You’ve Been Using Deodorant Wrong This Whole Time

February 17, 2016

It turns out we’ve been putting deodorant on the wrong way our whole lives. To be more specific, we are putting it on at the wrong time of the day for maximum effectiveness.

According to a 2009 article on Consumer Reports, the best time to put deodorant on isn’t in the morning, but at night.

At night, since you are sleeping, you sweat less (assuming you don’t suffer from extreme nightmares). This leaves the sweat ducts in your armpit clean, dry and open. Deodorants with aluminum-based active ingredients will actually get pulled into your sweat ducts, plugging them with anti-perspirant. Once the pores are plugged, the antiperspirant basically tells your sweat glands not to sweat, and it’s there to stay.

By the morning, you can wash off the deodorant completely while the active ingredients stay inside the pores, keeping them shut for 24 hours or longer.

The strategy keeps you drier in the morning and throughout the day as the deodorant is already activated. When you apply deodorant in the morning, you risk the antiperspirant being washed off by sweat before it has time to become effective.

And if you’re worried that plugging your pores doesn’t sound too clean, health experts claim otherwise.

Dare to add deodorant to your nightly routine? It would seem the only thing you have to lose are sweaty pits.

h/t: Lifehacker

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