Frequent deodorant or antiperspirant users don’t know about the changes it does to their bodies. Whatever the reason people uses it for, keeping dry armpits or simply preventing them from smelling bad, it comes with a dangerous effect.

All those hygiene products may be interfering with microbial life development. Highly deodorant or antiperspirant use can influence the type of bacteria found in the human armpit, according to scientists.

Photo: The Standard UK/Getty Images
Photo: The Standard UK/Getty Images

The National Institute of Health (NIH) proves how mostly harmless or even beneficial microbes cover the human skin. Microbes responsible. Some microbes, the NIH says, protect the skin from harmful bugs and even plays a crucial role in educating the immune system cells found in human skin.

“We wanted to understand what effect antiperspirant and deodorant have on the microbial life that lives on our bodies, and how our daily habits influence the life that lives on us”, researcher Julie Horvath said in a news release, “Ultimately, we want to know if any changes in our microbial ecosystem are good or bad, but first we have to know what the landscape looks like and how our daily habits change it.”

By performing a test of 17 recruited study participants, researchers were able to look up close to the armpits of the volunteers over one week. The first study was conformed by three men and four women who used antiperspirant products. The second study featured three men and two women using deodorant, and the control group, which consisted on the same men and women ratio, but using neither product.

“We know that these skin microbes interact with the immune system. So it’s important to consider what our daily habits do the skin’s micro biome”, said lead researcher Julie Horvath.

The study made by researchers from North Carolina Museum of Natural Sciences concluded that deodorant users actually had the most bacteria while the other subjects showed fewer bacteria on armpit swabs. As lead author of the study Horvath verifies that the focus of this study was not the demonization of deodorants, but rather to know the causes and effects of people’s bacteria growth.

In spite of researchers findings, there’s still hesitation on whether it’s good or bad to have an increase of bacterial life. Deodorant or antiperspirant effects on people could be positive, or it could be bad, as the hygiene products might be killing helpful bacteria. One thing’s for sure, using antiperspirant or deodorant completely changes the microbial ecosystem of people’s skin, according to Julie Horvath, from the NC Museum of Natural Sciences.

Source: Philly