What can make your sweat smell bad?

If you are a person who gets into regular workouts, the question of the smell of your sweat can be of paramount importance to you especially when you exercise in public places. While there is nothing strange in the sweat having a tendency to smell bad, sometimes the smell becomes too intense. This article will provide you with several ideas about what can be causing such a smell.

Not wearing socks with your sport shoes

Many people prefer not putting on any socks while wearing sports shoes. This is actually a very bad idea if you are concerned about the smell of you sweat.

In fact, the purpose of socks is to help the water to leave the surface of your skin where exactly all of the bacteria are residing. This is possible when socks are made of natural materials, for example cotton. If there are no socks, your feet are soaked in sweat and all of the bacteria there can easily multiply. This makes it rather difficult to avoid unpleasant smells.

Note that it is not enough just to wear socks. As it has already been said, you should wear socks made of natural materials. This is crucial since artificial fabric will not change anything as well since it is not capable of liquid absorption.

By the way, the specific smell of sweaty feet comes from the Bacillus subtilis species of bacteria residing on the feet.

Wearing clothes made of artificial materials

Artificial materials cannot transport water that is why they are locking your sweat on the surface of your skin. As it has been described with the sweat of your feet, it also happens to your armpits. You can yourself check how much the smell of sweat on your cotton T-shirt differs from the smell on your polyester T-shirt. By the way, the intensity of the smell on the artificial material can be a way higher even if you have been wearing this piece of clothes for a short moment and the cotton one for the entire day.

Pay your attention to the fact there are many manufacturers of sportswear who are aware of this problem and they are developing various advanced materials which have special channels for water transportation. It is rather difficult to say how effective they are for minimising unpleasant smells before testing each of them. It is up to you whether you would like to check them especially since such clothes tends to be pretty expensive. Yet, it might have an advantage over its natural alternatives since one of its purposes is also keeping the material dry. This cannot be achieved if you are wearing natural materials such as cotton as they will certainly be wet when you sweat.

One more important fact you should know is that natural materials sometimes can get attacked by the bacteria releasing toxins with unpleasant smells too much. Then, you might notice that unpleasant smells are not leaving your garment even after washing. In such a situation, you will need to wash your clothes in a particularly high temperature which is capable of killing the bacteria for good.

Your diet

It is not a secret that some kinds of food can make you release smells through your skin. Certainly, the most obvious cases are onion and garlic, however, there are a way more other products that can change the smell of your body in general and the smell of your sweat.

For example, a great number of spices are capable of bringing such changes into your body. In addition to it, having food with artificial flavours especially the once intensified by monosodium glutamate. You can easily notice it by frequent consumption of various chips, instant noodles and other products.

By the way, these are not all of the issues connected to your diet. The smell of your sweat can become rather unpleasant if there is too much of protein in it. In addition to it, it has already been proved experimentally that lack of magnesium in a diet can make the smell of sweat worse.

Alcohol consumption

In all likelihood, you are already aware of the fact alcohol is regarded by our bodies as a toxic substance, so our bodies are trying to get rid of it as soon of possible after consumption. Unfortunately, some of the substances are broken into compounds and a part of these compounds have a rather unpleasant smells. When they are mixed together and are leaving a body with sweat, this can make a general rather unpleasant effect.