I dry shampooed, I promise!

Hey guys, a non-smelly Amy with you today on DNews taking on a topic we’ve all dealt

with one way or another: gross stinky body odor.

Let’s start with the basic fact. We all smell. And it’s because of our skin.

Our skin is our largest body organ, varying from person to person but on average it’s

about 21 square feet of surface area. It’s layered to protect our delicate organs from

dangerous germs and bacteria while also keeping in moisture, basically making it an excellent

barrier between our internal selves and the outside world.

And that barrier varies in its topography and texture. There are folds, valleys, little

niches, and it’s all home to a thriving ecosystem of bacteria. Some of the bacteria

on your skin can cause nasty infections, but other bacteria actually fights off the bad

microbes, keeping you healthy. And that in itself is a finely tuned system; any disruption

can cause skin disorders or infections.

Skin also has loads and loads of sweat glands. One kind are called eccrine glands and they're

everywhere. These are the ones that continually bathe our skin in a salty-watery secretion,

known as sweat, to cool us off. They can also release fluid that acidifies the skin, keeping

the growth of micro-organisms in check.

Another kind of sweat glands are the apocrine glands. These are found mainly in notoriously

sweaty and odorous areas like armpits and groins. They respond to adrenaline and emotional

stress, secreting a milky fluid that’s also thought to contain pheromones.

So there’s a lot of fluid going on with skin, but that’s not the culprit of the stink;

sweat itself is actually odourless.

The smell factors comes in because as we sweat, the moisture gets into all those skin folds

and nooks and crannies where there’s plenty of bacteria. And a moist, closed environment

is bacteria’s happy place.

They thrive in spots like armpits, eat compounds found in sweat, and produce molecules that

we smell and know as body odor.

And there’s more to it. Diet can affect your unique odor. Foods high in sulphur like

broccoli and cauliflower release compounds secreted in sweat that can make you smell

worse, sort of like rancid butter.

Meat also changes body odor. One study actually found that vegetarian men’s sweat smells

more appealing to women than their meat-eating brethren’s. Alcohol can seep out through

your pores if you over imbibe, making you smell, well, like a drunk.

But let’s say you have an average diet, don’t drink too much, and lead a pretty

standard lifestyle without engaging in especially sweaty activities. How long until you really

start to noticeably stink? Well, it varies from person to person because no two people

are the same. But a few days without showering, deodorant, or basic washing will probably

start to get unpleasant for the people around you. But it's possible to push through the

smell phase and get to a no-smell phase. Eventually your body will settle into a happy arrangement

of bacteria that keeps itself, and your smell, in check. Because, really, we didn't adapt

to need perfumes and deodorants and body lotions…It’s social convention that tells us to

manage our natural human smell.

You know who doesn’t stink? The team over at Source Fed! They do pop-culture news and

comedy…so it’s like us but faster and funnier! Click the link below to get your

daily dose of the trending news!

And speaking of smelly, I’ve heard it smelled pretty bad on board the Apollo spacecraft

during missions to the Moon, not surprising when you realize that they were pooping and eating

smelly things like tuna in that thing! If you want to know more about that, check out

my own channel, Vintage Space, where I dig into all kind of space oddities.

Have you ever been aware of your own smell? Let us know in the comments below, don’t

forget to like this video, and subscribe for a new episode of DNews every day of the week.