00:00Hey guys, it's me Anne, and this is Beauty With Me.
00:02If you guys have been watching my show for a while, you know that I'm pretty much up for anything.
00:07So when I found out that people go through tons of trials just to test deodorant,
00:12I was like, yeah, okay, I gotta try that.
00:15Lucky for me, Secret invited me back to their clinical testing labs in New Jersey,
00:19where they put my body through the ringer to see how well their clinical strength antiperspirant actually works.
00:25But I couldn't do a video about antiperspirant without addressing the controversy around the use of aluminum salts,
00:31which is the compound that basically plugs your pores so you don't sweat as much.
00:35There's a lot of conflicting information about the use of this ingredient because some studies have indicated
00:41that aluminum has been linked to diseases like Alzheimer and cancer,
00:45although associations like the American Cancer Society, National Cancer Institute,
00:50and the Alzheimer Association have all reported that aluminum is safe to use.
00:54I personally use natural deodorant on the day-to-day,
00:56and then I'll use antiperspirant on days that I know I'm going to be sweating a lot.
01:00It is all up to your personal preference, what you want to do or not.
01:05To prepare for the test, I wore this deodorant on one arm for three days,
01:10and no deodorant on this arm for three days as well.
01:16What we're doing here is we need to take some data from you.
01:19One, make sure you're healthy, and also take a few data points that will show what your state is right
01:24now,
01:25because we're going to be taking several other measurements on your heart rate, for example, through the day.
01:31Put it in between your cheek and gum there.
01:34What we're sampling here is your cortisol level.
01:37So cortisol is a stress hormone, right?
01:40And so cortisol levels can increase when you feel stressed.
01:44Put it right in there.
01:45Secret's testing process is pretty unique because they test for two different kinds of sweat.
01:51Didn't know there were two different kinds of sweat, did you?
01:54Apparently, there's stress-induced sweat and physical activity-induced sweat.
01:58And guess what?
01:59They both smell different.
02:01For that reason, Secret has two different tests that they do,
02:04the first of which is the stress test.
02:09Good luck.
02:10Okay.
02:11Hello.
02:12Please have a seat.
02:13Okay.
02:14I'll be honest, this test was really terrifying.
02:18No joke, it was like something out of Clockwork Orange.
02:21During this exercise, you'll have your heart rate monitored,
02:23and you will undergo a moderately stressful mental and physical tasks.
02:27At the end of the test, we're going to keep you here to make sure that your heart rate has
02:30returned normal.
02:31It will also do another saliva test just to monitor your cortisol.
02:35Again, I'm going to need you to follow all of my instructions explicitly.
02:38Do you understand?
02:39Okay.
02:40I need you to place your hand in the bucket of water, your right hand.
02:44And hold it in there until I tell you to remove it.
02:55Remove your hand from the bucket and place it on the towel.
02:57I need you to count backwards from 2,043 by 17s as quickly as possible.
03:02If you make a mistake, you'll have to start over.
03:04So please begin.
03:052,043 by 17s.
03:072,043 by 17s.
03:092,043 by 17s.
03:12Minus 20 is 23.
03:15Put your hand back in the water.
03:16Oh my God.
03:17Okay.
03:19This time, I need you to count backwards from 4,032 by 13s.
03:23Oh, you changed the number.
03:27Oh my gosh.
03:29This is going to make me go so stupid.
03:32What is happening to this thing right now?
03:35It's all right.
03:35Okay.
03:36Please continue.
03:37Okay.
03:374,032.
03:39My hand.
03:40It's 4,022.
03:41Okay.
03:42It was, it was the 19 one, right?
03:4619, 20, 21, 22, 23, 24, 25, 26, 27, 29, 30, 31, 32.
03:52Got it.
03:54Okay.
03:54You may remove your hand.
03:562026.
03:57Then it's 2000.
04:002009.
04:0190.
04:02Put your hand back in the water.
04:04Yay, yay, yay.
04:07That concludes our test.
04:08You may remove your hand from the water.
04:10I'm going to start a timer.
04:15So I'm so sorry.
04:16I had to be so mean to you in there.
04:18Why did you have to be so stoic?
04:20That's part of making you stressed is by not giving you any verbal or visual cues of whether
04:26or not you're doing well or whether or not you're doing bad.
04:29If I were to say like, yeah, you can do it or that's correct, keep going, or even saying,
04:34no, that's wrong, try again, like even any kind of visual or verbal cues would have helped
04:39you relax a little bit.
04:40And I wanted to keep you on edge.
04:45I'm going to have you stand there with your arms at your side for about a minute.
04:49I'll be timing you.
04:49And then I will give you instruction as to which arm to lift up.
04:54Okay?
04:54All right.
04:55So number one and number two, if you would come in, please.
04:58Once the test was over, Barry, who's a trained odor grader, and I got very, very intimate.
05:04Do you know how many armpits you've smelled in your lifetime?
