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Why do feet stink differently than the rest of your body??

2007-04-18 16:44:32 · 6 answers · asked by mc 2 in Health Other - Health

6 answers

The main thing that feeds foot smell is sweat. With more than 250,000 sweat glands each, your feet are among the most perspiring parts of the body. In one day, each foot can produce more than a pint of sweat! Sweat is basically just salt and water, though, so it doesn't have a distinctive smell of its own. The smell is actually caused by bacteria on our skin that eats the sweat and excretes waste that has a strong odor. It's perfectly normal to have bacteria on your skin, and it doesn't ordinarily produce a noticeable smell, but sweat attracts bacteria and gives them a whole lot to feed on.

Of course we sweat all over -- our hands have a comparable number of sweat glands, for example -- and most of the rest of our body doesn't particularly stink (the armpits being a notable exception.


So what's different about our feet? The answer is our socks and shoes. The sweat our feet excrete can't easily escape into the air like the sweat our hands excretes -- it all collects on our skin and in our socks. The bacteria love this dark, damp feast and have a sort of feeding frenzy. When you take off your shoes, the smell that hits you is all the bacteria excretion that's collected on your feet and in your socks and shoes.


The main reason some people's feet (or more precisely, some people's socks and shoes) smell worse than other people's is that some people sweat more than other people. This is just one of the many variable physiological qualities of human beings. This is also why sometimes your feet smell much worse than at other times -- it all has to do with how much you sweat.


So, since foot odor is caused by bacteria digesting sweat, there are two main ways to reduce the stink. You can:

decrease the amount of bacteria on your feet
decrease the amount of sweat that collects on your feet and in your shoes

Reducing the level of bacteria is really a matter of cleanliness. To control the bacteria population on you feet, you should:
wash your feet with strong anti-bacterial soap
wear clean socks
don't wear the same shoes everyday - give a pair of shoes 24 hours or more to air out before wearing them again

To reduce the amount of sweat that collects in your shoes, you should:
wear well-ventilated shoes instead of very constrictive shoes, such as boots
always wear socks, preferably made of cotton or other absorbent materials that absorb a lot of the sweat so the bacteria can't feed on it
change your socks a few times a day
buy some absorbent Odor-Eater type shoe inserts
apply an antiperspirant to your feet


If your foot odor is really bad and these solutions don't help much, then you should see a doctor. There are a number of prescription drugs that can treat serious foot odor, some by killing bacteria and some by reducing foot sweat

2007-04-18 16:56:40 · answer #1 · answered by rosieC 7 · 0 0

If you do not wear shoes or socks or anything of that manner, your feet do not stink as much, actually. A large part of stinky feet is how tight the spaces are, how well the socks and shoes absorb the stench, and how long the stench stays on each piece. For instance, if we put all the stuff around and on our armpits as we did our feet, our armpits would smell a lot stronger as well.

2007-04-18 16:52:03 · answer #2 · answered by xParadox 3 · 0 0

ft extremely stink even worse because of the fact they are regularly encased in socks and shoes. in assessment to while your brow sweats, your shoes and socks extremely collect extra sweat than everywhere else on your physique can. The micro organism likes to stay in our shoes, on our ft, and in our socks because of the fact no longer in ordinary terms is there adequate sweat to bypass around, however the darkness of being interior of a shoe is the appropriate breeding floor for this micro organism. all the micro organism is busy chowing down interior your shoes, and once you're taking your shoes off all the excreted waste odors are set unfastened and waft for the time of the room or on your face.

2016-12-10 05:54:21 · answer #3 · answered by Anonymous · 0 0

1

2017-02-08 22:22:50 · answer #4 · answered by Dale 4 · 0 0

Bacteria thrive on feet....I know you have to know this. The byproducts from these bacteria often smell rancid.

2007-04-18 17:42:01 · answer #5 · answered by Anonymous · 0 0

sweat,and confinement

2007-04-18 16:54:23 · answer #6 · answered by Anonymous · 0 0

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