How "Big Perfume" hijacked your human scent

Dr. Serge Gregoire

13d • Detox

Somewhere along the way, we decided that smelling like a human was a bad thing.

I get that we all want to smell good, particularly for the opposite sex.

But drowning your skin in modern fragrances and perfumes comes at a cost to your health.

The interesting thing is, historically, perfume wasn't even a health problem!

For thousands of years, perfume was actually just plants, resins, and flower oils.

It only became a health problem when industrial chemistry hijacked fragrance in the mid 19th century.

Perfumers stopped depending on plants and started depending on labs.

And just like that, perfume became cheaper, longer-lasting and biologically foreign to the human body.

Then in 1921, Chanel No. 5 changed everything…

It was the first mass-marketed perfume to fully embrace abstract synthetic concepts (not flowers!) as the core identity.

Advertising reframed perfume as femininity, seduction, status ,and being" clean," "fresh," "pure."

And health disappeared from the conversation entirely.

The rest is history…

Today, scents are added to EVERYTHING: soaps, detergents, shampoos, laundry products, Air fresheners…

Perfume has become an ambient exposure.

"Fragrance" became a legal black box, which means companies don't have to disclose what's actually in their proprietary fragrance blends.

So now we're dealing with chronic, involuntary exposure to petrochemical-derived synthetic fragrance compounds that our bodies were never designed to handle!

And it is far from a drop of jasmine oil on your wrist…

These industrial chemicals are absorbed through your skin, lungs, and mucous membranes – disrupting your endocrine system, triggering your immune system, and screwing with your hormones.

But what exactly is IN modern perfumes that makes them so harmful for humans?

Primarily, it's phthalates and parabens, which you've probably heard me talk about on social media.

One study screened 47 branded perfumes and found phthalates in 100% of them – with some containing up to 23,649 parts per million of diethyl phthalate (PMID: 27120507).

And these chemicals absorb DIRECTLY through your skin…

Think about where people typically apply perfume – the neck, wrists, and behind the ears. Areas with highly absorbent skin and mucous membranes.

Areas very close to your thyroid gland.

Multiple studies have directly linked phthalates and parabens to thyroid dysfunction – including thyroid nodules, altered TSH levels, disrupted T3/T4 ratios, and changes in thyroid hormone synthesis and signaling (PMID: 35581467, 39047362, 37894927, 34930008, PMC8566079, 24658602, 17637918).

These chemicals bind to thyroid hormone receptors, hijack thyroid hormone transport proteins, disrupt the hypothalamic-pituitary-thyroid axis, induce liver enzymes that mess with thyroid hormone metabolism, and cause oxidative stress and mitochondrial damage in thyroid cells.

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