0:00

Hi.

0:00

I'm Merrill Horn filling in for Wendy

0:02

Zickerman, and you're listening to science versus

0:04

from Gimlet. This

0:07

is the show that pits facts against

0:10

fowl odors as we tackle deodorant.

0:17

because it turns out that a lot of

0:19

you are really stinky. Hi.

0:22

I'm smelly. I

0:25

have the worst body odor. I've

0:27

always been a pretty stinky person.

0:30

I don't know why to take. I am

0:32

so smelly. I mean,

0:34

this happens to people that we all know

0:36

and love. my sweat smells

0:38

so bad that my mom

0:40

used to, like, smell me before I even

0:42

reached the house and be like, Wendy take

0:44

a shallot.

0:48

Yep. Even Wendy's a stinker.

0:51

So it seems like the obvious solution

0:53

here is to slather on some deodorant

0:55

or antiperspirant. But a

0:57

lot of you were like, hold on a

0:59

second. What exactly is in this

1:01

stuff? Like

1:03

some of these sticks and sprays are

1:05

chock full of chemicals. So

1:08

are they really safe? I know that I've heard

1:10

a lot of buzz about different metals and

1:12

deodorants and the risk of breast cancers, and

1:14

I would really like to go back to using

1:16

an anti first group. that I'm terrified

1:19

of, like, what is it? That I'm just just

1:21

worried now about kinda cools in the theaters

1:23

and how it's affected me. Because

1:25

of this, some of you have made the switch

1:27

to so called natural deodorants, and

1:30

you're not impressed. Either the natural ones

1:33

smell really bad or they don't

1:35

work I started trying out a bunch

1:37

of natural options and my bedside

1:39

drawer became a graveyard of

1:41

failed attempts. So let's

1:43

dig into our bedside drawer of

1:45

science. Today, we're gonna look

1:47

at why some of us get so smelly

1:50

and find out what are deodorants

1:52

and antiperspirants really doing?

1:55

And are they dangerous? Come

1:57

along as we dive into your armpits.

2:00

Because

2:00

when it comes to deodorant, there's a lot

2:02

of windy take a shower. But then

2:04

there's science.

2:07

Science versus is coming up after the break.

2:10

the

2:21

Welcome back. Today,

2:23

we're taking on body odor. and

2:25

the stuff we use to fight it. And

2:27

to start, we wanted to know, where

2:30

does b o come from? Why

2:32

do we smell? So we

2:34

called up a scientist named Gavin Thomas.

2:37

And when we got to chatting, he told us

2:39

about presentation he had to give when

2:41

he first got into this

2:42

b o world. and I remember going

2:45

down and being a bit nervous and walking into

2:47

the to the room to do my presentation, actually

2:49

thinking, oh my god, I can awesome b. I want

2:51

me and I was like, this is this is come

2:54

to do project about trying to

2:56

stop by the owner production.

2:58

So in addition to being a bit smelly himself,

3:00

Gavin as a professor of microbiology at

3:02

the University of York and the UK.

3:05

And he told me that the reason we have

3:07

B. O. It all comes down to the microbes.

3:10

that make their home on our bodies.

3:12

So to

3:14

understand how this happens, imagine

3:17

that you are a bacterium on

3:19

the human and body.

3:19

Where would you live?

3:23

Well, you could pick something like the

3:25

forearm or the elbow, But

3:27

those areas are pretty dry and exposed.

3:30

It's pretty hard to live there. Sort of

3:32

like camping in the desert.

3:35

A much better place to live would

3:37

be the secluded, moist

3:38

oasis of the armpit.

3:45

And

3:45

you're not the only one who wants to live

3:48

there. And so

3:48

you've got a really really an area which

3:50

is stuff full of microbes all happily

3:53

jumping away on sweat secretions. So

3:55

it's it's a great place to be.

3:58

One

3:58

reason this is a great place to be

3:59

is that there's a buffet full of

4:02

tasty bacteria treats.

4:04

It's your sweat. Your

4:05

armpit makes two main kinds of

4:07

sweat. One kind is that

4:09

salty liquid that trickles out

4:11

when you're going for a jog. and

4:14

this is the stuff that cools your body down.

4:17

But the other kind the kind of the bacteria

4:19

love to eat is the special sweat.

