Body smell, especially when the underarm smells bad, everyone will worry about being misunderstood and not paying attention to personal hygiene. However, is body odor really all due to poor personal hygiene habits?
Of course not! Body odor is not caused by hygiene habits alone. Hormonal changes can also cause body odor to change. Let's first understand the causes of body odor.
Adults have as many as 4 million sweat glands
Sweat, 99% composed of water, helps us dissipate heat and detoxify. Adults have an average of 3 to 4 million sweat glands, which are eccrine glands (eccrine lines) and apocrine glands (apocrine glands).
We feel sticky in our body in the hot summer. It is covered with eccrine glands on the surface of the skin, which discharge thin sweat. The sweat of eccrine glands is more than 99% water, and contains almost no protein and fatty acid.
After exercising, the underarms and chest are wet, which is due to the apocrine sweat glands. Apocrine sweat glands will discharge a large amount of secretions after intense exercise to help the body dissipate heat. Apocrine glands (apocrine glands) are scattered with hair follicles, and are mostly distributed in the hair follicle openings near the armpits, chest, and private parts. The secretions of the apocrine glands contain proteins and fatty acids.
In general, males have larger and more active sweat glands than females.
Sweating does not cause body odor
The sweat from the sweat glands is colorless and odorless. The protein and fatty acids in the sweat are broken down by bacteria on the body surface, which is the cause of body odor. Most of the places where apocrine sweat glands are distributed are body parts that cannot be directly exposed to sunlight, and the warm and humid environment is especially conducive to the reproduction of bacteria. Therefore, the more you sweat, the more chances of body odor developing in specific areas such as armpits, chest and private parts. Body odor is strongest after exercise.
Hormone- induced changes in body odor
Do you remember the smell of sweat in the classroom after male students exercised in school? Girls will suddenly find that their body odor becomes strong some days?
Hormones control our body odor from puberty onwards. Hormone secretion starts to be active during puberty, and hormones are excreted and secreted through the apocrine glands. Men's sweat glands are naturally more active than women's, so they generally sweat more and are more likely to have body odor than women. In recent years, studies have found that body odor is related to androgen.
Female hormones change periodically with menstruation. The hormone is strongest before menstruation and lowest during menstruation, and after menopause this gland stops secreting hormones. In addition, emotions can also activate the apocrine glands, and irritability or tension are prone to odor.
Hot flashes, night sweats, and hormonal fluctuations experienced during menopause can lead to excessive sweating, which can lead to changes in body odor. After menopause, female hormones decrease and even old people will appear.
How to Improve?
Avoid eating spicy food
Body odor comes from the breakdown of fatty acids in sweat and bacteria on the skin surface. Spicy and stimulating food will stimulate the secretion of fatty acids and increase the content of fatty acids in sweat.
Keep skin dry
Bacteria like warm, humid and dark environments. We keep the sweating parts dry, such as wearing clothes with good perspiration performance, shaving armpit hair, and trying to prevent bacteria from adhering to the skin, all of which can effectively reduce body odor
Use deodorant
Using antiperspirants and deodorants is another way to reduce body odor. Antiperspirants usually contain aluminum chloride, a chemical that, when exposed to sweat, forms a blockage of eccrine glands (sweat production) Particles, the particles block the pore outlet, sweat cannot be discharged, so as to reduce sweat and keep the armpit dry.
The principle of operation of deodorant stick is that the ingredients in the formula suppress odor on the one hand and kill bacteria and break down odor on the other hand.
As people pay more and more attention to their health, many people begin to choose deodorant instead of antiperspirant. Zero Yet 100's vegan deodorant products do not add any artificial preservatives, and do not irritate the skin. The aroma formulated with natural compound essential oils is even more pleasant to the body and mind.
Body odor is a very natural phenomenon, we don't need to pay too much attention to it, as long as the effective deodorization is enough.
