Health Tips

Perspiration causes body odor. One and a half pints of perspiration is produced by the sweat glands in normal temperate conditions. Ninety per cent of perspiration is water, the rest is made up of dissolved salts, urea and waste products.One of its main jobs is to keep body temperature normal. So when we exercise, or are in a hot climate for example perspiration increases to try to bring our body temperature down. When perspiration first evaporates on the skin there is very little smell on a normal healthy person. It is the build up of stale sweat that smells bad. The smell occurs when bacteria that live on the skin act on the sweat produced by the apocrine glands. Alcohol, spicy foods, garlic, cumin, caffeine and hot drinks can all cause us to sweat more.

Other Reasons for Body Odor
Diabetes: especially in those who use insulin to control their levels of sugar, can smell of acetone (nail-varnish remover). Such individuals require urgent medical attention.

Liver Disorders: may smell of ammonia and people with yeast infections can smell of beer.

Drugs: Some anti-psychotic medications, morphine, high doses of the hormone thyroxin and overdoses of analgesics such as aspirin, acetaminophen (Tylenol,etc) are all known to cause body odor.

Anxiety: when emotions run high the body prepares itself for a ‘fight or flight’ response. This is a physiological state in which body prepares itself for action. Often we can neither fight nor escape situations that cause anxiety but our bodies still react as though preparing for action. We all sweat during states of arousal even in tiny amounts. This is the basis of measures used in galvanic skin response test used, for example, in lie detectors or with biofeedback equipment.

Heredity: there are some people inherit a tendency to sweat more than others. Excessive sweating is known as hyperhidrosis.

Dealing with Body Odor
Daily (or more frequent) showers, use of soap, changing your clothes frequently, (a few times a day if you sweat excessively), choosing natural fiber clothing and sometimes a change of diet will all help to get rid of body odor.