EP57. Do Natural Deodorants Work?

Welcome to Green Beauty Conversations, the podcast that challenges you to think about how you buy, use, make and sell your natural beauty formulations. We tackle topics that will make you think and encourage debate about green beauty with your friends, followers or customers. I'm your host, Lorraine Dallmeyer. I'm a chartered environmentalist, biologist and the CEO of award winning online organic cosmetic formulation school Formula Botanica. We have thousands of students in 170 countries worldwide who study with us to become organic beauty formulators and entrepreneurs. Visit our website@formulabotanica.com to try our free online formulation course. Today's podcast looks at the topics of sweat, shame and deodorants. Society is constantly telling us that sweat is undesirable and that we should seek to try and avoid sweating as it's seen as something dirty and uncivilized. But should we be ashamed of our body's natural function or should we look to work with it? And what types of deodorants are there out there on the market? I'm joined by Ada Juratovsky, co founder of Nala Care, an indie beauty brand based in Vancouver, Canada which makes them sells a line of natural deodorants and other personal care products. Their formulations marry science with nature, providing high quality effective products and encouraging deep self care. Welcome to the podcast, Ada. It's fantastic to have you with us.

Thank you so much Lorraine. I am so honored to be here.

So let's get straight into the topic that we want to talk about today. We're going to be talking about sweat and shame and deodorants and the whole package. So let's talk about the different types of sweat sweat first. Can you run us through them?

Yeah, absolutely. There are two main types of sweat. So there's our physiological sweat or what we call cooling sweat. And this is essentially very precise type of bodily mechanism that ultimately just responds to cool our body temperature down. So it will respond to an increase in external body temperature, such as a warm day, but also internal body temperatures, such as something out of physical activity, like when we're exercising. Then there is psychological sweat or stress sweat. What's fascinating is it functions completely differently than cooling sweat. And you know, for the purpose of the podcast, I'll just probably stick to cooling and stress sweat. Otherwise it becomes a bit of a tongue twister with physiological, psychological and all of that. But stress sweat is actually a response to emotions. So most commonly this is a response to something like stress, anxiety, pain. It can also be a response to things like excitement. But we most commonly see it with that nervous feeling we get. Yeah, those are the two main types.

So why do we sweat then? I know you've already touched a little bit on it, but what is the main reason behind it?

This is actually so fascinating, too. I think sweat. I'm so excited to be talking about this. But even the reason why we sweat differs based on what is triggering this sweat. So for cooling sweat, and maybe even to back up a little bit, we have millions of sweat glands all over our body. And 2 to 4 million, I think they say, on average. And it covers literally our entire surface area of our body, which in and of itself is fascinating. So our cooling sweat comes out of eccrine sweat glands. And like I said, they really serve to regulate our body temperature. And the way that it works is once there's even a subtle difference to our environment, our autonomic system is triggered. We release sweat from our eccrine glands, and essentially the sweat is a mix of water and sodium with tiny bits of trace materials. But more or less, it's virtually odorless. It sits on the surface of our skin, quickly evaporates. And it's the moisture. It's the evaporation of this moisture that causes us to cool down.

Stress.

Sweat functions completely differently. And what it is, they come out of a different sweat gland altogether. They come out of an apocrine sweat gland. And also these can be found all over our body, but they're really concentrated in areas like our armpits, the palms of our hands, our groins, our face. So areas that might get a little sweatier when we are stressed. And the type of sweat that this releases is more of like a milky fluid, and it's actually a mixture of fatty acids and protein, so it's harder to break down. And this sweat as well, is odorless. But the difference is it sits on our skin longer. And once it starts to intermingle with the bacteria on our skin, that's what causes the body odor. The reason we have body odor goes way back to our animalistic instinct, is this fight or flight response that would send out a signal to our perceived threat, Whatever it was that was causing us to feel stressed or nervous or on alert, to say, basically, back off, I'm dangerous. And one way we do that is through our smell. That's a little bit of the why.

Fascinating. So when we look at modern expressions around sweat, we use sayings such as sweating like a pig. I think most of us are probably probably heard that one which suggests that sweating is something dirty or unwanted. So why is Sweat viewed as something that we should be ashamed of.

