Who's got the funk? Better sniff closer - it might be you!
As you've gotten older, you might have noticed a few changes going on with your body. But one of these only your nose knows - it's your personal scent. You smell differently these days than you did a few years ago, and sometimes you can be downright rank, right? What's to blame for all this smelliness? It's your old pal, sweat.
Teenage sweat is different from kid sweat. For starters, there's much more of it. During puberty, hormones that are busy changing you into an adult also up the output of your sweat glands. You sweat more all over, but the places affected most are under your arms and around your genitals.
Teen sweat is also made up of different stuff than kid sweat. Humans have two types of sweat glands - eccrine glands, which release a salty liquid good for cooling the body, and apocrine glands, which put out a milky substance that regulates sweating. Eccrine glands are all over your body, but apocrine glands are found mostly - you guessed it - under your arms and around your genitals. When you go through puberty, your apocrine glands become a lot more active than they used to be...[read more]