What's the difference between deodorant and antiperspirant?

He's a big guy, four forty pounds, and he was recently ejected from the Borgottic casino in Atlantic City for um an unpleasant smell. Basically, he uh, like I said, he's a big guy. He'd been playing seventeen hours straight, so apparently he was on a roll. But I guess he'd also failed to shower him between I don't know. I guess they didn't comp a room for him or anything for you know, a half hour or anything like that. But yeah, Mr Wax was ejected. No no word on

his winnings or anything like that. Well, I hope it was enough to buy some soap in the odor and I imagine so, I imagine so. And you know, if you were close enough to Mr Wax, you'd probably think, well, this is you know, it's body odor. It smells like anybody odor I've ever smelt. But were you to really get up under there and you had a really good scent, like maybe you're a professional sniffer for a perfume company or whatever, you would notice that he has a very

distinct what is called an odor type. And all of us apparently have a unique odor type. Do you know much about oder types? Uh? Well, I know that we we do all have one. And uh it's genetically based and it can be also environmental to write like what you eat. Yeah, so, so basically, there was one study in two thousand six that found that vegetarians emit a more pleasant body odor than meat eater. They smell like broccoli, and we smell like steak. That's gross. I would rather

smell like steak any day of the week too. There was there's another study in ninety five that found that a pregnant woman's body odor was actually a combination of the mothers and the fetus's um body odor smell. Yeah, that's fascinating and based on my own personal observations, as unscientific as it maybe, I've concluded, Chuck that your body odor is based on your love of hot rod racing

and those delicious morning smoothies you make. Yeah, well, you know, Josh, based on my findings, I've I found that you smell like a mix of circus peanuts and old footballs and desperation and desperation, so strange combinations. Yeah, so it works. The thing is is, um, we do have our own specific odor types. We don't know precisely what makes what and and I don't think any has really been catalogued yet. Look for that in the future when somebody ends up

with a lot of excessive funding. Um. But we do have a couple of theories of why we smell. There's this anthropologist named Leu's Leaky and he postulated that we actually smell um evolutionarily speaking to ward off predators, which is something we had to deal with before. You don't so much anymore unless you're like a lion tamer or a hill billy that kind of thing. Um, So now it's just kind of offensive to to a degree, right right, Um, So what do you do? Well, I would use deodorant

or cold or I would use antipersprint. Aren't they the same thing? Why would you even go so far as to say both, I mean it's the same thing, right, Well, they're not the same thing, And I think anyone that pays attention in the supermarket of the pharmacy knows there's antipersprint and there's deodorant. That is true. I just thought they were different spellings. Well what's the difference. Well, one keeps you from sweating and actually, uh stops you from sweating,

and one is just a perfume to mask odor. Okay, well it was very sustained that that's the easy answer. Did you know that your body odor doesn't actually emanate from your from your your glands, from your sweat? Do you do? You know where your smell actually comes from, something with bacteria, And it does. It does. So you've got two kinds of sweat glands. Um. One is the ecrine gland, and it just excretes salt and water and

there's no smell to that. The other is the apocrine gland, and this one actually is in charge of carrying um, fat and protein secretions from your cells. I didn't even know myself secreted fats and Approacheinus gross um. But it carries it through these glands or these ducks to the glands and then out onto your skin, where there's plenty of native flora, which is another name for bacteria. And your smell is actually your the bacteria chowing down on

these fats and proteins. That is so gnarly I can't get to this podcast. But yeah, and of course you've got um, you know the most the most both of these types of gland sweat glands under your arm an exact axillary area. The armpit, as everyone knows, is generally where the stink comes from, right, which is why we very infrequently put deodorant, or as Chuck calls it, antiperspirant, on the back of your neck. Um. That'd just be weird, although it would have a similar effect, I imagine, it's

just nobody's you know, next smells all that bad. Um. So, do you know much of the history of deodorance and anti Well, I know that it kind of started in the nineteen fifties in the United States, at least, Well, it became a social taboo to smell in the fifties, right and watch Madman. Well, I was just gonna bring that up here because I don't want it. Yeah, it's

it's one of my favorite new shows. I'm kind of late to it, but I've been watching it on the on demand feature and uh, there was an episode that dealt with anti pershmint spray and this is when the show is set and how they sold it to you. I think they said, uh, you're not afraid to get close or don't be afraid to get close, which recalls get a little closer from I think Arid Extra Dry

was Oodorant that use that. So it's it's interesting that what they're implying is with a lot of advertising is is sex, get a little closer, don't be afraid to get close to your husband, and uh, I just think,

I mean, the show in general is really neat. That in the nineteen fifties and sixties when add the advertising boom really started is where I mean a lot of the things that we we have today and social taboos like they were told to us by these admin in New York in the nineteen fifties and sixties and people bought into it, and all these years later, you know, you don't want to stink because you want to get

a little closer exactly. And conversely, if you do stink, you should be afraid to get closer, right, right, so that it's really paid off. In two thousands six, just any pursh prints and deodorants accounted for two point five billion dollars in sales, and me, think about it, what their four bucks tops for you? Anything you find at the grocery store right, Um, and uh, it turns out I have a I've developed a theory about deodor and

any perspirant sales. So there are three big things on the horizon that I think are going to cause the deodorant and any persprint market to fluctuate. You want to hear, I'd love to, Okay. So the first is baby boomers. It turns out that in in your fifties, right in the fifties to the sixties, range um, deodorant use kind of falls off. You don't need it quite as much. You don't need it or you don't you're not bothered

