FOOT CARE JOURNAL 06
Where Does Foot Odor
Actually Come From?
You slip off your shoes at the end of a long day, and for a second you hope no one is standing too close. Foot odor is one of those quiet worries almost everyone shares. The surprising part is where it starts: not with sweat itself.
Fresh sweat is close to odorless. The smell comes from bacteria that live on everyone’s skin, all the time.
Feet have one of the highest concentrations of sweat glands on the body, and they are often said to produce close to a glass of sweat a day. Bacteria feed on that moisture, and the compounds they release as they break it down are the source of that unmistakable smell.
A cousin in the cheese cave
One of the bacteria behind that familiar smell belongs to the same family as the one used to ripen Limburger, the famously pungent cheese. If the comparison has ever crossed your mind, there is a reason for it.
Shoes make it worse. Inside a shoe, air barely moves and sweat has nowhere to go. Warm and humid, it is close to an ideal place for bacteria to grow.
Wear the same pair day after day, and it never fully dries out between wears. The bacteria simply keep multiplying.
Dead skin plays a part too. Old skin that builds up on the heels and between the toes is food for bacteria. The more there is, the more they multiply, and the stronger the smell tends to be.
So foot odor is built from several things at once: sweat, bacteria, the climate inside your shoes and dead skin. Deal with only one, and the others bring it back in a slightly different form.
Washing removes surface dirt and some of the bacteria present at that moment. But the inside of a shoe can’t be scrubbed the same way, and as long as it stays a breeding ground, the smell returns quickly.
Washing, it turns out, is only part of the answer.
If odor comes with itching, peeling or redness, it may be a skin condition such as athlete’s foot. A doctor can tell you for certain.
Feet change with what you do for them, a little every day.
At Colors Hiroo Nail Lounge, foot care is a treatment of its own, never an afterthought. Over the years, we have kept refining how we care for callused skin and heels.
It can be done in the same visit as your gel manicure or pedicure: an unhurried hour in a modern Japanese house, two minutes’ walk from Hiroo Station.
Reservations are made through Hot Pepper Beauty, an external Japanese booking site. English-language plan details are listed further down that page; please scroll down to find them.
Colors Hiroo Nail Lounge
5-3-8 Hiroo, Shibuya-ku,
Tokyo
Mon–Fri 10:00–21:00
Sat, Sun & Holidays 11:00–20:00