Welcome Guest, Give the Gift of Health to Your Loved Ones
Edition: 2015-07-30 The 20th century gave rise to all sorts of seemingly beneficial things, which, in light of the simultaneous rise in chronic non-infectious ailments, we might need to flag as candidates for re-examination, as potential concerning correlates even though not yet confirmed causes.
One of those 20th enhancements was the broad availability of inexpensive and effective antiperspirants and deodorants. Prior to that, about the best one could do was to mask body odor with strong scents and perfumes.
Body odor mainly arises from a process that starts at the apocrine sweat glands. Long thought to be just for temperature regulation, these glands may turn out to have a separate and important excretory function.
The odor results from bacterial action. The odor (and human olfactory response) varies with skin biome, genotype, phenotype, gender, environment/culture, circumstances and doubtless other factors. Humans have been adapted to this phenomenon forever, but as with the simple matter of wearing clothes, public displays of natural state have fallen into disfavor. The pejorative old expression "the great unwashed" probably captures the attitude of the historical upper classes, who could afford to manage their olfactory footprint.
Approaches to "fixing" the BO "problem" might include:
In general, if you can avoid needing to use any odor control products at all, that's the way to go until more is understood about long term effects. Being retired, I have this luxury, but still need a product for hosting visitors and periodic mingling with the general populace.