4:22

is much more complicated. It

4:24

would look like a kind of a thick

4:26

milky kind of liquid if you if

4:28

you look to that. If

4:30

that other sweat is basically salt

4:32

water, this special sweat is kind

4:34

of like a milkshake. So yeah,

4:37

my milkshake brings all the bacteria to

4:39

the yard.

4:39

i'm

4:43

Alright. Anyway, for bacteria,

4:45

This is the good stuff. And scientists

4:48

don't really understand why we make

4:50

this special sweat. Whether or not

4:52

it serves any real purpose is a

4:54

mystery. We start

4:57

pumping it from our pits that are growing and

4:59

a couple other places around puberty.

5:02

And bacteria love it because it's

5:04

full of fats and other off that they can

5:06

chow down on.

5:06

So they can get food out of it.

5:09

And then the molecule that's left, they

5:12

spit out

5:12

and those molecules they spit

5:14

out, those are the real stars

5:17

of today's episode. That's

5:19

what BIO is. I asked Gavin.

5:22

Is BO sort of the, like, the

5:24

bacteria poop?

5:24

Yeah. Kind of. Yeah.

5:27

Your

5:27

sweat itself is odorless. but

5:30

that sweat gets eaten up by the bacteria

5:33

who poop out these chemicals and

5:35

that is b o. And

5:37

there are dozens of these smell EBO

5:39

chemicals, all made by bacteria

5:42

chowing down on different stuff in that milkshake

5:44

sweat. Gavin actually works

5:46

on one of the stinkiest b o chemicals.

5:49

He said it sort of smells like a

5:51

cheesy, oniony, sulfur

5:54

like stench. It's really gross.

5:57

One time, a grad student spilled a little

5:59

on his lab

5:59

by mistake. I like that tiny

6:02

tiny amount in the whole department's tank

6:05

body odor for a few hours. So this is really

6:07

really really really pungent stuff.

6:09

And

6:10

that's just one of the chemicals that make up

6:12

b o. everyone has their own signature

6:14

b o cocktail. Like, some

6:16

of these chemicals wafting off our pits

6:19

have more of an acidic spicy

6:21

smell. there's even one

6:23

that's known as a pig pheromone

6:25

and one called goat acid, which

6:28

smells like goats. Okay.

6:32

So that's where BIO comes from. Bacteria

6:34

in your armpits eat up this special kind

6:37

of sweat and then basically poop

6:39

out chemicals that can wash through the air.

6:42

And this explains why some of us are

6:44

smelier than others. We may have

6:46

more of those bacteria that make the really

6:48

stinky chemicals. Others

6:50

may have less of them. And this

6:52

also has to do with your genetics. Like

6:55

there are some people who just don't really have

6:57

sticky pits. Scientists have

6:59

found that a lot of them have this

7:01

particular genetic mutation that

7:04

changes what's in their sweat. which

7:07

means they basically don't give off

7:09

that on unique chemical. And

7:11

so for them.

7:11

So their overall smell is quite

7:13

different. their

7:14

odor is is much less pungent

7:17

and is describe as being more

7:19

sweet.

7:22

This

7:22

mutation is most common in

7:24

some places in East Asia, like

7:26

Korea and China, where it's

7:28

actually the norm. Something

7:31

like eighty to ninety five percent

7:33

of East Asian people don't have

7:35

stinky pitties.

7:37

But many of us aren't this lucky

7:39

and do have stanky bo. And

7:41

for a long time, we've been

7:43

told that we need to do something about

7:45

it. That's

7:48

where deodorant and anti perspirants come

7:50

in. In the US, deodorants

7:52

started hitting the market around a hundred

7:54

years ago. And to get people to

7:56

start buying this stuff, companies had

7:58

to convince them that it was

7:59

necessary in the first place. So

8:02

ad campaigns were a war telling

8:04

people especially women that

8:07

if they didn't start using deodorant,

8:10

they'd basically die alone. Here's

8:13

one newspaper ad from the nineteen thirties.

8:17

You're a pretty girl, Mary, and

8:19

you're smart about most things. But

8:21

you're just a bit stupid about

8:23

yourself. You love a

8:25

good time, but you seldom have

8:28

one. Evening after evening,

8:30

you sit at home alone You've

8:33

met several grand men who seemed interested

8:35

at first. They took you out

8:37

once and that was that.