05:08Okay, ladies, you're going to lift your right underarm up.
05:16The odor graders have a numeric scale that they grade odor on, zero being no smell, 10 being
05:23extremely smelly.
05:29Tell me what you do here.
05:32So I'm the head of sniffing.
05:34Okay.
05:34So I sniff under people's arms.
05:36I sniff their feet.
05:38I sniff their breath.
05:39And if we're doing a feminine hygiene product, I'll be sniffing a used pad.
05:44So you literally smell vaginas and penises?
05:49Not penises, just vaginas.
05:50It's gross.
05:52So if you had to choose between smelling armpits, used pads, breath, and feet, you could only
06:00choose one, you've smelled the rest of your life, what would you choose?
06:04I'd have to go with feet.
06:05Feet?
06:06I'd have to go with feet.
06:07What?
06:08Why?
06:09I don't know.
06:10I love it.
06:11I love what I do.
06:11Every single test is different and every client wants something different.
06:16On a very standard DO study like you were involved in today, we're looking at the intensity
06:21of the body odor.
06:23So we want to see how intense the smell was under the arm that was treated and the arm that
06:31wasn't treated.
06:32In your case, it was really low.
06:34You only had a marginal smell compared to some of the other ladies on the studio.
06:38At that point, the worst was pretty much over and after grading my pits for odor and sweat
06:43production, I moved on to the heat test.
06:46We're going to be in the hot room for about 50 minutes.
06:50You're going to be sitting for 30 and then you're going to be walking around these chairs
06:53for 20.
06:54I had to wear these absorbent pads under my armpits to collect all my sweat for analysis
06:59later.
06:59It was pretty gross.
07:0240 seconds and then we're going to start walking when the timer goes off.
07:10Okay ladies, you're going to start going this way and you're just going to walk for 20 minutes.
07:16I'm considering this my exercise for the day.
07:23Hey ladies, you can find your seats for me.
07:29What we're actually doing now is, before you went into the hot room, we weighed your vial.
07:34Now we know that the pad weighed 20.647 grams.
07:41We want to now see what your sweat added to that pad weighs so that we can kind of work
07:46out then if the product's been working for you.
07:49I cannot believe he's doing this math in his head right now.
07:520.4 less on the product side.
07:57I sweat less on the product side.
07:59You did.
07:59You being, I'm guessing you're of Asian descent.
08:02Yes.
08:02You're Chinese.
08:03So there are certain areas of eastern, coastal, China, Japan and places like that that actually
08:10don't make the apocrine glands.
08:13At all.
08:13At all.
08:14And so what happens is, the way that you might notice it personally is you would have a different
08:18kind of ear wax than other people, so because I mentioned that apocrine glands are in the
08:22ear canal as well.
08:24So they actually.
08:24What does that mean?
08:25So someone who has activated apocrine glands, their ear wax is going to be very waxy and
08:32kind of will have some color to it, maybe like a yellow tint to it.
08:35Whereas people who don't have active apocrine glands, it's going to be more hard, crunchy,
08:40crusty kind of a thing.
08:41Wait, that's like TMI, but that's literally my ear wax.
08:44Is it?
08:45Really?
08:45See?
08:45Yeah.
08:45I have like really like weird ear wax.
08:48I guess not that weird.
08:49I always thought it was just me.
08:50You would still, even under stress, create odor.
08:53It would just be odor from the acrine gland sweat, as opposed to the rancid odor that comes
08:58from apocrine gland sweat.
09:00You hear that?
09:02That means I'm not that smelly.
09:06Fresh.
09:06At the end of all the testing, the scientists found that I had a 59 percent reduction in
09:11sweat production on the arm that I did wear the antiperspirant on, and I also scored
09:16an odor of zero, which basically means the antiperspirant worked.
09:21I have a little microscope with me that I can show you on the tip of your finger, your
09:25sweat glands firing.
09:26Do you want to see?
09:26Yes.
09:27That sounds so cool.
09:30Okay.
09:30So here we go.
09:31That one's just now firing, and if you stay with it, you saw it just been reabsorbed.
09:36So what'd you think?
09:38How crazy was that?
09:39All in all, even though I was scared sh**less to do some of those tests, I'm looking at
09:45you oral math, I actually had a really fun experience and I learned a lot.
09:49I mean, I had no idea the science of sweat was so complex.
09:53Zero to ten, what would you give this side?
09:57Like a six?
09:58Yeah.
09:59And what about that side?
10:00Like a zero.
10:01Yeah.
10:02Thank you guys so much for joining me on this experience, and let me know if you would
10:06try this test and what you want me to try next on Beauty With Me in the comments below.
10:11Thank you guys so much for joining me on that experience.
10:13Let me know if you would try this test and what you want me to try next on Beauty With
10:17Me in the comments below, and click here to subscribe to Refinery29, and click here
10:22to watch more videos.
10:24Bye!
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