Post by sgn on Jan 6, 2014 1:52:25 GMT
My problems with b.o. started when I was 17 and a half year old.
secret
I've been doing whatever I can to cover my problems, and to avoid talking about it. I've actually isolated myself from friends when they started to ask too many questions. The only person in my vicinity that I've had to mention this to was a manager at work (since I felt I had to stay at home one day when I really was needed at work).
My feeling is that a lot of people knows that I sometimes smell, but only two persons have been trying to ask me directly. So far, I've been dodging those questions at work, since it's too embarrassing to talk about it. It was terrible for a while when we the group that I'm in moved to a new floor in the building, but then we moved once again to another space with much more air (most probably because of me).
Since I was something like 24, I've been able to talk to physicians about this, although I usually didn't tell them the whole story. Would have been simpler if my problem only was sweating, but it might be connected to other bad experiences I've had.
when it started
Note the distinction between _when_ it started and _how_ it started. My feeling is that things happening at that time probably contributed a lot, but it might not be the underlying cause.
Anyway, my father was the highest local leader in a church where we lived, and most people (at least in Sweden) would consider them to be a cult. I had been refusing to go to their church since I was about 14 years old, but I was always really scared of what would happen if I did something my parents considered wrong.
One day, one of my brothers got a really long scolding because he implied that i might have been masturbating. (he was wrong on that occasion, I was only washing my self like anybody would when he stumbled in). I was in my room hearing my father shouting at my brother in the other end of our house. And my father was yelling that masturbation was something that was so wrong that I would never ever even consider doing it, and he accused my brother of lying. I actually feared for my brothers safety, that's how agitated my father was.
The end result was that I stopped doing anything about my sexual needs, which meant that I started waking up maybe once a week with nocturnal emissions instead. The first time I actually panic so much that I literally froze for a while before I gathered myself together. (Now I know that I wasn't realistic, but back then I was really scared that he might get outraged and maybe even kill me if he found out.)
It took a few months before I realized that I sometimes had really bad b.o, and probably several additional weeks before I saw the link between nocturnal emissions / panic and bad b.o. When I smelled something, I always used to think it was others in the vicinity that smelled. And I can't smell myself consistently. I would describe it as if I'm bringing that cloud around with me wherever I go, and it's only if I've been in a room somewhere for a longer time, and then walks for a while in fresh air before getting back to the place I've been sitting that I can smell it for a short while. But I can't grade it at all by myself.
more things could trigger the bo
After a long time, it actually was enough to be woken up suddenly for me to end up with a bad b.o. that day (and sometimes the following day as well). I did everything I could to minimize my problems. Besides the obvious (trying every deodorant I could find, a lot of strange ideas from the Internet, diets, etc), I also tried everything I could to wake up softer.
For instance: I put tape over the speaker of my alarm clock. It worked for a while, but then I started waking up suddenly (with b.o. problems) both from the faint alarm and from other sounds. I also tried setting the stereo to start playing soft music a bit before the alarm, but after a while i started waking suddenly of the faint "tick" sound the stereo does when it turns itself on.
I can wake up to suddenly from slowly increasing light as well. (I don't wake up with panic every time, but it used to be a couple of times each month).
physicians
I started asking physicians I met about problems with sweating and b.o, but the most common answers was that there wasn't anything one could do about it, or that "freshness is a new invention, there wasn't any deodorants back int the 17:th century, and back then people didn't shower more than a few times a year". Seems like you can't find anybody specialized in the b.o. area at all here in Sweden.
oxybutynin
Then I happened to read about botox threatment and contacted a local clinic. They mainly helped people with severe excessive sweating, but since I sweat much more the bad days then ordinary days, they thought their treatments might help. First we tried some oxybutynin tablets. They almost stopped the sweating, but not enough to make the b.o. go away. It might have added two extra hours of freshness after the last shower. The backside was that I couldn't train without more or less getting a heat stroke, and I would still have a severe b.o. before the working day was over on bad days, and they made me feel nauseous. I still take oxybutynin the days I know I need to do something important if I know when I wake up that it's going to be a bad day.