8:41

Wake up, Mary,

8:44

Yeah. It turns out that the cause

8:46

of Mary's loneliness was, you

8:49

guessed it, b o. We

8:51

found tons of ads like this, and

8:53

the industry has exploded over

8:55

the years. The vast majority

8:57

of people in the US wear deodorant. ninety

9:00

percent of us. So

9:03

our next question is, how does this

9:05

stuff work? Like, what's really

9:07

going on in your pit when you slather

9:09

this stuff on, we're gonna

9:12

focus on anti perspirants because those

9:14

are the big guns that help stop you from

9:16

sweating. And for this, we're gonna

9:18

talk to Julie Horbath. Hello.

9:21

Hi, Julie. Julie's the head

9:23

of a research lab at the North Carolina

9:26

Museum of Natural Sciences. She's

9:28

helped to get at what's going on here.

9:30

By studying what's deodorants and anti

9:33

curse sprints are doing to the bugs in her

9:35

armpits. Her first study

9:37

actually began after she and her labmates

9:40

were basically just swabbing their armpits

9:42

for fun. You know, as scientists

9:44

do, we wanted

9:45

to sample things where we found smelly

9:47

body parts, so we sampled armpits. They

9:50

put the stuff from the swabs onto petri

9:52

dishes. And then after a couple

9:54

days, check to see how many bacteria

9:56

had grown. And a couple people

9:58

had some really interesting things crowing on their

10:01

plates. And I thought, oh, that looks really cool.

10:03

I wonder what's on mine. And then I went to all of my

10:05

plates and they were all blank. Nothing was

10:07

buffing. Nothing at all.

10:12

Julie thought back about why this could

10:14

be and realized what might

10:16

be happening. When she first started

10:18

her job at the museum, it was little

10:20

nerve wracking. I was a little bit shy,

10:23

and now I have this prominent role where I'm supposed

10:25

to talk to the public every day. And

10:27

so I had started using clinical

10:29

strength, anti persistent deodorant. And

10:31

so probably

10:32

all those chemicals I was using on my skin that

10:34

had killed off the microbes on all these places

10:36

that we had sampled. And so that's why there was nothing

10:38

growing

10:38

on my body. You

10:39

were like going nuclear on them.

10:42

Yeah. Exactly. Yeah. I got rid of all of

10:44

them. but Julie was

10:46

just one person. To see if this

10:48

happens for other people, she and her colleagues

10:50

went on to do a small study on this,

10:53

to look at what happens to the microbes

10:55

on our armpits when we use antiperspirants. Julie's

10:59

team started by getting people to let

11:01

their bacteria run wild. So

11:03

they got eighteen people and told them

11:06

to stop wearing anything on their armpits at

11:08

all for several days. and then

11:10

watched as their armpits became chock full

11:12

of bacteria. Meanwhile,

11:14

they were bringing all these people into the

11:16

lab to get swabbed. You know, when we

11:18

were doing this sampling, we our lab definitely

11:21

had a

11:21

fragrance to it.

11:23

The next step was to see what an

11:25

anti per sprint would do here. So they

11:28

gave them one to use for a couple days

11:30

and then everybody had

11:32

a drastic reduction in amount of microbes

11:34

that were living on their skin. How big a drop

11:36

was it? I mean, really significant,

11:38

you know, from hundreds of culturable microbes on

11:40

these people's skin went to maybe just one

11:42

or two or a handful of microbes living on

11:45

their skin. that we can culture. Wow. So

11:47

a dramatic a dramatic drop in what was

11:49

on the skin. So

11:50

anti perspirants basically stop

11:52

the bacteria from pooping and stinking

11:55

up our pits. And the way they

11:57

do this is actually pretty wild.

11:59

any

11:59

purse print products are things that have aluminum

12:02

based salt. So the aluminum based salts will actually

12:04

mix with your sweat when you do sweat, and then

12:06

it actually makes essentially a plug

12:08

so that it reduces the amount you sweat

12:10

in the future.

12:12

Yeah. This is the infamous aluminum.

12:14

It's a key ingredient and a lot of anti perspirants.

12:18

When you use these little bits of aluminum

12:20

mixed with the stuff on your skin

12:22

to clog up your sweat glands, and

12:25

that physically block sweat from coming

12:27

out. And with no sweat,

12:29

a lot of the bacteria will starve.

