Idea of making small, incremental changes to deal with this condition

 

DISCLAIMER:  I am not a doctor or medical professional of any kind, and nothing here is medical advice.

So, I have a new idea that came to me. It sounds like most people are looking for one single thing that is going to cure them. It occurred to me that a much more realistic approach would be to look for a large number of things that each make a small, but noticeable improvement, adding up to a major improvement.

So instead of hoping that eating some probiotic yogurt is going to cure your condition, hope for a 5% improvement from it. Look for a large number of areas to get these 5% improvements, and it will add up to something major. In my case, I cured my problem 20 years ago through dietary change (see my profile for my posts if you are interested), but I think the approach I lay out here is promising for people who can't find one major thing that cures them.

Here are ideas for things to look at with the goal of getting a large number of small improvements:

- Supplements, like zinc and magnesium. This topic will require a good deal of research, based on what others report has worked for them.

- Dietary change

- Clothing change to improve odor control, particularly activated charcoal clothing, which you may have to make yourself from activated charcoal cloth. Cotton fabrics will work better for this condition than synthetic ones.

- Foot odor control through activated charcoal socks and insoles and thinking about breathable or absorbent footwear

- Genital area odor control through removal of hair (which simply exists to amplify the smell) and perhaps try an adult diaper (incontinence underwear) to control smell from genital/anal area.

- Improved anal area hygiene. I have a post on this, but the basic idea is to go beyond simply using dry toilet paper to clean, but using the showerhead as well to get a much deeper clean, and trying to use the toilet right before the shower to maximize the benefits.

- Exercising to sweat out the toxins - this has been observed by people to be beneficial.

- Improved bowel habits - this has been observed by people to be beneficial.

- Consuming probiotics, either through supplements or kombucha or kiefer

- Consuming activated charcoal supplements

These are just some ideas, and I am sure there are other things that could be added to this list. Some of these ideas rely on an assumption that there are multiple areas of the body responsible for the problem, which is based on my own experience. If your sweat is the problem then it is likely more than just your underarm sweat that is contributing to the issue, but of course I can't prove this is the case for everyone, and you will need to experiment.

So, the idea with all these things is not to look at one of them as being a cure, as I think most people do, but rather to look for small but noticeable improvements that can be added onto other things that create small improvements, and lead to an overall substantial improvement. So instead of hoping that zinc + magnesium supplements are going to cure you, hope instead for a small, but noticeable improvement. The whole idea is that this seems to be a far more realistic, and achievable approach.

Now, since most people do not have someone to actually tell them how their condition is improving/worsening, and since most people can't smell themselves, they are forced to rely on the reactions of others, which is an inherently crude and imprecise tool. So a key part of this idea is to try a large number of possible solutions all at the same time, so that instead of attempting to identify a 5% improvement in your condition based on the reactions of others, you will be looking for a major improvement instead.

When looking for things to try, you want to segregate out anything that people report might make symptoms worse. For example, I think some people have reported this with probiotics. Try things like this after you try everything else. If this works and you want to try and identify which things are actually responsible for your improvement, and which are not doing anything, that will require some experimentation, if you think that is worth the effort.

There is a second half of the ways to look for small improvements, that can be added to other small improvements, and this is the mental/emotional side of this. Here are the major issues to look at:

- The issue of how you feel about causing discomfort to others from your condition

- The question of just what other people are actually smelling. If you can't smell yourself then there is a lot of speculation on your part about exactly what the answer to this is. There is likely a natural human tendency to exaggerate this, to at least some degree.

- Your ability to tolerate others negative reactions to you.

- The question of much a negative smell dilutes through the air over distance.

- The question of how many people are offended by you but are not saying anything. If people make negative comments, you know that there must be a larger number of offended people who would never make those comments, but how many people is that?

- The question of the reasonableness of negative comments that are made. Are people making comments reacting in an unreasonable way, and thus they should be ignored?

- The issue of being willing to take risks, in terms of possibly having negative reactions, both in order to experience more things, and to learn more about what is doable and what is not.

- The issue of being willing accept a more restrictive diet, if you know it will improve your symptoms

- Being willing to spend more time learning about this condition and how to deal with it.

- The issue of how this condition affects your self image/self esteem

There are probably many other mental/emotional areas, and you want to make this list as large as possible.

With each of these areas, the idea is not to radically change your view, for example suddenly deciding that you do not care if others are offended by you, or that you will not care at all about negative comments made in front of you. The idea is to try and push the envelope a little bit, to see if you can slightly improve in these areas, looking for 5% improvements in a large number of areas that will add up to something substantial.

The way to get small, but noticeable improvements is to push as hard as you can in an area. Hopefully you can find a major improvement, but this is the way to achieve a realistic, small improvement.

For the mental/emotional side of this, the way to get these small improvements is largely by challenging your own beliefs and assumptions concerning the above issues I listed. So perhaps you can learn to have a little bit more tolerance for making others uncomfortable, and learn to be just a little less affected by negative comments that are made. If you could achieve 5% improvements in all the above mental/emotional areas, that would add up to something substantial.

So the idea is to look at trying to make small improvements in a large number of physical areas, and mental/emotional areas. The realistic hope is not that this adds up to a cure, but perhaps it adds up to just barely enough that you can justify no longer being isolated, or being miserable around others, which is what you need to live a normal life.

Also, there is another area to improve on beyond the physical and mental/emotional side, and that is the issue of finding things you enjoy doing that don't involve being around other people. There is an entire universe of things like this that include outdoor sports and being indoors and making music and art, reading and more. When the covid lockdowns started, I had to learn to find ways to make it enjoyable, by looking for enjoyable things that did not involve being around strangers indoors. Through a lot of effort I did this, and this concept is key for anyone with this condition.

 

EDIT: I thought a bit more about this post, and I think the most important thing is the idea that individual treatments may yield small benefits that are too small to notice from watching for reactions, and that the key is to do a large number of treatments together as a package to get around this problem.

So for example, it may be the case that zinc + magnesium supplementation makes a small positive difference, but you don't see a change in reactions and conclude it did nothing. Making this part of a larger package of treatments would take care of this problem. For the mental/emotional side, I think the goal should be to look at the areas I listed, and have a goal of simply having each area not be a disaster.