Why some people don't have to wear deodorant
Temperatures are (finally) rocketing which – besides digging our summer wardrobes out of storage – means only one thing; sweat.
Throughout the country, we’re lathering and spraying deodorant onto ourselves with gusto in hope that it’ll stop excessive sweating and mask any body odour.
Though if you happen to be part of a small portion of the population, you could be wasting your time, as a study has revealed some people don’t give off body odour at all.
A study in the Journal of Investigative Dermatology explains that a few years ago, scientists discovered a gene called ABCC11 which determined whether people produced wet or dry earwax.
And the people who produced ‘dry’ earwax also lacked the chemical in one’s armpits which bacteria feeds on and causes underarm odour.
This was just 2% of the population, mind, so don’t throw away your Dove roll-on just yet.
It also varies a great deal between populations, and is especially absent in East Asia.
“This key gene is basically the single determinant of whether you do produce underarm odour or not,” Ian Day, a genetic epidemiologist at the University of Bristol and the study’s co-author, told Live Science.
The findings were the result of an investigation into chemical exposures among 6,495 women in Britain and their babies.
Taking blood samples – which contain genetic material – researchers asked what kind of hygiene products women used daily to investigate how their genes related to the products they were using.
They found that 98% of the women had the gene for smelly armpits, with 95% of those using deodorant regularly.
But three-quarters of the 117 women who didn’t produce underarm odour still used deodorant daily.
Which goes to show that even if we don’t smell, we feel the need to conform to the same hygiene routines – in other words, we reckon it’s better safe than sorry.
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