12:32

So that's the secret weapon that anti

12:34

perspirants have up their sleeve. Aluminum.

12:38

Companies

12:38

will throw other stuff in these

12:40

sticks too, like antimicrobial, and

12:42

fragrances. And

12:45

just quickly, we heard from some of you

12:47

who were worried about this idea of blocking

12:49

your sweat glands. that this

12:51

could somehow cause toxins to build

12:53

up inside your body. But

12:56

that's just a myth. It's mainly your

12:58

kidneys and liver that do the detox thing.

13:01

And then most of that groggy stuff gets

13:03

flushed out through your pee and poop.

13:06

Bottom line, our b o comes from the back

13:08

syria eating up this special sweat

13:10

and pooping out smelling chemicals from

13:12

it. An antiperspirants work

13:14

because aluminum clogs our pores

13:17

and blocks that sweat from ever

13:19

even coming out, which shuts down

13:21

that bacteria buffet. But

13:23

is this safe, rubbing metal

13:25

all over our pits? That's our

13:27

next pit stop after the break.

13:37

First session, case sixty three for

13:39

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I need to know why we

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November fourteenth, follow and listen for

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free only on Spotify. When

15:07

Melanie was a kid, She recorded

15:09

a concert on what she thought was a blank

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15:12

But the tape was

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15:24

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15:44

Welcome back. Now we know

15:46

what BIO is and how and I press

15:48

prints block it. But next, we're gonna

15:51

look at whether we should be worried about what's in

15:53

this

15:53

stuff. And

15:54

some of you had asked us about parabens,

15:57

but a lot of these sticks and sprays

15:59

don't actually use those anymore. So

16:02

we're gonna focus on the aluminum that

16:04

we just talked about because

16:07

there's this idea that it could be seeping

16:09

into our bodies and doing damage.

16:12

In particular, people have been worried

16:14

that it could be causing breast cancer or

16:16

maybe Alzheimer's. Over the years

16:18

claims have been made that deodorants or

16:20

anti perspirants might be linked

16:22

specifically to breast cancer.

16:24

There's a growing amount of research

16:27

directly linking aluminum. specifically

16:29

the aluminum that's found in deodorants to

16:31

causing breast cancer and other dysfunctions

16:34

in the body.

16:37

Yeah, what is this stuff doing to our

16:39

bodies? Let's

16:40

start with cancer. When

16:42

I started looking into the science here,

16:44

Right away, I found that there is some

16:46

evidence that aluminum isn't good for us.

16:48

Like if you put aluminum on

16:51

cells in a dish, It can make them behave

16:53

more like cancer cells. And

16:55

one weird thing is that a study

16:57

did find that more breast tumors have been

16:59

popping up near the armpit. right

17:01

near where we put on antiperspirant. And

17:04

then in twenty seventeen, a study

17:06

came out that sounded even scarier.

17:09

We called up one of the scientists who did it.

17:11

Hanno Omer. Hello. Hello.

17:15

Hanno is an epidemiologist at the Medical

17:17

University of Insbrook in Austria.

17:19

And he wanted to dig into this to find out

17:21

whether deodorants really could be like suppress

17:24

cancer and people. So

17:26

his team got around four hundred women.

17:28

Half of them had breast cancer, half of them didn't.

17:31

And they asked the women how often they

17:33

had worn this stuff under their arms

17:35

when they were younger.

17:36

So never,

17:38

months in a month, several times

17:40

a month, several times a week,

17:43

daily or more than daily.

17:46

By

17:46

the way, they couldn't separate out the people

17:49

who wore deodorant with a lume in a minute.

17:51

because a lot of women had no idea

17:53

what was in their deodorant. So

17:55

they just asked everyone about underarm

17:57

products in general. And Hanno

17:59

told me

17:59

that none of the scientists doing the study

18:02

thought that they'd see a link to cancer. So

18:04

you weren't expecting to find anything. Actually,

18:07

not. Yeah. Yes. The surprise

18:10

was that that there was some effects, but

18:12

there was a difference between the groups. You

18:14

found something? Yeah.

18:17

They found that the woman who said

18:19

that they had worn this stuff more, they

18:21

were more likely to have had breast cancer.

