Can You Smell Me?
Your body odor is a combination of your genetics, diet, and lifestyle. It's normal to have some kind of body odor; it's when the odor becomes very strong that it becomes a problem and sometimes even affecting your self-view.
The average human nose can detect about 10,000 different odors. If you think about this number in terms of the all smells, you might be able to describe nearly every smell in the world, broadly speaking. However, you may have lived with someone who generally smells bad—and you may rank pretty high on the smell-o-meter. Yet over time you may not notice these smells . It may seem impossible for one person's armpits or feet to emit such foul aromas and the person be completely unaware or you may think a smell is horrible and another thinks it is quite pleasant.
Olfactory Fatigue
If you've ever smelled something and thought, "Wow! That smells awful!" only to have someone else give the same thing a thumbs up, then you've experienced olfactory fatigue.
Olfactory fatigue is the inability to detect a smell that is present--and it can happen in your own home. When you smell something strongly for a long time, or if it's familiar (like your own underarms) and therefore not particularly interesting anymore, your sense of smell gets tired out and stops detecting it. The result? You might not notice when your breath smells bad or when your armpits start smelling awful because olfactory fatigue has made them seem normal again!
However, if you're not used to smelling something strongly all the time—and it's not familiar—you can get a sense of how much you've gotten used to it. For example, imagine what your breath would smell like after eating a pound of garlic cloves, or how bad your armpits would smell after wearing the same shirt for two weeks straight. Yes there are people that can not smell malodor on their body unless it is magnified.
Olfactory fatigue can happen with any familiar scent, like coffee brewing in the morning or cooking dinner at night. Have you ever cooked fish and after a while the fish smell was absent but the next day someone may notice a fishy odor on your coat, sweater or hair? It also happens when we're exposed repeatedly--even unconsciously--to certain odors like cigarette smoke or perfume/cologne that have become associated with certain people in your lives who wear them frequently enough for you to not even notice anymore!
Housing Bacteria On Your Skin
The skin microbiome is an ecosystem of microorganisms that live on your body. You have a good amount of bacteria living on and in you. Many are beneficial and necessary for your survival and help protect you. But not all are good and this primarily is how odor starts. So there are good reasons why deodorant and antiperspirants are needed: they help prevent odor-causing bacteria from proliferating and causing bad smells.
Contributors To Smell
Apocrine glands are found mostly in moist areas with hair. This is where you can experience pungent odors especially in the underarm and groin area.
Apocrine glands are a type of sweat gland, bigger than eccrine glands. They're usually associated with hair follicles, so they produce apocrine sweat that has a higher concentration of protein and lipids compared to the watery fluid secreted by your other sweat glands (the eccrine). The apocrine sweat produced in these glands itself is actually odorless; it's only when bacteria break down those proteins and lipids that the body odor begins to develop!
This means that if you want to smell good all day long without worrying about smelling bad later on, then it's important you find ways to keep the bacteria levels low so they don't produce strong-smelling compounds during their metabolic processes (which usually involve breaking down your bodily odors). Soap helps kill off some germs but not all--and even if soap does manage kill off some germs during washing sessions at home or work bathrooms etc., those dead cells could still release toxins into surrounding environment when left behind after washing hands/body parts etc..
If you want to use natural remedies for reducing underarm odors instead of commercial products like antiperspirants or conventional deodorants, try a more natural kind. SHILDZ is a cream deodorant that you apply to areas on your skin where you notice an odor. The skin can absorb what you put on it. Be a conscious consumer by knowing what you are putting on your skin.
Here's the bottom line: Even though you might not be able to smell yourself, others can. And if they don't like what they smell, you could be in for a world of trouble. So if you're looking for ways to improve your body odor, it might be time to invest in some deodorant or a different kind.
