If you thought you were the only one who experiences the frequent bizarre situations where one of your armpits stinks more than the other, then you should know that there are multitudes of people all over the world just like you. Simply put, you are not the only one who suffers from this issue. As a matter of fact, the average person frequently experiences this. For many people, it is normally the right armpit that smells worse than the left armpit. Read on to the bottom see why and what you can do about it.

But why does this really happen? Why is one of your armpits always smellier than the other one?

By the end of this blog, we shall understand why this happens. But before taking a look at why one armpit smells worse than the other, let’s first take some time to understand what causes our armpits to be smelly in the first place.

Why do armpits smell?

There are two main things that cause the armpits to have an offensive smell. These two things work together to give your armpits that awful smell. What are these things? They are sweat or perspiration and bacteria. When sweat and the numerous bacteria in your armpits combine forces, then they turn your armpit into a stink zone.

We all have millions of sweat glands in the body. It is believed that the average human being has over 4 million sweat glands in the body. The sweat glands, as the name implies, are the glands in the body responsible for making sweat or perspiration. These sweat glands will make you sweat whenever your body gets hotter as a result of a physical activity you have just engaged in or are engaging in or when the atmosphere becomes hotter. The moment the body gets hotter, the sweat glands receive a command from a part of your brain called hypothalmus telling your body to sweat. Your brain tells your sweat glands to produce sweat because it wants your body to be cool. As the sweat leaves your body through the pores in your skin, it keeps your body cool. So you see that sweat is very important to us!

But while sweat helps in cooling the body, it also causes us certain minor problems such as staining our clothes and giving us body odor.

Many are of the misconception that sweat alone is what is responsible for causing the armpits to be smelly. Readers should note that sweat alone isn’t capable of causing body odor. What really causes our armpits to smell bad is the combination of bacteria on our body and sweat.Also hormones, stress, and diet. Sweat alone on the body can’t cause the body to give off an offensive smell. Neither can bacteria alone on the body cause body odor. Sweat and bacteria work hand in hand to cause body odor.

According to scientists, the average person has trillions (about 100,000,000,000,000) of bacteria living on their body. A lot of these bacteria make the armpits their home, mainly because of its hidden and moist nature. These bacteria can’t just seem to get enough of hiding in your armpits.

Now, while living in your armpits, these bacteria feed on the sweat molecules in your armpit and give off a highly smelly organosulphur compound called thioalcholols. According to scientists, that offensive smell in your armpits is nothing but the organosulphur compound produced after the numerous bacteria in your armpits ingest your sweat molecules.

In addition to this highly smelly compound being produced in the armpits by bacteria feeding on sweat and breaking it down, the pungent smell of the armpits is worsened by the fact that the armpits are one of the few parts of the body which are hidden and contain a lot of hair. And on top of this, not too much air can get into the armpits to freshen the place.

Now, that we have understood why the armpits smell bad, let us now take a look at why sometimes one armpit stinks more than the other armpit.

Why would one armpit stink more than the other?

There are so many reasons why this ‘abnormal’ situation happens. Among the most common reasons why one of your armpit will end up stinking more the other one include the following:

Not all armpits are the same

Everybody has two armpits, which are not the same in terms of producing the same amount of sweat and having the same number of bacteria. For some people, their right armpit produces more sweat and has more bacteria than their left armpit. And for some people it is the other way around. Since it has been established that sweat and bacteria are what cause the armpit to stink, it goes without saying that the more bacteria and sweat that you have in your armpit, the higher the chances of the armpit to smell bad.

Therefore if your right armpit has more sweat and bacteria in it than the left armpit, then it is highly likely that the right armpit will be smellier than the left one, and vice versa.

The arm that you use more frequently will have its armpit stinking more than the other’s.

Another reason why one of your armpits will be smellier than the other one is as a result of the fact that the average person doesn’t use both arms equally. One arm is normally more active and dominant than the other. If you are left-handed, then it’s obvious you use your left arm more than you use your right arm, and vice versa. The arm that you use more actively tends to get a sweatier armpit than the other one. An armpit that produces more sweat will be smellier because bacteria get more sweat molecules to feed on thereby producing more of the offensive smelling organosulphur compound called thioalcholols. It’s a known fact that there are more right-handed people in this world than there are left-handed people. This is the reason why more people complain of having their right armpit smelling worse than their left armpit.