I Tried Natural Deodorant | Lakisha Adams

hello beautiful people of the internet what’s up it’s a girl Lakisha for a very long time i had been thinking about giving up mainstream deodorants, after i understood the way that it actually worked, i was looking for alternatives for the past three years i’ve actually completely given up using mainstream deodorant and in today’s video we’re going to be talking about some of the alternatives, my experience, and some of the research behind why personally i stopped using it if this is your first time seeing my face my name is Kakisha and i post a lot of beauty makeup, lifestyle, and hair related videos if that is something you’re interested in then make sure you are subscribed without further ado, let’s get started let’s first start off with how deodorant actually works so this excerpt comes from staff writer from howstuffworks.com so “antiperspirants work because they contain one or more chemicals like aluminum chloride or Hydrobromide, when microscopic portions of the aluminum enter the skin they take water with them, this causes sweat ducts to swell and eventually close preventing them from delivering their contents to the skin’s surface” so basically these ingredients inhibit the body’s natural mechanism of expelling sweat from the body, now we do sweat for obvious reasons, number one it’s a really great temperature regulator it helps to cool us down when we’re hot and prevents us from becoming excessively overheated, it’s also a great way for the body to get rid of toxins that are built up in the body, we do this by sweating so there is a reason why we do sweat and it’s important to sweat of course, you’re supposed to apply antiperspirants at night the reason being is they need the time to go into your armpits and actually clog the ducts so you apply it at night so it can swell and clog those ducts and then after in the morning you can actually wipe it off because you don’t need the residue and you can go on about your day but something about how that works just didn’t sit with me and i just wasn’t into swelling my ducks and clogging them preventing my body from doing what it’s supposed to do naturally okay, so the basis of most deodorants is hydrobromide like we said before which is the kind of salt and aluminum chloride which is a metal based compound now this actual metal is the active ingredient that clogs your ducts and prevent your sweat glands from releasing sweat, now to be clear it has never been proven, scientifically proven that these two ingredients are linked to or cause cancer but they are somewhat correlated that still has yet to be determined the jury’s still out on that but i would rather wait for the actual results to come in then continuing doing something if i know that it’s affecting my body right, another thing that really solidified my choice to stop using mainstream deodorant is when i had my own experience so in January 2018 i discovered a lump in my left chest and i was absolutely frightened because of it, i remember it was the longest, and hardest, most fearful five months of my life, i know people have been saying for years that deodorant and those clogged ducks under your armpit is a it’s linked to or it is in correlation with having breast cancer and obviously i don’t want to have breast cancer and i don’t actually have any breast cancer in my history in my family but during that time i lost my uncle to cancer, i lost my father to cancer, I lost a lot of people in my family to cancer around that time so my head space was definitely not in the right way and i was maybe making a bigger deal out of it than actually was necessary but this is one of the reasons why i stopped using it so i found the lump in my chest, i went ,, 0:03:50.400,0:03:55.439 to my doctor to get it looked at and she had sent me to go get a biopsy done, now i don’t know why it took so long, it took three months to get the biopsy and when i actually went to the clinic or the medical center to get the biopsy done they advised that the scans that i had from before were too outdated that i had to go get the scan again so three months into it, i’m freaking out at this point, three months into it i had to go get my scans again and then within the week i was able to go for my biopsy thankfully it did turn out to be benign but i did discover that a lot of black women, especially young black women tend to develop or are more predisposed to developing cysts in their chest it’s just naturally hereditary it’s something that we it’s the common and i found out that a lot of my friends as well ended up having cysts in their chest too so a part of that experience from being completely frightened not knowing what’s going on and during that five months where i was waiting for results going back and forth not knowing what’s going to happen knowing that i have family members that passed away during that time and hoping and praying that it wasn’t going to be me as well that’s that’s part of what solidified my idea to live a healthier lifestyle and make sure that whatever i was doing on a daily basis would be positively impacting my health and hopefully impacting the health of people around me by sharing that experience as well what happened when i switched over to natural deodorant, i would love to say that it was smooth sailing but it really wasn’t, when i started to wean myself off of using these mainstream products initially when i switched over i’m not gonna lie, i smelled really bad there’s no way to sugarcoat it, i did start to smell really bad so i ended up taking like showers two times a day, i would bring wipes with me during the day to wipe up, i didn’t know what was going on, all of a sudden it was just my ph balance was all over the place and it was not a fun time so i was looking for a natural deodorant to try instead the first product that i started using was the Schmitz bergamot and lime i actually have two of them one to travel with and one to leave at home and these are natural deodorants made from like less than 10 ingredients and when i started using them it was great you know they were nice now these are a paste so they’re not going to leave you feeling dry like mainstream deodorants but they’re going to allow you to sweat while masking some of that scent after i had used this for i think maybe three weeks to a month i started noticing that under my arms were getting really itchy and irritated and red and i did not know what was going on my mom used them as well and she had the same experience at that point i started doing masks under my armpits just the same way you do with your face your armpits are very delicate skin so it makes sense that you’re going to treat them similar to you do your face so i started using bentonite clay, i think initially i did every day for five days then i did it two times a week and then i do it once a week still to this day i still do it on my armpits once a week then i did a little bit more research about the deodorants