How It Works

Stress works in mysterious ways. It begins in the brain resulting in heightened levels of norepinephrine and dopamine. This leads to what we call the fight or flight response. As the norephiphrine and dopamine increase, so does our blood pressure, heart rate, our digestive system slows down (because who has time to go to urinate or defecate when they are running from a bear!) Pupils dilate so that we can see more clearly, and we sweat more to help cool our body down as  we increase our physical activity in order to fight or flee the apparent stressor.

The norepinephrine will stimulate the sweat glands in the axillary region (the armpits) to help with this cooling process. There are two types of glands that are activated during our stress response. The eccrine glands which primarily secrete salt water based fluid which tends not to smell and the apocrine glands which secretes a high concentration of lipids, fatty acids, and triglycerides. When these products are broken down by the normal flora bacteria located in the axillary region, they create the ominous smell that we all tend to associate with the odorous “stress sweat” as my patient so accurately describes it.

In particular, there is a compound, Gly-Cys-3M3SH, that is secreted by our appocrine glands when stress levels are high. It is utilized by our normal flora bacteria, Staphylococcus, as an energy source. These bacteria will break down this molecule into a thiolalcohol compound by the name 3M3SH. Why is this important? This is the same type of compound that is responsible for the smelly assaults skunks use to ward off there enemies. This is the common denominator between humans and skunks. We smell by the same means as a skunk when under stress! Unless if you’re a great horned owl which lacks the ability to smell a skunk, then you’d be wise to fight the smell of the skunk by an alternative means, Dr. Hoot’s Deodorant!

Unique to our deodorant from Dr. Hoot’s, we provide the bacteria (or little skunks that I like to call them) with an alternative fuel source in the form of an amino acid, L-methionine. A recent university study, showed that the normal flora bacteria appear to take preference over this alternative fuel source when in comparison to Cys-Gly-3M3SH.  Remember this is the natural compound secreted by human axillary (apocrine) glands, which is then broken down into the odorous molecule, thioalcohol. Given that the bacteria prefer this food over Cys-Gly-3M3SH much like a child would prefer ice-cream over brocoli, it reduces the production of the odorous compound by 75% per York University study.  Ask yourself, does your current deodorant do this?

Although we cannot provide you with owl talons that generate 300 lbs of force to kill a skunk we can provide you (and maybe even plumicorns upon request) an appropriate means of killing that skunky smell after a hard days work. A preferable fuel source for your little bacteria to chow down on and reduce the production of 3M3SH. So be the owl and fight the skunk! With Dr. Hoot’s deodorant stick.