18:24

And in particular, the woman who wore

18:26

a lot of deodorant, those who put it

18:28

on more than once a day, they were

18:30

the ones who had the increased risk. And

18:33

then, Hanno's team wanted to see if people

18:35

with cancer actually had more aluminum

18:37

in their breasts. So They

18:39

looked at breast tissue from some of the women

18:42

with cancer and some of them without it.

18:44

And here's what they found.

18:45

Aluminum content was

18:48

higher in the breast insipation group.

18:51

It was not a big difference between

18:53

the groups, but there was a statistical

18:56

significant difference. Yeah,

18:59

the women who had breast cancer

19:01

had a little more aluminum in their breasts.

19:04

So when we first saw the study,

19:06

it was looking pretty bad. like

19:08

wearing lot of this stuff could increase

19:10

your risk of breast cancer. Maybe

19:13

because it lets more aluminum seep into

19:15

your breasts. but you

19:17

might not need to throw away your anti perspirant

19:20

just yet and to explain why

19:22

here's Julian Knight. She's a senior

19:24

investigator at the Loonenfeld Tennenbaum

19:26

Research Institute at Sinai Health in Toronto.

19:29

Julia said that while some of this research

19:32

sounds scary, there are actually a bunch

19:34

of caveats that you need to know. I

19:36

always get worried when people so things

19:38

get in media. Like, this study shows x.

19:40

Well, That's fine. Well, what about the other studies

19:42

that have been done? You know? You have to think of it

19:44

as sort of like a court case. Like, this one

19:46

study is sort of like it's

19:48

sort of like a situation where there's

19:50

been a murder and

19:51

one witness reports

19:53

seeing you near the scene of the crime.

19:56

we don't commit somebody on that basis.

19:58

Right? You have to think about that.

19:59

That is just one little piece of evidence.

20:02

Yeah. So to really be worried about

20:04

what Hanoi pound, you'd need other witnesses,

20:07

other studies to back it up. And

20:09

in this case, when we look at the other papers

20:11

on this, they're all over the place. For

20:14

example, another study like Thanos

20:16

didn't find a link at all between deodorant

20:18

use in breast cancer. Another

20:20

problem is that the witnesses in these studies

20:23

may not be remembering things right because

20:25

they're asking women to think back

20:27

about their deodorant habits from

20:30

decades ago. And Julia

20:32

says that asking people with cancer about this

20:34

kind of thing is especially tricky. If

20:36

you have a serious disease like breast cancer,

20:39

you're gonna think a little differently about

20:41

because you're probably trying to think like, why did

20:43

I get this? What might explain it? You

20:45

know, you think a little bit. And so in this case,

20:47

it could be that you're more likely

20:50

to think like oh, I think I've heard

20:52

that deodorant might be, like, to breast

20:54

cancer and, like, I'd maybe I did use a lot

20:56

when I was younger. Yeah. For sure, that sort

20:58

of thing. I mean, that that's a very

21:00

common probably called we call bias.

21:02

Julia says that because of these issues,

21:05

she's not convinced that there is a link between

21:07

antiperspirants and cancer at all

21:09

right now. lot of other scientists

21:12

that we spoke to agreed with Julia. We

21:14

asked Hano about this. He's the one who

21:16

worked on that scary sounding study on

21:19

four hundred women. Do

21:20

you think that your study is enough

21:22

to convince you that this is dangerous?

21:24

No, we can't say.

21:27

It would be absolutely too

21:31

much

21:32

to to say that our

21:34

study is approved for

21:36

the relationship between

21:39

aluminum and breast cancer.

21:42

Okay. So before we leave this question

21:44

on whether antipirants are bad for us,

21:46

we wanted to look at the idea that antiperspirants

21:49

might be linked to Alzheimer's disease. And

21:52

what we found is sort of similar to

21:54

breast cancer. The research is kind

21:56

of all over the place. So

21:59

we reached out to a bunch of experts. We

22:01

heard back from six of them, and

22:03

they all said that at this point,

22:05

they're not worried about the aluminum

22:07

and antiperspirant leading to Alzheimer's.

22:10

So bottom line, we

22:12

don't have good data showing that antiperspirants

22:14

can up your risk of getting breast cancer

22:17

or Alzheimer's. Where does that

22:19

leave us? Well,

22:21

if you want to keep using NIRE Spritz,

22:23

you're probably fine. But

22:25

there is one thing that some scientists mentioned.