Great question. I mean, sweating definitely suffers from a bad rep and pigs do too. On that note or on a bit of a tangent, pigs don't actually even sweat that much. I was researching a little bit about this to just see, because I'm like, what does it actually come from? And I wanted to understand the roots. But pigs roll around in mud to cool down. I mean, that's their cooling mechanism. And so I think there's so many misassociations with both. So maybe it is a bit of a fitting expression. But I think what it really comes down to is, I think it is this conditioning and this desire for cleanliness, you know, and to be clean is to be pure and to be holy and whatever that might actually be. And you know, in this world or in this way of thinking, to have a smell is to be dirty, when in reality to have a smell is to be human. And I think that's where we start to break it down because there is definitely this shame aspect. And one thing I would like to say on this note though is it's a topic we handle delicately, you know, regardless of why we might have internalized this shame, whether it's a result of conditioning or internal external pressures, whatever else, at the end of the day, it's a valid concern and it's one that we take seriously. You know, we never want to downplay that. If a customer reaches out to us and says, hey, I want to switch to a natural deodorant, but I'm worrying about smelling, we're never going to say, oh my gosh, that should be the last of your worries. You know, it's all about your health. Because it might sound a little silly, but to us, the shame we might feel around smell has the exact same weight as our need for wanting to take care of our health. And they're equally weighted. We never want to pit one against the other and say, oh, what's a little bit of smell? If you're doing all of these positive things for your body in the long term? So we make sure to address it. Yes, we have shame around our smell. It's probably deeply internalized. We're conditioned to smell like strawberries and cucumber and think that's how we should be smelling all the time, despite the millions of functions our bodies and our brains are doing on a day to day basis, which does have a bit of a smell output. And so, yeah, of course there are ingredients that we use to neutralize smells. Right. And to make sure that you're not smelling bad. But I think it's important to address those concerns because like I said, wherever they come from, they are, they are valid. And I think it's something that, that we deal with on a daily basis, no matter how hard we're working to tackle. I think some of this conditioning.

Yeah, I agree. There is certainly an element of conditioning in there, and we see that throughout the whole beauty industry. And I loved what you were just saying about people needing to feel like they're pure, almost holy, and almost feeling like they have to sanitize themselves in order to be nowadays. And there's a whole. I mean, this is a whole big topic. We probably can't on the podcast today. But the one thing that I read recently was I read an article that some women are getting Botox injections into their scalp to stop themselves from sweating and ruining their hair during exercise classes. I was really quite shocked by that. And I understand, you know, if you're. You want to look good at the gym, maybe, but how do you think we should challenge this type of assumption?

It's not just in the scalp. I think Botox injections also in the armpits for the same reason, right? Not to sweat and to fight our very intelligent built in system designed to do this for a purpose. And it feeds off of your last question as well. I think in this specific case where things like Botox in your head and in your armpits is targeted more towards women, I think it's just a more extreme level of this conditioning. And truthfully, I think it's a result of thousands and thousands of years of women being influenced to fit into patriarchal expectations. And really some of these expectations to not sweat, to look a certain way, to have a body of a certain size, et cetera, go against our body's natural need to function. And there's a quote I actually read recently in Glennon Doyle's book Untamed. But she writes, the best way to control women is to teach us to control ourselves. And I think that really resonated because some of the most intelligent, successful women I know, we're aware that this is happening around us. The need to diet, the need to exercise, to put on makeup, to dress a certain way, to have our hair a certain way. It's so hard not to internalize that, unfortunately, sometimes it can be warped into notions of empowerment or self care, you know, And I think we can become distanced from the reasons of why we're doing certain things. And my best advice there is Take stock of why we're doing things. We're on autopilot for a lot of things, like shaving our armpits, like, you know, bleaching our. Our hair, whatever it might actually be. And sometimes we don't think why we do it. And the positive news, in my opinion, in terms of how do we challenge it, I think it's already happening. Sweat is being associated in a more positive light. We see it being associated with things like strength, with empowerment. We see sweat being associated with sexiness, which is nice. You know, it's working hard. And not in a sexualized notion necessarily, but I think sweat as a result of exercising, you know, it's like women to women, talking about, hey, this is really great. This is what we should aspire to. And it's the same way we see armpit hair slowly, like, making its way into mainstream media. And I do think indie brands are leading a lot of these conversations in terms of, hey, let's take a step back. We've been trying not to sweat. We've been ripping our hair out of our follicles, weekly, monthly, whatever it might be. And let's take a second to think, why are we doing this? And maybe let's create a more positive narrative or a more positive line of communication and a line of support to our customers to say, it doesn't have to be like this. If you want to do this, all the power to you. But maybe just take a step to step back, to just ask yourself, why are we doing this?

Powerful words. And I'm sure everyone listening can probably imagine that we've all gone through an element of conditioning of this. So I'm really glad that we're tackling this on the podcast today because it's a fascinating topic. So we've talked about sweat, we've talked about shame, We've talked about patriarchal, forcing us into this. Into this whole situation. And now I want to talk a little bit about deodorants, because obviously you make and sell deodorants. So what type of deodorants do you think we should work with, with our body's sort of natural need to sweat? What types of deodorants are there out there?

