There’s never an acceptable social situation where smelling rotten is better than smelling pleasant.
Foul body odor, for the most part, is generated from your feet, orifices, and where skin rubs against skin (armpits and between your legs for example).
If you have bad smells oozing out of your forearms, you need to see a doctor because that’s a medical problem, not a hygiene problem.
We’re going to assume you already practice basic hygiene, and that you’re looking for something beyond that to deal with this problem.
If soap and water have failed you, the following should help…
Sweat the stink out
Bad body odor can cling to your skin like a leech.
If a shower isn’t washing away the surface smell you need to get at the problem from the inside.
Get a good sweat going and purge the body odor from your pores.
A light sweat will not get the job done. You need a rigorous, full body sweat.
Make sure the clothes you wear while working up a sweat are clean (we’re going to talk more about this in a second).
You won’t solve your odor problem if your sweating away with dirty, smelly clothes pressed up against your skin.
If exercise isn’t your thing, a sauna or steam room will get the job done.
Whether you’re exercising, using a sauna, or taking a hot bath, sweating is a powerful way to eliminate waste in your body that may be causing bad odor.
This process is more efficient when you make sure your pores are not clogged. (Pores are tiny openings on the surface of your skin that release sweat and oil)
You can do this by removing the dead skin cells, oil, and dirt that build up on the surface of your skin.
Three easy ways to do this are:
- Use a soft bristle hair brush and run it over your dry skin
- Use an abrasive loofah or firm sponge when you bathe
- Exfoliate your skin – there are many products made for this but we recommend gently rubbing plain baking soda over your skin in the shower. (if you have sensitive skin test it on a small patch before using it on your entire body)
Unclogging your pores helps your body eliminate waste more efficiently. You’ll also feel cleaner when you get rid of the layer of dead skin, oil, and grime that’s coating your entire body.
Eat clean and you’ll smell clean
If you needed another reason to avoid junk food, here it is – it can make you smell awful.
It’s even worse if you’re older and your body isn’t as capable of processing unhealthy garbage.
Alcohol might be the worse olfactory offender. If you’ve ever been near an older alcoholic you know they smell like grim death.
Do we need to tell you what you should be eating to smell nice? You already know the answer; fruits, vegetables, healthy fats, lean protein, lots of water, etc.
A few pungent foods that should be avoided are garlic, onions, and hot peppers.
One food item that gets mentioned a lot as being able to eliminate body odor is chlorophyll.
You’ll find chlorophyll in leafy greens like spinach and kale, and in green powder supplements like spirulina.
We help a lot of people improve their health in many different ways. One thing we see over and over is the desire for mammoth results by making very little change
If you don’t practice good hygiene, if you don’t break a sweat every now and again, and you live off garlic and onions, popping two chlorophyll tablets a day isn’t going to make you smell like a rose garden.
Changing your body chemistry to eliminate odor will require making a series of easy to implement changes.
You might not be the problem
Stink can embed itself in the fibers of your clothes.
They’ll smell alright fresh out of the laundry, then the bad smell is activated when the clothing becomes warm and moist against your skin.
This especially becomes a problem if you wear your clothes more than once without washing them (stop doing that).
Plain laundry soap won’t knock the embedded smell out.
You need bleach. Bleach can ruin your clothes if you don’t know how to use it, so look up the instructions if you’re unfamiliar.
With shoes, and even clothing, the embedded stink can become so foul that the only solution is to throw it in the garbage.
Exfoliate with a loofah or baking soda
Running a bar of soap over the problem area isn’t enough. You have to really get in there and scrub away the stench.
You can use a loofah to do this, or you can put a little baking soda on a washcloth and scrub away.
Kill the bacteria
Unless your diet is terrible or you have a medical condition, fresh sweat doesn’t smell horrible.
Bacteria that live on your skin breaking sweat down into acids are what cause the bad smell.
You can experiment with different brands of soap and deodorant labeled “antibacterial” to deal with the bacteria.
If you want to try a natural antibacterial product before switching to a chemical filled deodorant, use a solution that’s 1 part Apple Cider Vinegar and 3 parts water on the problem area.
Apply, let it sit for a minute then rinse it off.
Two things:
- Apple Cider Vinegar can irritate your skin. If it starts to burn, wash it off and dilute the solution with more water.
- Apple Cider Vinegar smells bad. You’ll need to wash it off with soap and maybe even the baking soda exfoliant described above.
These steps should take care of most body odor. If the problem doesn’t go away you might want to see a doctor.