22:28

Maybe don't use antiperspirant if you've

22:30

got a cut on your pit. like if you

22:32

get a nick well shaving. The FDA

22:35

says that anti aspirants are generally

22:37

considered safe, but you shouldn't

22:39

use them on broken skin, so

22:41

you can limit much gets into your body.

22:44

The FDA also says to watch out if you

22:46

have kidney disease, to check with your doctor

22:48

first.

22:50

Okay. So

22:53

let's say you do want to abandon your

22:55

antivirus print altogether. What

22:57

are your options? Does anything else

22:59

actually work? Well, if

23:01

you look at TikTok, you'll hear people

23:03

talking about all sorts of stuff. You

23:05

can use apple cider vinegar as duodirate.

23:08

This is glycolic acid and it eliminates

23:10

the underarm bacteria that causes B0I

23:12

have the best deodorant hack ever.

23:14

Any kind of cellic acid

23:17

toner. Other people are just using

23:19

lemons. One person who got on

23:21

the lemon train is rapper sweetie. She

23:23

mentioned this in an interview that she did. put

23:25

lemons instead

23:26

of the odorant on

23:28

your armpits. So just to,

23:30

like, prepare it, you might just wanna squeeze

23:33

it to get the juices flying. And

23:35

this did kinda get our juices flowing

23:38

because it makes sense. A lot of these

23:40

things are acidic, which could

23:42

kill off some bacteria. So

23:45

I looked for studies on these things. At

23:48

first, I came up short, but then

23:50

I asked Julie Horvath. our

23:52

pit swabbing scientist from earlier. And

23:55

she actually has done a tiny bit of

23:57

research on this. We

23:58

actually did Lyme study where

23:59

we had people who plaid lime

24:02

lime juice to their armpits? Like they were just

24:04

rubbing lime slices on their armpits?

24:07

Yes. Uh-huh. And then we

24:09

saw it grow on the plates.

24:11

And the plates showed that the limes were

24:13

working a little, but they

24:15

only tried it on two people and

24:18

there was a problem. people

24:19

just said that they didn't really like the

24:22

effect of the lime juice because, you

24:24

know, maybe it was killing off some of the microbes

24:26

because changing the acidity, but it made them

24:28

really sticky And so they they weren't

24:31

a fan. But

24:32

again, this was only two people,

24:34

and we couldn't find much evidence on any

24:36

of these other trends either. Alright.

24:39

So what about so called natural deodorants

24:42

that you can buy in the store? Like

24:44

the ones that have the stuff to kill off

24:46

the bacteria or mask the smell,

24:49

but no aluminum based antihypert.

24:51

We

24:52

wanted to know if those actually kill

24:54

off the stinky bacteria. But

24:56

the data we have on those is also

24:59

pretty underwhelming. Julie told me

25:01

about one small study of nine

25:03

people, It found that the natural

25:05

deodorants did work to kill off some

25:07

bacteria, but it didn't work as

25:09

reliably as the antiperspirants.

25:10

ren The

25:12

deodorants do work for some people,

25:14

and it probably works better in some people

25:16

than others. And the some people versus others

25:19

it's not really clear who it works in and

25:21

why yet. But,

25:23

I mean, it it works at some level.

25:26

But

25:26

Julie says that there is one thing

25:28

being tested in the lab that she's excited

25:30

about, probiotic deodorants.

25:34

Like, maybe the answer is that

25:36

we should be working with our armpit microbes,

25:38

not against them. You can do this

25:41

by adding more of the good guys to the mix.

25:43

the less stinky bacteria. This

25:46

is what probiotic deodorants try to

25:48

do. They actually have live organisms in

25:50

them, and some of these live organisms you can

25:52

put on your body and they will eventually,

25:54

you know, over multiple days or weeks,

25:56

replace the microbes that live on your skin that are smelly,

25:58

so you can use that as a deodorant.

25:59

There's

26:01

one small study on ten smelly

26:03

people, which did find that this work

26:05

to make them a little less stinky, and

26:08

at least one clinical trial is in the works.

26:10

So

26:13

who knows? But Julie

26:15

is optimistic that swapping your

26:17

stinky microbes for some more neutral

26:19

ones might help. or maybe find

26:21

somebody who smells really good and get a transplant

26:23

from them and see if those microbes can

26:25

out compete, you're spelling one. So like a Rob ARM against

26:28

them. Yeah. Yeah. And that would be a little tricky.