Yeah, absolutely. There's so many types of deodorants. There's natural deodorants, there's antiperspirants, and they all function a little bit differently. The beauty of it, and our philosophy is it's not a one size fits all. You know, in this short conversation so far, already tackled how personal the armpits are like, we don't think much about the armpits, but they're so personal. And then they're subject to so many personal conversations. How much do we sweat? Do we sweat? Do we smell? Do we shave our armpits? Do we wax? Do we grow it out? Whatever it is? And yet for so long we've been treating deodorant and armpits. It's kind of just like a one size fits all solution. Like you go to the drugstore, you grab the first thing on the shelf and it's expensive. Expect it to solve all of your problems and meet all of your needs. And the truth is, we're so different in terms of just how we're built, but also our lifestyle. You know, how we're, how we spend the day, Is it an office job, is it a physical job, how much we're drinking water, how much we're, what we're eating, Alcohol, drugs, medication, all of that takes plays into this. And so it really is a personalized approach. And so one thing in terms of how Nala tackles natural deodorants, we actually have different strengths because we believe not only are my needs going to be different than your needs, Lorraine, or the needs of the people listening, but also our needs change day to day. And so the way that we tackle this is we have three different strengths. Deodorants. We have our most gentle deodorant, which you can either get in this beautiful peppermint charcoal mix, or we also, you can personalize it with a different scent which has no baking soda. The activated charcoal is actually used to promote sweat. So we recommend this before working out. Get a good flush out of your system, really get a good healthy sweat going. Then we have our regular strength, which has some baking soda in it. And our core one is again, in this beautiful, sophisticated scent. I love the sense of natural deodorants. I think there's so much room to play with. But it's a lemon myrtle geranium, very fresh, lemony scent. And it's got some baking soda, so it's got a little bit more deodorizing power there. And this could be a great everyday deodorant. And then we've got something like our extra strength, which is, which has even more baking soda. And baking soda is an active ingredient when it comes to just deodorizing its ability to deodorize. And we have extra strength. And so if you have a big client presentation or it's a big hot day, you don't want to be super sweaty. We'd recommend extra strength. And what we find with these different ones, we've actually had our customers tell us, when I switch up the strengths, it helps my body regulate sweat more effectively. I think the misconception is that we all need the strongest deodorant, the strongest power all the time. But our armpit skin is actually very delicate, and we don't need the strongest solution all the time. You know, made of ice and fire and all of that. I think it's important to actually tune into what our body needs and adapt and really help our body serve us the way it's designed to.

So touching on the topic of baking soda then, which is something I wanted to ask you about anyway, because it's such a huge trend at the moment and people are obviously looking for baking soda. We see a lot of DIY deodorants made with baking soda soda, but obviously it raises the ph because it's an alkaline ingredient and the skin's natural ph is quite acidic. Some people can react to that. How do you balance that out in your formulations?

We found this as well, and it's interesting. It's one of the reasons we've actually led to. That led us to creating personalized deodorants. Some people very naturally can handle high concentrations of baking soda. Most people can't. I have very sensitive skin as well. It's one of the reasons we offer solution without baking soda. But what we found is actually the body can build a tolerance to it. It can get used to it like so many things. And it's another reason we don't need to go to the strongest solution all the time. Baking soda is a super powerful tool, but it's also not the end all, be all. It's part of the reason we have different concentrations and we have options without. You can start with a gentle way. And for some people, there might need to be a phase where you're teaching your body to sweat. Again, back to the conditioning. We've learned not to sweat and have taken actions not to sweat. And even if we continue to do that, that's okay. But as soon as we take that breather and let our skin breathe, that's where options and different ingredients can actually help us to do this. And then the baking soda is there for serves a purpose. It has a deodorizing ability. But we say work it in, phase it in, mix it up. It can be something where you're using it every other day. It can be something where you're doing it on big presentations day and then we tone it down a little bit. And this also keeps our body guessing and which is good because it keeps our body sweating, it keeps our body regulating and managed that way.

So what other ingredients should we look for in deodorants then? Are there any other particular natural ingredients that you love using in your formulations?

There's so many beautiful ingredients, one that we actually do and this was a result of our research, especially when we talked about, when we looked at stress sweat that we talked about at the beginning. So obviously you know, we can't change our body's natural response to sweat and anxiety, although that would be so great if we could. But we can do things like a be more mindful of the situations that are causing us to feel stressed and hopefully not trigger our apocrine sweat glands so much. But the other thing is the ingredients we use that have powerful properties that can be naturally calming or even have stress reducing properties. And so one ingredient that we love is Copaiba oil. So Copaiba oil is actually found in a woodsy deodorant that we make and personalized. So you can choose the strength it can be without baking soda, regular extra strength baking soda. The main component of Copaiba oil is bcp, which is actually a cannabinoid, BCP also found in CBD oil. But what we found is that it's actually much more concentrated in Copaiba and it's a lot better researched in Copaiba as it stands today. We know that just the effects of smelling BCP can have natural stress reducing properties on us. And you know, part of the reason include mindful ingredients like that is something like putting on deodorant can tend to be a very mindless act. You know, you're running out the door, you forgot to put it on, you put on a couple swipes and catch the bus. We're encouraging people like anything, make deliberate decisions, take that moment, think about why you're doing the things you do and smell your deodorant before you put it on. You know, take a deep breath, relax, feel good. And I think it's a very intentional way to start the day. And so I mean that's, that's one ingredient, but there's so many really powerful, really beautiful ingredients out there.

