Meet Sharmani Pillay, Pharmacist and Founder of Apothekari Dermaceuticals as she talks about the philosophy behind her science based line of skin care treatments. More videos are available throughout the site.
The short answer: hormonal shifts during perimenopause and menopause change both how much you sweat and how that sweat interacts with skin bacteria, which means body chemistry itself is shifting, not just your deodorant's effectiveness.
If a product you've used for years is suddenly stinging, or your skin feels tight and reactive no matter what you put on it, your skin barrier is probably the reason. The short answer: declining estrogen slows your skin's ability to produce ceramides and lipids, so it holds onto moisture less effectively and reacts more easily to things it used to tolerate. It's not that your skin got "worse" — it changed, and it needs a different kind of support now.
Skin doesn't hydrate itself in isolation from its environment. Humectant ingredients in your moisturizer, and to some extent your skin's own natural moisturizing factors, pull water from the surrounding air into the skin. When humidity is high, as it typically is through summer, that process gets a meaningful assist. When outdoor humidity drops heading into fall, that assist largely disappears, and skin has to hold onto moisture with less outside help.