What should I do if my feet stink a lot?
1. Inhibits the growth of bacteria.
The key to preventing smelly feet is to inhibit the growth of bacteria.
2. To prevent smelly feet, keep your feet clean.
Wash your feet carefully with antiseptic soap at least once a day, including the toe crevices; clip your toenails once a week; get a foot polishing stone or scrub to carefully remove dead skin from the palms and heels of your feet, which are a major food source for bacteria.
3. Foot odor comes from bacteria.
The dead skin on the feet provides protein food for the bacteria, and the sweat on the feet provides a moist environment for Propionibacterium, Staphylococcus, and Staphylococcus epidermis to proliferate. Propionibacterium breaks down the protein and produces propionic acid, which is the acidic and pungent substance in the odor of smelly feet; Staphylococcus epidermis eats the protein and produces isovaleric acid, which smells rotten and a bit sour; the stench comes mainly from Staphylococcus, which produces a rotten egg smell because it eats the protein and produces methyl mercaptan. The combination of these smells is the foot odor.
4. To prevent smelly feet, avoid overly damp feet.
Moist, warm environments are a breeding ground for bacteria. After washing your feet, dry them thoroughly before putting on your shoes. Keep a pair of crocs or leather sandals in your office and put on socks before wearing such shoes. This way, you will not leave the impression of a casual work attitude while keeping your feet dry. After strenuous exercise, switch to slippers immediately, or take your shoes and socks off and wait for the sweat on your feet to dry before putting them back on.
5. People with smelly feet tend to have a lot of sweat glands on their feet.
There are differences between people in terms of sweat gland density; some have over 100,000 sweat glands on both feet combined, while others may have hundreds of thousands. Those with many sweat glands on their feet produce a lot of sweat, which allows bacteria to flourish and makes them particularly prone to smelly feet.
6. Change socks frequently.
To prevent smelly feet, change your socks regularly, at least once daily. If you are on a business trip and it is not convenient for you to wear slippers, changing your socks twice a day is even recommended.
7. Remove bacteria.
Wash and dry your socks by turning them inside out first to remove bacteria better.
8. Don’t wear shoes that are too thick and heavy.
The thicker the shoes, the more sweat they will absorb, and the more bacteria will be able to breed in them.
9. 4 tips for tackling bacteria in your shoes:
- You can use a shoe and hat desiccant to dry up the moisture (aka sweat) inside. Without water, the rate of bacterial reproduction will drop. Insoles should be taken out often to dry; UV light is very effective in sterilizing them.
- You can also remove moisture by using heat. For example, you can heat the insoles with a hairdryer and even blow on the inside of the shoes the same way, especially the toe part, except the stench will waft out.
- If it’s summer, you can seal the shoes in a black bin bag and leave them in the sun. This way, the temperature inside the bag will exceed 60°C. In an hour, all the bacteria will be gone.
- Of course, you can also rotate 2-3 pairs of shoes, wearing each team for a week and then leaving them on a two-week break, which will reduce bacterial growth rate.
10. Don’t believe in soaking your feet to eliminate the odor.
For example, adding onion, ginger, garlic, pepper, and vinegar to foot wash water to get rid of foot odor may sound sensible: to remove the smell. But when you think about it, those are the spices we put in our pig-trotter-stew, which do not kill the bacteria at all, let alone destroy the environment conducive to their growth. These methods only mask foot odor through the smell of spices and add some spicy seasoning to the original stench and sourness.
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