I love that. So take the time to smell your product. You could say that about anything really with your skin care, with your hair care, and just inhale it. Take the time to feel that well being and bring it into your life that way. So one final question I have for you is One criticism that's frequently levied against natural deodorants is that they don't work. I see this talked about a lot on the Internet. Obviously, you know, some sort of non natural deodorants, let's term them that way, are advertised as offering very long protection. And people then seem to think, oh well, you know, I know that if I use a natural deodorant, it won't offer me that lasting protection. So they often have this concept that they just don't work. Is this true?

Natural deodorants absolutely do work as long as you understand that they're not antiperspirants. And I think that's, that's the key there and there's some education that we do and I think that needs to continue to be done. But antiperspirants function in, to break it down, literally antiperspire. So the ingredients chosen there are to stop you from sweating deodorants and natural deodorants are still allow you to sweat and still allow your body to sweat. So there's nothing there that's clogging the pores. And then instead the way that it works is it works to neutralize that odor. And the beauty of natural deodorants, I find that it does so much more and goes above and beyond. So yes, you can neutralize body odor, but also what you can do is you can start to moisturize the underarm skin, replenish that skin. There's a lot of broken skin there as well. You know, from shaving, waxing, whatever that might be. You can soothe it and you can use beautiful ingredients, beautiful scents, and again, being very mindful of what's in there and keeps you smelling great, offering you the protection that you need. And I think it can be a little bit of trial and error and experimentation to find what works for you. We have different PH levels, different hormones, chemicals, all of that lifestyles like we talked about. And so my advice to that is there's a light at the end of the tunnel. Stick with it. Just now, Lorraine, when you were talking about smelling all of your products, I remember somebody saying what a joy it is to read books. Because if you think about it, it's somebody putting one story, everything that either all of their knowledge or their best story they have to tell into this book. And I'm seeing that a lot more with conscious brands and products, people are putting all of their love into it, right? Like their research, their love, their expertise, their branding, their messaging, all of that. And we consume so many products that it's easy to just fly through it without giving it a second thought. But, you know, maybe that's what I'll put out to the listeners, is take a moment today and have a moment with every single product you consume and just smell it, feel it, touch it, appreciate it. And you know, if it's not bringing you that joy, you know, at the risk of sounding like Marie Kondo here, you know, that's always a good opportunity to maybe question, hey, why am I using this and what purpose is this fulfilling for me? What is this doing for me?

That's absolutely fantastic. And what a high note to end the show on this afternoon. So thank you so much for sharing all of your information and wisdom and experience. If our listeners want to find out more about you and your deodorant brand, where can they go?

Yeah, absolutely. So our brand is Nalicare. You can find us@nalicare.com on Instagram and social media. We are Alicare. And you can also reach out to Meristovsky, probably linked somewhere, so I'm not spelling it out. If you want to reach out on LinkedIn, say hi, send a note. Always happy to chat.

Awesome. And all of those links will be underneath the podcast notes. Thank you so much, Ada. It's been fantastic to interview you today.

Thank you, Lorraine. So great to chat and yeah, looking forward to unpacking this even more and seeing the conversations that come out of it.

So I hope this podcast has challenged you in how you now view sweat, shame and deodorants. Is sweating really as bad as the beauty industry has made us think? Or should we perhaps encourage our bodies to function the way they're supposed to? How do you feel about your deodorants? And how does the idea of being sweaty influence your deodorant choices? And how is your deodorant contributing to your self care? Please do join the discussion and leave us a comment on our social channels to tell us what you think. The Formula Botanica team and I love hearing from you, so come and tell us your views. Thank you for joining Ada and I today for this latest episode of Green Beauty Conversations where we looked at the shame of sweat and deodorants. I hope you enjoyed it. Make sure you subscribe to our podcast on itunes or Spotify and stay tuned for the next episode. Follow Formula Botanica Formula Botanica on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, YouTube, Pinterest or LinkedIn. We're everywhere. Visit our website@formulabotanica.com and sign up for our free online formulation course today. Sam.