Aaron here. I’m the cosmetic chemist behind Woohoo Body’s formulas, which mostly means I spend my days weighing things out, smelling things, occasionally making something so bad it goes straight in a bucket, and getting roped into office shenanigans when I should probably be measuring pH.
Phoebe collected up the questions that land in our inbox most often, starting with the big one: does natural deodorant work? She told me to answer them without causing a snooze fest. So here they are, roughly in the order people ask them. Stick around for the end, where I admit to some things.
Does natural deodorant actually work?
Yes, but not in the way an antiperspirant works, and that’s where most people trip up.
An antiperspirant is built to reduce how much you sweat, usually with aluminium salts that temporarily plug the sweat ducts. Every Woohoo deodorant is aluminium-free, so your sweating carries on as normal.
Here’s the part I wish more people knew: sweat is close to odourless on its own. BO starts when the bacteria living on your skin get to work breaking it down. So that’s what I go after. Depending on the formula, ours protects up to six different ways at once, neutralising the acids behind BO, keeping the odour-causing bacteria in check, trapping odour molecules before you notice them, and soaking up moisture so you feel fresher for longer.
So yes, you’ll still sweat. You just won’t smell like it.
So why does sweat smell?
It doesn’t, really. Not on its own.
Fresh sweat is mostly water and salts, and if you could keep it sterile it would be close to odourless. What you’re actually smelling is what happens next. The bacteria that live quite happily on your skin break sweat down, and the by-products of that are the bit your nose objects to.
That’s also why it’s your armpits and not your forearms. Underarm sweat glands produce a different kind of sweat, with more in it for bacteria to work on. Warm, covered, a bit humid. If you were designing a place for bacteria to have a nice time, you’d design an armpit.
Why does stress sweat smell worse?
Because it’s coming from different glands.
When you’re hot, you sweat mostly to cool down, and that sweat is fairly watery. A stress response recruits more of the underarm glands, and what they produce has more for bacteria to break down. Same bacteria, richer material, stronger result.
It’s not your imagination, and it’s not a failing of hygiene. A job interview is chemically different from a warm afternoon.
Why do I smell worse when I first switch to natural deodorant?
Because you’re in the adjustment period, and it’s completely normal. Especially coming off an antiperspirant. For most people it settles within a week or two. For some it takes longer, and that’s normal too.
Usually a few things are happening at once. Your underarms are getting used to a different kind of product. There’s often some leftover buildup on the skin from your old deodorant. And honestly, your pits might just want a more thorough wash than usual - warm water, soap, a washer, every day. Most people are surprised at the difference it makes.
If your skin gets sore or irritated rather than just smelly, that's a different thing. Stop using it and get in touch.
Do I need to do an armpit detox before I switch?
Not always. It’s an optional helping hand, not a must-do.
And a word on “detox”. Around here it doesn’t mean anything extreme or medical - your body handles that side of things by itself. It just means clearing away everyday buildup so your underarms feel clean and ready for deodorant.
Our Armpit Detox Mask uses a trio of mineral clays to lift away leftover deodorant, sweat and skincare residue, excess oil, and general buildup from daily life. Once or twice a week is plenty. If you’re just making the switch, two or three times a week while you’re settling in. Sensitive skin should stick to one or two.
Worth knowing: patch test it first, it's for external use only, and skip it on broken or freshly shaved skin.
What’s the difference between bicarb and bicarb-free formulas?
A different ingredient doing a similar job.
Bicarb soda neutralises the acids behind BO, and it’s been doing that in natural deodorant for decades. Our bicarb-free formulas use magnesium hydroxide and magnesium carbonate hydroxide instead. Magnesium hydroxide doesn’t dissolve easily in sweat, so less of it is at work on your skin at any one time. That’s what makes it gentler for a lot of people.
Skin varies a lot in how it gets on with bicarb, which is why we make both, and there’s a longer read on bicarb vs bicarb-free if you want the detail. If bicarb has given you itchy pits in the past, we’ve written about that too. And bicarb-free is not the consolation prize: Drift is bicarb-free and extra strength, so you can have the strength without the bicarb.
The bicarb scents are Surf, Urban, Wild, Tux and Pop. Bicarb-free are Mellow, Tango and Drift.
Why don’t you use aluminium?
We choose not to use it because we prefer simple, natural ingredients, and because our formulas are designed to work with your body’s natural processes rather than blocking them. There’s no aluminium in any Woohoo deodorant, and no aluminium salts in any of them.
