I was talking about hygiene with my partner who is a nurse and they were telling me that a lot of people remark that their armpits are smelling worse than normal and they are using more and more deodorant and people just think it is normal.
Trichobacteriosis looks like a yellowish coating on some of your armpit or groin hair and you need to shave and wash the area every day for 2 weeks. It is more common in men than women in the US only because it is more common for women to keep their armpits shaved. Most of the patients who are affected by it think that its actually residue from the increasing amounts of deodorant they end up using.
Anecdotal, but the few times I’ve had that I’ve wiped under my arms with alcohol and it cleaned it right up.
Yeah I don’t doubt it, its just superficial bacteria that can be sticky. I think some people have it worse than others and that like the 2 week thing is the sure fire nuclear option that will basically always work. I actually posted this because I’m pretty sure I had this too in my 20s when I was going to the gym all the time but I started shaving and keeping it that way around then and talking about it was like a memory unlocked moment.
Hey thanks for posting this–both the original post and your own anecdote. I think personal hygiene is something that should be more comfortably chatted about. It’s weird cause most people are like “ew TMI” and yeah it can wind up in that space, but at the same time, I think there’s a lot of stuff people are lacking in knowledge in just cause it’s kind of embarrassing to talk about!
Anyway I think I also had this in my early 20s; at least I hope so. I remember scrubbing harder and harder under my pits and one day seeing something slough off and until recently I’ve always assumed I killed a bunch of skin and it all came off. But given the symptoms I had been having at the time, I think this might have been it.