all natural deodorant.

Natural Ingredients Can Improve Your Skin

You might like to flaunt your legs or your smile, but your armpits? Not so much. After slathering toxic deodorant on your armpits for the last few decades, your skin under there might be dry, damaged, or covered in razor burn.

Believe it or not, the nourishing ingredients in all-natural deodorant can improve the quality of your skin and help you feel a bit less dread when raising your arm to wave help or finish a bench press. Ingredients like essential oils, hemp seed oil, coconut oil, and plant extracts will kill bacteria hiding in your armpits and keep your skin strong, healthy, and toxin-free.

Your Wallet Will Thank You

We all have preconceived notions about natural and organic products, especially when it comes to price. It’s easy to jump to the conclusion that natural deodorant will cost more than its regular toxic counterpart, but hold on for a minute.

Take the time to do a side-by-side comparison, and you’ll see that a safe, natural deodorant is actually comparable to a standard deodorant.

Why? Because the best natural deodorants only contain the active ingredients that work with your body to reduce odor. So, while the amount of deodorant might look the same as a commercial brand, you actually apply so much less of your natural deodorant that it lasts two to three times longer!

Just look at my favorite, Stick Up Natural Deodorant, which lasts as long as six months with recommended use. That’s a major win for your wallet.

Even if your natural deodorant does cost a few dollars more than your average commercial brand, you ultimately save money over time while also investing in your health and avoiding the consequences of toxic ingredients. It’s hard to argue with that kind of logic.

The Best Natural Deodorants Are Environmentally Friendly

Hey, it’s not just your body that you care about, it’s the environment as well. Most of the best all natural deodorants use packaging that support sustainability with renewable sources and recyclable materials. Cardboard containers in particular demonstrate a natural deodorant brand’s desire to maintain a smaller carbon footprint.

How to Pick The Best Natural Deodorant

We’re lucky that we have so many natural deodorant options available, but it can be confusing to find the right one. Use these tips to select the best all natural deodorant for your body.

Find An All Natural Deodorant Without Baking Soda

If you have sensitive skin, watch out for natural deodorants that use baking soda to neutralize odor. Baking soda might be a clever hack to keep your refrigerator smelling fresh, but it can wreak havoc on your armpits by disrupting your pH balance and triggering painful, itchy rashes.  Better to go with a baking soda free formula.

Look For Certain Natural Ingredients

Keep in mind that the term “natural” isn’t regulated by the FDA, so it’s easy for companies to claim their products are “natural”, even if they’re anything but. The best way to evaluate the natural safety of a product is to investigate its ingredients label.

Look for the following nourishing ingredients that actually enhance and support your health while also stopping bad odors:

• Aloe vera to nourish and soothe your skin
• Magnesium to naturally neutralize odor, especially on sensitive skin
• Zinc oxide to protect the skin and combat body odor
• Kaolin clay to remove impurities from pores and control unwanted bacteria
• Activated charcoal to absorb harmful substances and enhance detoxification
• Arrowroot powder to absorb moisture
• Organic coconut oil to keep skin feeling moisturized and kill fungi, yeast, and bacteria

All of these safe, natural, and super effective ingredients create the results you want without the negative side effects of normal deodorants that use toxic ingredients. Score!

What To Expect When Switching to Natural Deodorant

Once you’ve made the determination to go all natural (high five!), you’ll need to know what to expect. Since natural deodorant functions differently than regular deodorant, you risk being confused or surprised by the changes unless you’re prepared for them to occur.

You’ll Feel Sweatier At First

I know, this seems totally counter-intuitive, but there’s a logical reason behind it! Without aluminum-based antiperspirant blocking your sweat glands and clogging your pores, your body will actually be able to sweat like normal! Chances are that your body will even sweat more than usual because it’s finally, finally able to breathe.

Don’t worry, just reapply your deodorant as needed throughout the day. Eventually your system will balance out and won’t need to sweat excessively to stay cool.

You Might Notice More Body Odor As Your Body Detoxifies

Along with all of that extra sweat might come extra body odor. This is actually caused by detoxification as your sweat glands have a new and unprecedented opportunity to push toxins out of the sweat glands in your armpits.

Detoxification is a good thing, so be patient! It might take a few days or weeks for those nasty toxins to expel themselves and allow your perspiration process to find its balance.

Tips For Transitioning to Natural Deodorant

I just finished telling you that switching to a natural deodorant will make you sweatier and smellier during your first few weeks of use, but never doubt that you’re making the right decision by switching! Here are a few helpful tips and tricks that I always share with people transitioning to natural deodorant.

Be Patient During Your Natural Deodorant Adjustment Period

The detoxification process that you experience during the transition from standard to natural deodorant can be annoying, but it’s well worth it in the end! Your body will expel years and years of toxins and bacteria buildup, which is exactly why switching to a natural deodorant is one of the best decisions you’ll ever make. You’ll smell fresh without worrying about any chemicals.

As long as you don’t interrupt your body’s natural sweating process, and you just let it do what it was made to do with the help of a natural deodorant, you’ll reap the (many!) benefits.

Apply Less To Avoid Stains On Your Shirt

Natural deodorant contains natural and powerful oils. These concentrated oils do have the ability to stain your clothes, so just be sure to follow the application guidelines on your natural deodorant. Only apply a few swipes and be sure to rub it into your armpits before use. This simple step will prevent stains while still keeping you fresh.

Resist the Urge to Go Back to “The Dark Side”

I know it’s hard! If you find yourself sweating more than usual, you might think longingly of the convenience of your antiperspirant. Just re-read the major health concerns associated with regular deodorants and antiperspirants and remind yourself that natural is better!

Your extra sweat and odor won’t last for long, but the benefits of embracing a safe and natural product will carry through your entire life. Stick Up Natural Deodorant from Primal Life Organics has your back (and your armpits) on your journey toward better health and naturally fresh underarms. 

Resources

1. http://time.com/4394051/deodorant-antiperspirant-toxic/.
2. https://www.cancer.gov/about-cancer/causes-prevention/risk/myths/antiperspirants-fact-sheet.
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4. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5651828/.
5. https://www.webmd.com/breast-cancer/features/antiperspirant-facts-safety#1.
6. https://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2016/02/17/deodorant-chemicals.aspx.
7. https://cen.acs.org/articles/90/i27/Deodorants-Antiperspirants.html.
8. https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/how-advertisers-convinced-americans-they-smelled-bad-12552404/.
9. https://cen.acs.org/articles/90/i27/Deodorants-Antiperspirants.html.
10. https://www.realclearscience.com/blog/2014/08/antiperspirants_alter_your_armpit_bacteria_and_could_actually_make_you_smell_worse.html
11. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/25077920.
12. https://peerj.com/articles/1605/.
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14. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21157018.
15. https://universityhealthnews.com/daily/memory/aluminum-linked-to-alzheimers-disease/.
16. https://www.fda.gov/cosmetics/productsingredients/ingredients/ucm128042.htm
17. http://time.com/3922814/deodorant-cancer/.