26:30

haven't heard of the rub armpit parties. That's

26:32

an interesting party.

26:36

And there are other options that might be worth

26:39

trying for people who are dealing with really

26:41

bad b o or sweating. For

26:43

example, BOTOX seems to work pretty

26:45

well for the super sweaters, according

26:48

to one review and made them sweat

26:50

eighty to ninety percent less. It's

26:52

temporary though, and can be expensive.

26:55

But

26:55

if you're ready for the most radical

26:58

solution we heard when it comes to b o,

27:01

here it is.

27:02

embrace your stink.

27:05

We heard from a lot of you who are like,

27:08

benefit. I haven't

27:10

used deodorant and probably

27:13

ten years

27:14

and more. I just go with the

27:16

natural b o, get less

27:18

miserable for everyone up. Just

27:20

kidding. But

27:21

my kids do make finding quite a bit

27:24

when they get mommy a craft bureau. My preference

27:26

is not

27:26

to use anything. I don't use anything. I don't believe

27:28

we

27:28

need it. Sometimes, yeah, Sometimes I

27:30

smell.

27:31

And I like to smell like a human being

27:33

instead of like a flower

27:35

or rose petals.

27:40

That's science versus.

27:46

Hi, Merrill. Hey, Rose. Merrell,

27:49

how many citations are in this week's episode?

27:51

There are sixty five citations

27:54

in this week's episode.

27:55

And wait. Actually, in my version,

27:58

it says sixty three. Did it change? I

27:59

know, but I'm gonna add couple more Oh,

28:02

okay. I'm gonna yeah. You

28:04

got me. And

28:06

where can people go to check out these citations?

28:09

They can go to our show notes and then follow

28:11

the links to our transcripts. Rose,

28:13

did you change anything about your deodorant

28:16

use after working on this episode with

28:18

me? No. But I already was using

28:20

an aluminum free deodorant.

28:23

But not I didn't have any strong feelings about it.

28:25

I just sort of don't know. I can't really explain

28:27

why, but I guess I'll keep doing that.

28:30

Yeah. How

28:31

about you? before

28:32

I didn't really wear

28:34

any deodorant in this episode sort of

28:36

reminded me that it exists. And

28:39

so now I do put it on.

28:40

but it's kind of random way. What? So now

28:43

you wear more deodorant than he used to.

28:45

Yeah. Alright.

28:47

Well, Nice job, Merrell. Thanks,

28:50

Vyros. Bye.

28:53

This episode

28:56

was produced by me Merrill Horn with help

28:58

from Michelle Dang, Disha Biegat, Rose

29:00

Rimmler, Courtney Gilbert, and Wendy Zimmerman

29:03

were edited by Blythe Tarell, additional

29:05

editing help from Caitlyn Kenny and

29:07

Nicole Beamster Borr. Wendy Zookerman

29:10

is our executive producer. Fact

29:12

checking by Erica Aikiko Howard,

29:14

Mix and Sound Design by Boomi Hedaka,

29:17

music written by Boomi Hedaka, Emma

29:19

Monker, Bobby Lord, and Peter Leonard.

29:21

Thanks to all our listeners who left voice

29:23

mails about their stinky pitties, and

29:25

a big thanks to all the researchers we spoke

29:27

to, including Professor Philip Azarb,

29:30

doctor Andres Nash, doctor Rehan

29:32

Day leaked, doctor Cory Hartman,

29:34

doctor Akanea, doctor

29:36

Chris Hallowart, doctor Caroline Allen,

29:39

Professor Chris Graham McGrath, doctor

29:41

Adelene Kekem, doctor Jamie Allen,

29:43

and Professor Cornelia Bains. Special

29:46

thanks to Crystal Haw's dressler, Hanahan,

29:49

Stevie Lane, as well as Jonathan Goldstein.

29:51

He read her old Jaime Dealer and Ed.

29:53

By the way, Jonathan's show heavyweight

29:56

is back and the new season is

29:58

really good. If you're not already listening,

29:59

Definitely check it out. Heavy weight

30:02

on Spotify. Science versus

30:04

we'll be back next week. Smell you later.

30:13

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