Wash your hair with salt, by Dr. Gomi, odor and sweat specialist doctor in Japan

Why does your body odor change as you age and how can you neutralize it? Well, your body odor change as you age primarily due to the body odor compound nonenal and one of the ways to neutralize nonenal on your scalp is by washing your hair with salt water!

Shiseido, a Japanese cosmetics company, surveyed 2,400 women in Japan about body odor issues in the summer. The result was that 64% of the women are concerned about odor. One woman explained, “I know nonenal is the cause of the changing body odor, and this increases with age, especially after you’re 40 years old.”

Dr. Gomi, an odor specialist doctor who has studied body odor and sweat for over 30 years, says that shampooing your hair daily worsens body odor that’s due to aging.

There are two reasons that body odor increases as we age, especially for 40 year old women.

1. Menopause: When menopause starts, estrogen decreases. This makes peroxide lipid and fat acid react more, which causes increased aging odor as you age.
2. Hot flashes: Suddenly your face or chest gets hot and you start sweating a lot. This sweat includes a lot of ammonia and when it’s mixed with nonenal, the cause of odor, body odor gets worse.

The areas most susceptible to body odor due to aging are your scalp, behind your ears, the back of your neck, your chest, and underarms. The tricky area is your scalp, because it’s not easy to apply any deodorant products on your scalp during the day.

To combat nonenal due to aging, Dr. Gomi advises washing your hair with salt water once every 3 days. Pour hot water in a wash basin and mix it with a tablespoon of salt. Wash your hair in the basin. Massage your scalp as you wash your hair. You can easily rinse the salt water out in the shower.

When you first start wash your hair with salt water, your scalp might feel oily. This oily feeling will go away once your scalp gets used to the salt water and aging odor on your scalp will decrease. Salt functions as a deodorant to eliminate nonenal, the primary cause of body odor.

If you wash your hair with shampoo every day, you make your body odor situation worse. Washing your hair with shampoo damages the scalp and excessively removes natural scalp oils. To counteract your harsh treatment, your scalp tries to produce more and more oil, which causes your scalp to be oily and produce odor. Dr. Gomi recommends washing your hair with shampoo on the 1^st day and 2^nd day, then washing your hair with salt water on the 3^rd day Repeat this cycle every three days.