Let's talk about B.O.
Have you or someone you know ever said the following? "I have a shelf full of natural deodorants at home. None of them ever work!" While all of us have our own signature scent due to genetics, poor diet and other factors can in fact make you smelly.
The first culprit we'll look at is junk food. Excessive refined sugar can promote an overgrowth of yeast which in turn converts the sugars to alcohols that can cause you to smell anything but sweet.
The high glycemic index (a measure of how different carbohydrates raise blood sugar levels) of junk foods is likely to blame. It's thought that the sugar present in the blood after eating junk food alters the make-up of perspiration in some people when it combines with bacteria on the skin, leading to changes in odor.
Processed foods also lack chlorophyll, the chemical that gives vegetables their color and acts as a deodorizer and cleanser in the body, neutralizing the bacteria that causes BO.
Some people are not able to process choline in their diets due to a genetic condition called trimethylaminuria, and this can cause a fishy body odor. Magnesium deficiency can also be implicated in some cases of b.o. Stress can definitely make you ripe! Stress-related odor is like normal odor on steroids. When people are stressed, they produce more apocrine secretions from the apocrine glands in their armpits, causing an elevation of body odor.
Sweat itself is odorless; sweat simply feeds the bacteria on your skin and interacts with said bacteria to make the stinkies. Keep in mind that antiperspirant and deodorant are two separate animals. A natural deodorant will not keep you from sweating. A conventional antiperspirant uses aluminum salts to essentially plug up the sweat glands. Deodorants don't do much to actually stop you from sweating; they instead target the bacteria that feed on your sweat. You may want to try a natural deodorant formula that contains tea tree oil to target that bacteria.
So, if you're looking to switch to natural deodorants but find they don't work for you, you may want to look at the hidden factors that are making you smell!