botox
Later, they also tried botox for my foots and arm pits, and that made me completely fresh for about two weeks (even when I provoked it). I think that could be related to the fact that you are completely dry for about two weeks until the skin somehow compensates for the lack of sweating. My problems got as worse as usual again one or two additional weeks after the initial b.o. free weeks. We actually tried once more with a higher dose in just the arm pits, but that didn't even give a single week without b.o.
surgery
They also thought I could try to remove one type of sweat glands from my arm pits using surgery (they thought the chance of it helping was low, but I'm always ready to try anything without severe side effects). Unfortunately they can't do anything about the apocrine sweat glands (the ones that are responsible for most of the nutrition to the bacterias), but since it helps being drier, It felt worth a shot.
Unfortunately, that didn't help, but it made life a little easier when I didn't need to wait for 10-15 minutes for the deodorant to dry in the morning. Two years after the surgery, the drying time started to increase again, but now I use two small fans to help dry the deo properly. (If it won't dry properly, or I start moving to soon, the deo seems to be next to useless for me).
cognitive behavioral therapy
Happened to try CBT last year, and it seems like that almost solved one of my problems (waking up suddenly), and nowadays I can have a cellphone in my bedroom, and an alarm clock close to the bed! So far, it hasn't helped at all against b.o. after waking up if I have a nocturnal emission, or after masturbation.
positive
I'm still positive. In the beginning, I thought my problems would solve themselves as soon as I moved out. After that I've felt that the problems might be solved 3-6 months into the future. But now it's been 16 years! It feels like my life is passing by without giving me the opportunity to do some of the most important things. Instead my life is the work week, and a few hobbies I've picked up. The only really annoying thing is that I'm quite often unhappy in love, especially when the girl is into me as well (I'm always pretending that I'm not that interested, since I might have found something that helps within a few months, and I don't want to burn any bridges just by being impatient).
I rarely do anything in the weekends (I've noticed that masturbating once a week destroys the following two days (quite strong b.o. from arm pits and my feet), but then the risk of nocturnal emission and related b.o. gets drastically reduced the following week). Quite often when I've been doing something social during the weekend, I pay the price for it during the work week. And since I have a job I really like, I'm doing whatever I can to avoid loosing it.
/sgn
secret
I've been doing whatever I can to cover my problems, and to avoid talking about it. I've actually isolated myself from friends when they started to ask too many questions. The only person in my vicinity that I've had to mention this to was a manager at work (since I felt I had to stay at home one day when I really was needed at work).
My feeling is that a lot of people knows that I sometimes smell, but only two persons have been trying to ask me directly. So far, I've been dodging those questions at work, since it's too embarrassing to talk about it. It was terrible for a while when we the group that I'm in moved to a new floor in the building, but then we moved once again to another space with much more air (most probably because of me).
Since I was something like 24, I've been able to talk to physicians about this, although I usually didn't tell them the whole story. Would have been simpler if my problem only was sweating, but it might be connected to other bad experiences I've had.
when it started
Note the distinction between _when_ it started and _how_ it started. My feeling is that things happening at that time probably contributed a lot, but it might not be the underlying cause.
Anyway, my father was the highest local leader in a church where we lived, and most people (at least in Sweden) would consider them to be a cult. I had been refusing to go to their church since I was about 14 years old, but I was always really scared of what would happen if I did something my parents considered wrong.
One day, one of my brothers got a really long scolding because he implied that i might have been masturbating. (he was wrong on that occasion, I was only washing my self like anybody would when he stumbled in). I was in my room hearing my father shouting at my brother in the other end of our house. And my father was yelling that masturbation was something that was so wrong that I would never ever even consider doing it, and he accused my brother of lying. I actually feared for my brothers safety, that's how agitated my father was.
The end result was that I stopped doing anything about my sexual needs, which meant that I started waking up maybe once a week with nocturnal emissions instead. The first time I actually panic so much that I literally froze for a while before I gathered myself together. (Now I know that I wasn't realistic, but back then I was really scared that he might get outraged and maybe even kill me if he found out.)