by your smell. Either way, People in their fifties start to use less deodorant than they did when they were younger. That actually affects the market. And we've got a bunch of baby boomers we're hitting fifties, sixties, seventy now just walking around stinking pretty much? Have you smelled your parents lately? To try to keep my nose away from precisely precisely right. So, with all of this, this this huge aging population going on right now, I predict that the deodorant in any

persprint market will decline because of that. But but you're ready. I also predict that they that market will be helped by global warming because summer sales for are just the biggest, bulkiest season for deodorants and nanty purse prints. With climate change, we're going to have longer, hotter summers, right, And hence the deodorant nanny purseprint market will soldier on. They'll be able to bounce back from that discrepancy. And the third thing I think will bump it up even further, uh,

bovine growth hormones. It's all over the place. It's in milk, it's in beef, it's i I believe, in chickens, and it's causing early onset puberty in children. Yeah, and I know that your your glands that that make you stink. For lack of a bitter word, they don't come around so you're like eleven to eleven twelve until about the time you hit puberty. Right, if puberty starts at age eight all of a sudden, now thanks to drinking regular milk, um,

then you're going to need deodorant soon. So that will expand the market, the younger market for deodorant nanty perspart companies. These are just some theories for amblings that come up with They come to me in my sleep, that kind of thing. But I wake up thinking about deodorant all the time, so do I. It's more market stuff that that I think of. But in this case, it was applied to deodorant, so chuck, Maybe we should get a little more specific, like how does deodorant work versus how

does this any persport you keep talking about work? Well, uh, I know, deodorants don't keep you from sweating, so all they can do is, uh, you apply it to your excella, your armpit, Yeah, your armpit, and that that just masks the smell. It's a perfume to an extent, fill me in So basically it also most deodorants today include a

um and an ingredient that actually kills the bacteria, triclosan. Yes, so you've got that that native flora on your under arms, on the skin, and that your cells are still carrying the fats and proteins, or the the facts and proteins from yourselves are still being carried to your skin. There's no bacteria there to eat them, hence no smell, right right,

And they also include perfumes too. But what about andy pursprints. Well, the antie pershprint actually plugs the glands with things like aluminum and zirconium, which is kind of scary if you think about it, and that keeps the sweat from ever being produced in theory. In theory, yes, so any perspants don't let you sweat at all, well if if they're effective.

So I was doing a little research, a little extra research for this article, and there's this New York Times article by a guy named Anthony Ramirez that it came across. It's awesome, um, and he was talking about a little bit about the history of andy pershprint's. The first patented one ever was called ever Dry and it came onto the market in nineteen o three. You had to apply it using a swab to the armpit and it was so acidic that it actually ate through clothing and people

were putting this on their under arm. It's progressed quite a bit so far. Yeah, and and know that it's still there's a lot of controversy over the use of aluminum in products. It could post some health benefits, and actually, UM deodorance and Annie purse prints are considered over the counter drugs and are regulated by the FDA. Right, that's crazy, possibly in part because of the health the health hazards, potential health hazards like what well, potentially could be linked

to cancer. I think most people have heard that aluminum deodorance can be linked to cancer by by causing DNA mutation, right. And then there's another one that's a little a little weirder, right with the kidney disease. Yeah, yeah, yeah, So, like I think two thousand to two thousand five something like that, all of a sudden, this warning label pops up on deodorance and it says, uh, ask your doctor about kidney

disease or something like that. Um. And it just came out of nowhere, and there was never any really good explanation for it. Um. But it turns out that aluminium can also cause kidney poisoning, right, right, or if you have impaired kidney functioning, it can sinum out of the edge.

So it's possible all sorts of bad things could happen to you, which is why, for my understanding, eleven of the population doesn't use of the American population, I should say, doesn't use deodorant or uses an off brand, which leads me to wonder, what is an off brand deodorant? And why would you use it? Like, do you have like a friend down the street who whips it up for you?

Why not just go get it? At this story? Well, I think maybe what they mean bof brand it might be wrong, is maybe some of these all natural deodorants, No, those are included. They have made such headway into this market that the niche market like Tom's of Maine you mean, has actually expanded their huge players. So what they mean literally are these hippies that make up I guess although hippies aren't necessarily known to use deodorant, let alone go to the trouble to make their own. Now you know,

that's the question for another day. The question for today, which I advise you to go check out on how stuff Works dot com, is what's the difference between deodorant and anti persporant and stick around to find out which articles homepage are really cracks chucking me up after this. Thanks for hanging around, Chuck. You want to tell him,

I will. It's actually an article called how ativism works or ativism and that's when humans have can grow little tails or little nubbins on their body and the for those of you don't know, we have a homepage art that the writers themselves are in charge of finding a pictures to represent what the articles about. And some articles are a little harder than others. And I guess ativism

is hard because writer Katie Lambert Clambert, Yeah Clambert. She she her homepage art is a a little baby kind of prancing around just from like the waist down when the waist down with a with a cat's tail photoshops onto it and it's it really just cracks me up every time I see it. And Katie did a great chop with it. You definitely did. Way to go, Katie. You could check out this homepage art when you look up how ativism works on how stuff works dot com.

Let us know what you think. Send an email to podcast at how stuff works dot com brought to you by the reinvented two thousand twelve camera. It's ready, are you