Anti-perspirant

An anti-perspirant is commonly used for the prevention and treatment of severe sweating as found in both men and women. Nowadays, clinical-strength antiperspirants are also available to combat excessive sweating. People around the world put on either antiperspirant or deodorant before leaving for work.

Antiperspirants are basic products that usually perform double functions. These are products that are commonly used to control odor and sweat in the underarms. There are 2 kinds of glands in the underarms, eccrine and apocrine. By far, eccrine glands present in the human body are found to be most numerous.

The sweat glands are solely responsible for producing the moist or the sweat in the underarms and in different parts of our body. Most people use antiperspirants to cover up the smells from the underarms. However, if you perspire a lot, then you would probably require an anti-perspirant which can help to slow down the production of the underarm sweat to some extent.

Our bodies continuously perspire or produce sweat. However, there are times when they usually produce a lot more sweat. The additional sweat is usually produced to cool down the bodies when we are in extreme physical exertion or exposed to heat or in nervousness or stress.

Sweat appears whenever the sweat gland present in our body is stirred. The body cell secretes the fluid, which travels from coiled portion of the gland through the straight duct and then out onto the skin surface.

Most strong antiperspirants are manufactured with several ingredients including the liquid emollient, wax and the active ingredient compound. It’s an active ingredient which gives the antiperspirant the power to block the sweat. Almost all antiperspirants in the market have aluminum content as the main ingredient. If you check the label of the antiperspirant container, you’ll find the presence of the aluminum based compound is listed as the very first ingredient.

Given below are few of the most common active ingredients:

  1. Aluminum Hydroxybromide
  2. Aluminum Chlorohydrate
  3. Aluminum Zirconium Tricholorohydrex Glycine
  4. Aluminun Chloride

It’s a fact that every cell can draw a particular amount of water. Eventually the water concentrations inside and outside of the cell reaches its equilibrium. Now when this occurs, the water within the cell starts to pass out of the cell through the osmosis and the swelling of the cell goes down. This is major reason why people need to re-apply the antiperspirant.

On a given average, an over the counter antiperspirant can have active ingredient concentration that can range anywhere from 10 to 25 percent. As per FDA standards, over the counter antiperspirants can’t contain more than 15 to 25 percent of active ingredients, depending on what type it might be.

FDA also outlines that an antiperspirant should be able to decrease the average sweat of a person by at least 20%. On the other hand, for those people who suffer from excessive underarm sweating, there are some prescription products to choose. The prescription products include higher concentrations than those of the over the counter antiperspirants.