Can Your Deodorant Be Harmful to Your Health?

Can your deodorant be harmful? Photo courtesy SuzuanneBurdett.com

Health and wellness prevention strategies and natural remedies do not only center around nutrition and fitness. Many people find they have the best diet (compared to most), exercise regularly and get plenty of sleep and sunlight. However, what they could be putting on their skin can be disastrous for their later health. THe subject today? Deodorant.

What is so wrong with deodorant?

Not all deodorants are created equal. The commercial deodorants available today, for both men and women, contain the active ingredient aluminum. This is a toxin that seeps into the pores of your skin after applying it to your underarms. Any thing you put on your skin will enter the pores and seep into your bloodstream, which is why I don't put anything on my skin unless it is also safe to eat.

Aluminum has been linked to breast cancer in women, and is also found in abundance in Alzheimer's patients. In fact, back in the 1980's, a truck driver accidently spilled aluminum he was carrying in a small town's drinking water. Years later, an epidemic of Alzheimer's occurred in the same people who lived in the town at the time, and aluminum was found to have been built up within their brain's tissues.

What Can I Do?

Good health, for the present and for the future, requires you using preventative strategies. You don't have to be a control freak or a purist, but it is important that when you know the risks of something to take the appropriate measures. I don't use commercial deodorants anymore, as I have seen firsthand at what Alzheimer's does to a person, and I don't want that for myself or for my future family/caretakers (assuming that I will even need any ;)).

There are many organic deodorants on the market now that do not use aluminum or any artificial ingredients. The one I reccomend is Tropical Traditions Organic Aluminum-free Deodorant .

Although most of the time what I use is regular aluminum free baking soda. It's inexpensive, only one ingredient and it works just as well. Baking soda cleans as well as removes any smell that it comes across--it packs a powerful punch in fighting smells. Lovely conversation we are having, isn't it? It is important to find baking soda that doesn't contain aluminum, as most baking sodas on the market do contain aluminum.

So now you can go out in the world and be healthy and smell good at the same time! Isn't that fun? I'l see you out there.

This has been The Healthy Advocate.