2 Great Tips To Prevent Body Odour You Never Knew About

Body odour doesn’t actually come from your sweat, but the bacteria living on your skin. When you sweat, you are feeding this bacteria with moisture, which can get really smelly unless you do a few things to tame it. I personally use a combination of methods, which seem to work great for me. Hopefully you’ll benefit from this article and your smelly armpit problems will become a thing of the past.

♦ First of all, consider the clothes you are wearing. All the extra effort you will be making with personal hygiene and underarm deodorants will be such a waste if you are wearing fabrics which don’t let moisture escape from the surface of your skin. If the moisture stays, then the bacteria is being fed and the smells can still develop, no matter how much deodorant you are using.

I have been wearing cotton t-shirts for most of my life, until recently. I stumbled upon some t-shirts made from a fabric called merino wool. It’s from a variety of sheep which is native to New Zealand, and it’s absolutely fantastic at preventing body odours because it has moisture wicking properties. Basically what it does is it absorbs the moisture from your body and allows it to evaporate on the surface, thus keeping you dry.

The problem with merino wool is that it does get quite itchy (contrary to what the marketing information will tell you!). It’s also really expensive, about double what you would normally expect to pay for a cotton t-shirt. Luckily there is an awesome alternative, which is actually not very well known at all. Bamboo t-shirts have exactly the same moisture-absorbing properties, and they’re much more affordable than merino. The other cool thing about bamboo t-shirts is the fact that they are a lot more eco-friendly than cotton, as a crop. And importantly for the wearer, you won’t get itchy from wearing this material.

Since wearing merino wool and bamboo t-shirts I have been able to live without the fear of getting smelly armpits. Both fabrics have a natural antibacterial quality, which further helps to reduce odours. In fact, I usually tend to wear my bamboo and merino t-shirts for at least a couple of days without washing them – something I could never dream of doing with cotton.

♦ My next tip is to completely change the deodorant or antiperspirant you are using. I actually found that antiperspirant is pretty bad stuff, drying out the skin in your armpits yet they still get smelly. I have recently started using crystal rock deodorant. I first discovered it in a drugstore in Berlin, and it cost me only 2 and a half euros. I bought it in September last year. It’s now the middle of March (at the time of writing) and my crystal rock deodorant is still going strong – in fact it is supposed to last for a couple of years. I’ve just done a quick search on the internet and found many different brands of this type of deodorant, so it’s pretty easy to get hold of. And just think of all the money you will save by using this instead of aerosols.

So, in conclusion, all I did was ditch my cotton t-shirts in favour of bamboo (and sometimes merino although it’s itchy and expensive compared to bamboo), and start using a crystal rock deodorant. Now I hardly ever get smelly armpits and I’m a lot more confident. I hope these tips help you too.