Facts are facts. Seeing the word “aluminum” on something that you apply to your skin every single day, never really sat well with me. However, I still used the active ingredient in my traditional deodorants and even makeup without thinking twice for years. It’s sold at the local drugstore, so how bad could it really be? Well, unfortunately for some, it could be as bad as life or death.
Wtf? Life or death, that’s a stretch…
But it’s true. It even warns you on the drug facts back label.
Warnings
- For external use only
- Do not use on broken skin
- Ask a doctor before use if you have kidney disease
- Stop use if rash or irritation occurs
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The label clearly warnswhat you should be privy to when using the product, but what they don’t tell you is how serious you should actually it.
Some women don’t think twice before applying it after they’ve shaven their underarms. That’s technically broken skin, right? Or how about individuals suffering from kidney disease. Did you ever think why it’s so important that they consult their doctor on something so simple, yet necessary, as an everyday deodorant?
The truth is your typical drugstore deodorants contain a handful of chemicals that, over time, can be very harmful to you. Ingredients like Aluminum chlorohydrate and aluminum-zirconium tetrachlorohydrate gly are the most frequent active ingredients in commercial antiperspirants. The reason these Aluminum-based properties are used is to control your sweat. The Aluminum complexes react with the electrolytes in the sweat to ultimately form gel-like plugs in the duct of your sweat glands.
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When something is plugged up, you can only imagine that the sweat is going somewhere else right? An antiperspirant and deodorant will clog your skin follicles so that you’re not able to sweat as much as your body needs to. It’s pretty much inhibiting your body from performing its natural cleansing and detoxifying process.
Aluminum exposure has been linked to the development of Alzheimer’s disease and interferes with your estrogen levels. When your body can’t process estrogen properly, there’s a higher risk for breast cancer.
According to the US National Library of Medicine National Institutes of Health, “Clinical studies showing a disproportionately high incidence of breast cancer in the upperouter quadrant of the breast together with reports of genomic instability in outer quadrants of the breast provide supporting evidence for a role for locally applied cosmetic chemicals in the development of breast cancer.”
“Aluminum is known to have a genotoxic profile, capable of causing both DNA alterations and epigenetic effects, and this would be consistent with a potential role in breast cancer if such effects occurred in breast cells. Estrogen is a well-established influence in breast cancer and its action, dependent on intracellular receptors which function as ligand-activated zinc finger transcription factors, suggests one possible point of interference from aluminum. Results reported here demonstrate that aluminum in the form of aluminum chloride or aluminum chlorhydrate can interfere with the function of estrogen receptors of MCF7 human breast cancer cells both in terms of ligand binding and in terms of estrogen-regulated reporter gene expression. This adds aluminum to the increasing list of metals capable of interfering with estrogen action and termed metalloestrogens,” affirmed the medical study.
Although these findings have been ignored by most big-name deodorant manufacturers, consumers, and especially women have to now think twice about their deodorant choices. Educating, reading, and acting upon open knowledge like this can no longer be ignored. Thankfully, with open platforms like BlackDoctor.org, more women are becoming conscious about their health and hopefully will soon make the switch too.
So, what’s in your deodorant?
SOURCE:
Ncbi.nlm.nih.gov, Aluminum, antiperspirants and breast cancer, Sept. 2005
ReadyNutrition.com, 5 Toxic Chemicals Hiding in Your Deodorant, April 30, 2014
Tia Muhammad, BS, is an award-winning freelance content & media creative, copywriter, blogger, digital designer, and marketing consultant. She owns the boutique content and digital media company, jackieGLDN|studio.
