What does sweat odor smell like? How to distinguish between sweat odor and armpit odor

When we see someone standing next to us and he or she emits an unpleasant sweat odor, just like the smell of rancid food, we tend to think that this person has body odor. In fact, this is a misunderstanding of sweat odor, because sweat odor and body odor are two different concepts.

Different pathological causes

The difference between body odor and underarm odor is that they have completely different pathological causes. Underarm odor is the smell of the fluid secreted by the subcutaneous apical sebaceous glands after being decomposed by bacteria, which is dominated by endocrine, while body odor is caused by excessive sweating. This is the smell of a large amount of sweat secreted by normal sweat glands. For example, sweating after exercise. The reason is due to excessive excitement of the sympathetic nerves. The treatment of body odor focuses on removing the subcutaneous apical sebaceous glands. Sweat odor only requires moderate cleaning and does not require surgery.

Armpit odor is a disease

Bromhidrosis is a skin disease caused by excessive secretion of apocrine sweat glands. There are millions of sweat glands on the human body. They can be divided into two types according to the nature of their secretion: one is the small sweat glands, which are almost all over the body, generally the most in the palms, soles of the feet, and forehead. They open directly into the sweat pores on the skin and discharge clear sweat. The other is the apocrine sweat glands, which are only distributed in the armpits, umbilical follicles and perineum. The glands open into the hair follicles. The secretion of apocrine sweat glands is affected by the gonads. Before puberty, since the apocrine sweat glands are not yet mature and have no secretory function, body odor will not occur. During puberty, the gonads secrete vigorously and the apocrine sweat glands secrete more. The smell is also obviously smelly.

Symptoms of body odor

For example, patients with body odor generally have a family history, and in addition to the unpleasant smell, they are often accompanied by "oily ears", yellowing of clothing under the armpits, sticky and damp underarm secretions, etc. Through these phenomena, people can easily distinguish whether they have sweat odor or body odor.