because i was still getting really itchy was still getting somewhat irritated and i wanted to know why because our skin doesn’t naturally behave like that obviously people have been not wearing deodorant for years before it was invented and i realized that it was because of the baking soda, so currently i do not use Schmitz products anymore because they do have the baking soda and i wanted to find alternatives that didn’t have baking soda in it as we’ve talked about multiple times on this channel the skin is slightly acidic on the ph scale it goes from 1 to 14. the middle is 7 which is neutral, our skin is at a 5 or 5.5, around that area now baking soda sits at a comfortable 8 and that is very alkaline compared to our skin, so when you’re releasing sweat from the sweat glands it’s what doesn’t inherently smell it is when it gets in touch with the bacteria that’s on your arm and oxygen,it’s a chemical reaction that produces a smell now the lower your ph is under your arms the less you’re going to smell because baking soda sits at a comfortable 8 it’s going to actually make you smell more so you’re gonna actually be defeating the purpose so one of the things that i started using was oil especially if i’m not going anywhere i’m literally just gonna be in my house i don’t need to wear anything crazy till this day i still just use fragrant oils on my arms so this one is one that i made the leaves in here are i believe rosemary and i literally just put oil on my body otherwise i just use whatever moisturizer i’m using which is typically shea butter, shea butter already has a smell i put it on my armpits as well and i’m good to go but i also started to try to lighten the underarms because when you shave your underarms and you do all that good stuff you start getting a bit of darkness there and i was trying to get rid of some of the discoloration so two things i started using were soaps to help lighten the skin so one of them was kojic acid and this is whatever little i have left i’ll link it down below it’s from i don’t know what brand it is but i’ll link it down below so you guys can see and then this is a turmeric soap as well that i had been using to lighten my underarms and other areas on my body this one is from lavished by nature, i think is the name of the brand it’s a black owned company and so they both smell so good part of this is they do have acids in here that actually exfoliate the skin like has right and i found that the ahas because they are at a lower ph it did help the smell so when i was using these i noticed that the scent under my arms really did not get that crazy and it didn’t matter if i worked out or whatever i smelled fine here’s a tip as well if you are someone who doesn’t use store-bought deodorant and you’re out and about and you find that you know you get a little little smelly under there you can actually just use hand sanitizer just get the alcohol rub it under your arms in a pinch don’t do this every day but if you just take the alcohol and rub it under your arms you will be just fine and it will get rid of some of the smell too anyways these are the little things that you learned recently i actually picked up a new deodorant and i love this deodorant it is so nice and whenever i’m working out this is what i’ll use like i said if i’m not working out that day i don’t really feel like i need to put on deodorant i’ll just use a fragrant oil but if i am going to be working out this is a deodorant that i use this is the malin and goetz eucalyptus deodorant i got this at sephora it’s actually clear so it doesn’t leave any of that white residue in your shirts either, it smells like eucalyptus although i don’t find that there’s much of a scent in here anyways but it doesn’t have the aluminum chloride and it doesn’t have the hydrobromide and it doesn’t have baking soda so this one is a really good one that i do enjoy this one i find it doesn’t really feel like there’s anything under your arms initially when i first used it i was like is anything even coming off i thought that there was like a protective sealant on it and i was like no it is just so light it disappears into your skin and i i love this so much and what i really love about these products as well is they are unisex you can use them if you’re a man you can use them if you’re woman or anything in between there’s a few others that i found um that are really good as well i’m just on my laptop right now there’s one from Kosas which actually comes in two kinds one that’s non-scented and one that is i believe eucalyptus scented um but this is the Kosas chemistry AHA serum deodorant, this one is an exfoliator it’s gonna help with the darkness under your arms is also going to prevent the smell because it is a lower ph another one that’s really good is the one from Necessaire, they also have a really nice deodorant too that’s fragrance free this one actually says on their website they have a ph level of 3.5 to 4.

5 11:28 - which is the perfect level for under your armpits and this one is $20 there’s another one from a black owned brand called Iyoba this one actually retails for $15 and it is once again aluminum free baking soda free hydrobromide free as well and they come in five cents including unscented so it’s really cool too and the last one is also from a black owned brand the company is called I Am A Nudist 101 and this is their natural deodorant the largest size is 2.5 ounces and it retails for $10 it comes in a couple different sizes as well so you can choose but the most expensive one is $10 in truth there are some people who are using deodorant just because of social habit not because they actually need to, there was a study that was conducted i’ll link it down below as well that found that there are some individuals that do not produce the amount of bacteria and sweat necessary to actually develop a smell on your skin there are some people that just don’t have it or don’t produce enough and for those people you don’t really need to be applying deodorant if you don’t produce as much sweat and bacteria anyways the presence of hair under your arms may have an effect on how much you smell or how much of the bacteria is under your arms so it has a lot to do with lifestyle genetics and how you choose to get rid of some of that scent as well at the end of the day this is a personal preference if you want to wear that deodorant go ahead there’s nothing wrong with it obviously they’re on the market for a reason but my personal experience is that i choose not to wear them and this is why so in this video i’ve given you some alternatives in case you’re looking to switch from mainstream deodorant as well, leave a comment down below and let me know if there’s any deodorants that you love that i didn’t mention because i’ve always love finding new ones that i can try, remember to click over here to see some of my previous videos, remember to stay gorgeous, stay fabulous and i will see you lovely ladies and gents in my next video bye .