Precocious Body Odour: Why Your Kid Is Getting Smelly And How To Stop It

Have you ever wondered why babies and little kids don’t get smelly body odour? It’s because before puberty sets in, their sweat comes from eccrine glands that pretty much only secrete water. It’s not until puberty that the apocrine sweat glands kick in, and begin to secrete the oily substances that our body’s resident bacteria thrive in (stink is a normal process in the adult body, by the way, because these little critters are only doing their job of digesting these oils). So why are more and more mums noticing their kids start to smell, and even buying them deodorant before they’re ten years old? In a word: chemicals.

The early onset of body odour can signal the start of outright puberty. Over the last few decades, the onset of puberty has begun to shift earlier and earlier, with girls as young as 8 and boys as young as 9 starting to undergo the physical changes of sexual development. While early puberty can be hereditary, in most cases it’s environmental: since we first noticed it in the 1990s, we’ve discovered that it’s linked to obesity and exposure to chemicals.

The obesity crisis is bad enough for our kids as it is, with poor diet and lack of exercise causing more morbid illness than ever. But researchers believe that it’s also triggering early puberty, especially for girls, where the natural build up of fat reserves signals to the brain that the body is ready for reproductive capabilities. The worst part is, fat cells can retain and store the hormone-disrupting chemicals we’re exposed to, so we end up stuck in a vicious cycle of weight gain and toxin exposure. Scary, right?

Precocious puberty can have a huge physical, psychological and emotional impact, and dealing with body odour is just one part of a larger parcel that the child has to endure. Besides that, early puberty isn’t just a problem in itself: it’s actually a symptom of a wider endemic—the daily doses of poison we give ourselves every day, which are causing lots of other debilitating health problems in our society. That’s why we need to overthrow our current lifestyle regime and get rid of the toxins in our foods and household products. It’s time to mutiny!

So what exactly is causing our kids to suffer precocious puberty? Ironically, it could be the deodorant you’re buying to mask their increasing body odour. Most of the leading brands—whose marketing is often aimed at the pre-pubescent kids—all contain aluminium-based and/or zirconium-based compounds. Many well-meaning mums mistakenly believe they need to buy an antiperspirant to stop their kids from smelling, and it’s virtually impossible to find one that’s not loaded with these sweat-blocking chemicals that can mess up their kids’ hormones (which is also linked to increased cancer risk in the long run).

There’s also a lot of new evidence proving what we’ve suspected for a long time: added sugar is bad for our kids. Besides causing obesity, there’s new proof that high sugar consumption—especially from soft drinks—can affect young girls’ rate of maturation, causing the early onset of menstruation. So not only does sugar make us fat, it also messes with our hormones!

There are lots of chemicals in consumer products that can make us sick and cause our kids to stink prematurely.

But these are some of the worst offenders:

• Parabens: found in many deodorants, shampoos, shaving gels, lotions, sunscreens, and toothpastes, and are known to disrupt the sex hormones, cause precocious puberty and raise breast cancer risk.
• BPA and BPS: found ubiquitously in plastics, and are known to mimic oestrogen and affect other endocrine-related pathways and to cause cancer.
• Phthalates: a group of industrial chemicals used to make plastics that’s linked to weight gain, precocious puberty, lower IQ in children, and reduced fertility.
• PFOA: a likely carcinogen and known to cause precocious puberty, found in non-stick cookware coatings.
• MSG: a food additive linked to low fertility rates.
• Non-fermented soy products: which are full of many hormone-like substances.
• Bovine growth hormone (rBGH): which is commonly added into commercial dairy products, and implicated in premature adolescence.
• Dichlorobenzene: a known carcinogen found in some mothballs and in solid blocks of toilet bowl and air deodorisers, and is associated with early puberty and menstruation.
• Metalloestrogens: a new concern, and a previously unknown class of cancer-causing, oestrogen-mimicking compounds, which are added to thousands of consumer products including vaccines.

If these things sound terrifying, it’s because they are. But don’t panic—it’s much simpler than you’d think to eliminate the vast majority of them from our lives. We need to get a little bit smarter about the lifestyle choices we’re making, but it’s really as easy as saying NO to fake and YES to natural! 

We all need to pay a bit more attention to what we’re buying. This is especially true for mums, who still represent the biggest demographic of supermarket shoppers. We also need to get a bit tougher, since many of the things we’re buying are on request of pre-pubescent kids and teens who are much more susceptible to skeevy marketing campaigns than we are.

The list isn’t exhaustive, but some good ways to start ridding our family of hormone-disrupting, cancer-causing toxins are:

• Eating fresh, raw whole foods: to eliminate BPA and phthalates from processed and packaged foods, and for balanced nutrition.
• Storing food in glass: to reduce the volume of chemicals leaking into our food from plastic containers.
• Eliminating or reducing sugar: to support healthy weight and body function.
• Using natural cleaning products: to reduce one our exposure to toxic chemicals and our impact on the environment.
• Eliminating fragranced products: including scented candles, fabric softeners, dryer sheets, air fresheners which contain hundreds of chemicals.
• Use a water filter: to prevent chemicals that have leaked into our waterways from getting back into our food and drinking water.
• Using natural body products: (including shampoo, toothpaste, cosmetics, perfumes, hand wash, body wash, and feminine hygiene products) and eliminate all products that contain triclosan and synthetic fragrance.
• Using natural deodorants: because they don’t block sweat (which is a healthy body process that gets rid of toxins!), and they use natural antibacterial agents to reduce body odour instead of synthetic chemicals.