Whiten Your Underarms

First to understand how to whiten your underarms, most don't understand why they have dark underarms in the first place.  

The primary reasons why you have darker skin on your underarms (in no particular order)....

1. Shaving
2. Antiperspirant
3. Hyperpigmentation
4. Buildup of dead skin cells under the arm
5. In rare cases, dark underarms can be associated with acanthosis nigricans

Probably the easiest fix for making lighter underarms could be as simple as changing your deodorant.  While deodoorants can keep you from smelling, they can also cause darker skin.  One of the ingredients, alum chloride apparently will stain your clothes as well as your skin when mixed with your sweat (ever noticed how white shirts that are older have dark, yellowish spots under your arms?).

The solution is to find APD's that don't contain alum chloride in them.  Perhaps the best option for this is to find a antiperspirant or deodorant that contains an ingredient called Aluminum Zirconium Tetrachlorohydrex Glycine, which has been seen to be less "invasive" on the skin and can actually reduce the possibility of stains to both the skin and your shirt. 

While you would think that shaving the hair under your arm would mean the skin would be lighter, in actuality sometimes the opposite is true.  This is especially true for people whose hair is darker than their skin.  

The reason for this is typically, when you shave, you are simply cutting your hair follicles shorter.  The hair under the skin can leave a shadow which will give the appearance of darker skin.

The solution to this problem is to wax rather than shave because waxing will remove the hair by the root and not simply cut the hair shorter.

In some cases, darker underarms is simply a case of dead cell proliferation on the surface, much like what you may see with age spots associated with this.

The best remedy for lightening your underarms if this is the case is to use an exfoliator treatment.  Search for products that contain lactic acid.  In some cases, using products that exfoliate the face can work as well.

Hyperpigmentation can also result in darker underarms.  Typically, this is because your body is producing too much melanin.  Usually, the culprit involved is the sun although any skin inflammation can cause it.

The best result for this is to use a cream that inhibits melanin production in the body.