It took a few months before I realized that I sometimes had really bad b.o, and probably several additional weeks before I saw the link between nocturnal emissions / panic and bad b.o. When I smelled something, I always used to think it was others in the vicinity that smelled. And I can't smell myself consistently. I would describe it as if I'm bringing that cloud around with me wherever I go, and it's only if I've been in a room somewhere for a longer time, and then walks for a while in fresh air before getting back to the place I've been sitting that I can smell it for a short while. But I can't grade it at all by myself.
more things could trigger the bo
After a long time, it actually was enough to be woken up suddenly for me to end up with a bad b.o. that day (and sometimes the following day as well). I did everything I could to minimize my problems. Besides the obvious (trying every deodorant I could find, a lot of strange ideas from the Internet, diets, etc), I also tried everything I could to wake up softer.
For instance: I put tape over the speaker of my alarm clock. It worked for a while, but then I started waking up suddenly (with b.o. problems) both from the faint alarm and from other sounds. I also tried setting the stereo to start playing soft music a bit before the alarm, but after a while i started waking suddenly of the faint "tick" sound the stereo does when it turns itself on.
I can wake up to suddenly from slowly increasing light as well. (I don't wake up with panic every time, but it used to be a couple of times each month).
physicians
I started asking physicians I met about problems with sweating and b.o, but the most common answers was that there wasn't anything one could do about it, or that "freshness is a new invention, there wasn't any deodorants back int the 17:th century, and back then people didn't shower more than a few times a year". Seems like you can't find anybody specialized in the b.o. area at all here in Sweden.
oxybutynin
Then I happened to read about botox threatment and contacted a local clinic. They mainly helped people with severe excessive sweating, but since I sweat much more the bad days then ordinary days, they thought their treatments might help. First we tried some oxybutynin tablets. They almost stopped the sweating, but not enough to make the b.o. go away. It might have added two extra hours of freshness after the last shower. The backside was that I couldn't train without more or less getting a heat stroke, and I would still have a severe b.o. before the working day was over on bad days, and they made me feel nauseous. I still take oxybutynin the days I know I need to do something important if I know when I wake up that it's going to be a bad day.
botox
Later, they also tried botox for my foots and arm pits, and that made me completely fresh for about two weeks (even when I provoked it). I think that could be related to the fact that you are completely dry for about two weeks until the skin somehow compensates for the lack of sweating. My problems got as worse as usual again one or two additional weeks after the initial b.o. free weeks. We actually tried once more with a higher dose in just the arm pits, but that didn't even give a single week without b.o.
surgery
They also thought I could try to remove one type of sweat glands from my arm pits using surgery (they thought the chance of it helping was low, but I'm always ready to try anything without severe side effects). Unfortunately they can't do anything about the apocrine sweat glands (the ones that are responsible for most of the nutrition to the bacterias), but since it helps being drier, It felt worth a shot.
Unfortunately, that didn't help, but it made life a little easier when I didn't need to wait for 10-15 minutes for the deodorant to dry in the morning. Two years after the surgery, the drying time started to increase again, but now I use two small fans to help dry the deo properly. (If it won't dry properly, or I start moving to soon, the deo seems to be next to useless for me).
cognitive behavioral therapy
Happened to try CBT last year, and it seems like that almost solved one of my problems (waking up suddenly), and nowadays I can have a cellphone in my bedroom, and an alarm clock close to the bed! So far, it hasn't helped at all against b.o. after waking up if I have a nocturnal emission, or after masturbation.
positive
I'm still positive. In the beginning, I thought my problems would solve themselves as soon as I moved out. After that I've felt that the problems might be solved 3-6 months into the future. But now it's been 16 years! It feels like my life is passing by without giving me the opportunity to do some of the most important things. Instead my life is the work week, and a few hobbies I've picked up. The only really annoying thing is that I'm quite often unhappy in love, especially when the girl is into me as well (I'm always pretending that I'm not that interested, since I might have found something that helps within a few months, and I don't want to burn any bridges just by being impatient).
I rarely do anything in the weekends (I've noticed that masturbating once a week destroys the following two days (quite strong b.o. from arm pits and my feet), but then the risk of nocturnal emission and related b.o. gets drastically reduced the following week). Quite often when I've been doing something social during the weekend, I pay the price for it during the work week. And since I have a job I really like, I'm doing whatever I can to avoid loosing it.
/sgn