Health Info

On Body odour

Body odour or underarm odour is a pungent smell produced by internal discharge. Underarm odour from secretion of apocrine glands from the skin combined with bacterial action results in a bad smell. This frequently occurs in adolescent females.

If the smell is strong, it is easy to make others feel uncomfortable. According to statistics, 80% of Europeans and Americans have body odour while Asians only consist of 10% or fewer. For Westerners, they think of it as a normal physiological phenomenon and do not care.

Although less common in Asian community, the smell of body odour is a dreaded thing and will cause much embarrassment for the affected persons. What causes body odour? Generally there are two types of sweat glands. One is also known as small exocrine glands distributed in the body which secretes 99% water and 0.5% salt. Another, known as apocrine gland contained at the dermal layer of skin, discharges at hair roots, found only in the armpits, genitals or eyebrows. The liquid will secrete a thick discharge, containing fat, protein and iron. Through the armpit, sweat secretion and bacterial decomposition will result in the formation of odour.

On Bad Breath

Some affected individuals with bad breath will feel very uncomfortable. Some will refuse to swallow food. Some might even cause feeling of nausea and vomiting. Of course, this will lead to offensive feelings to people nearby. When speaking to people, some might cover up their mouth with their hands for fear because of this problem. According to the statistics of the relevant government agencies, 56.3% of the population over 18 years of age suffer from varying degrees of bad breath symptoms.

When a person has bad breath, it will doubtlessly be embarrassing in social situations. Knowing that this is a social taboo, but one still cannot get rid of the problem will become a great distress to social life. Friends and family may make well-intentioned suggestions to the afflicted individual to use Chinese herbal toothpaste, chewing tea leaves or other remedies. Unfortunately for most people, bad breath persists despite trying these remedies. Many people think that perhaps the accumulation of food residue around the teeth causes the bad breath problem and will use tooth cleaning device with ultrasonic vibration. However these don’t work. In fact most of the root causes of bad breath disease have nothing to do with this issue. So, bad breath cannot be removed even by using these remedies or methods.