Aluminium antiperspirants tend to react with sweat and leave yellow marks in fabric, and they can leave white marks too, where the aluminium dries on the skin and rubs off.
Will I sweat less over time once I’ve switched?
No. I get asked this a lot and I’d love it to be true, but it isn’t.
Our deodorants don’t touch how much you sweat. They’re aluminium-free, so nothing is being blocked. What changes over the first few weeks is that your underarms adjust to a different kind of product, and the odour settles down. The sweating carries on doing what your body wants it to do.
Some people do notice more sweating when they first switch, as their body adapts to a different formula.
Is there a natural deodorant myth that drives you crazy?
Not really myths. It’s more the half-truths and the misleading claims that bug me.
Natural deodorants that are still using synthetic fragrance to do all the lovely smelling. We stick to natural fragrances.
And potassium alum, the crystal deodorants. Some of them get sold as a natural alternative, and because it’s a mineral you come away thinking it must be doing something better. It isn’t. It’s still a form of aluminium salt, it’s still plugging your sweat ducts to stop you sweating.
How much should I be using?
Less than you think.
Two to four swipes of a stick, which doesn’t need rubbing in. Or half a pea to a whole pea of paste per underarm, rubbed in fully until it disappears, before you get dressed.
Start at the lower end if your skin is on the sensitive side, or if it’s going on a child. Head towards the upper end if you’ve got stronger BO or you sweat heavily, and hairy underarms might want a bit extra to work it through to the skin.
The other upside of not overdoing it: the less you use, the longer your Woohoo lasts.
Do the sticks really work as an anti-chafe balm?
They do, and it’s one of my favourite bits of accidental design. The stick’s glide comes from the butters and waxes that hold it together, and that same glide helps protect against chafe. Chest, back, under your bust, between your thighs. Feet work too, just go easy with the amount - it gets slippery.
While our sticks are the ones built for anti-chafe, the pastes do help too (but the sticks are a bit more effective).
What’s the worst deodorant fail you’ve ever had in the lab?
A deodorant test where I put two actives together that really did not want to be in the same room. Acid met alkaline, and the whole batch curdled. Think ricotta, if ricotta were sticky.
You know the elephant toothpaste experiment they do at school? Like that, except mine didn’t have the decency to be impressive about it. It didn’t foam up and go anywhere. It just sat there.
It went in a bucket and got disposed of properly. We don’t talk about it much.
What’s the weirdest scent combination you’ve ever tried?
Nothing truly deranged, but a few genuine misfires.
Ylang ylang was straight headache material. Lovely in theory, and by lunchtime nobody in the office was speaking to me. Raspberry cocoa was a bit much. And I once tried a chocolate cacao extract that smelled incredible in the jar but did absolutely nothing good in a deodorant.
Then there are the two traps that are easy to fall into. Garlic and rosemary together will have you smelling like a roast dinner. And citrus is much harder than it looks - it’s very easy to make a lemon scent that smells like toilet cleaner.
How many formulas did it take to get the original Woohoo formula right?
Fewer than ten, which usually surprises people. What surprises them more is how long fewer than ten took.
The base came together quickly. We were making it at cottage scale in tiny batches, so I could turn a new version around in a day. The scent took a bit of hunting - we wanted a delicate balance of florals without it being too flowery, or too feminine. Finding packaging we were happy with took longer again.
But the thing that really set the pace was the dose. Finding the point where there was enough bicarb to properly neutralise odour, but not so much that my own underarms objected. And you can’t rush that, because skin doesn’t tell you straight away. Each version meant two or three weeks of actually wearing it and watching to see whether anything changed.
So: under ten formulas, and the better part of a year. I was the test subject, which seemed fair enough given it was my idea.
If you could only use one Woohoo scent for the rest of your life, what would it be?
Jingle. Peppermint and vanilla, and I’ve never got sick of it. It’s a limited edition though, and we’re sold out until Christmas, so if I’ve just put a craving in your head, sorry about that.
The one I actually reach for the rest of the year is Tux. Bergamot, citrus and some nice woods. A classic, and it’s what I wear when I want to feel like I’ve made an effort.
Got a question I haven’t answered?
Send it through.
And if you’re still working out which formula suits you, get in touch and we’ll help you work it out. We also have two guarantees, a 90 Day Sensitivity Guarantee and a 90 Day Freshness Guarantee, and you can read how they work on our guarantee page.
Cheers, Aaron
