Personal hygiene

Akuaku matawhaiaro

Personal hygiene is about making sure your body and clothes are clean. It includes hand washing, having baths or showers, cleaning your teeth and covering your mouth when coughing or sneezing.

There are lots of reasons why it is important. It helps you stay healthy, as washing removes germs. Wearing clean clothes and your body and breath smelling OK can also help you feel more confident.

Basic hygiene is important to everyone. But when puberty happens, your body goes through many changes that mean you can have new hygiene needs. These changes include an increase in hormone levels. Hormones affect a lot of things, including the glands in your armpits and groin. These glands make the scent that attracts people to us (our pheromones) as well as making sweat. When you hit puberty, the increase in hormones makes the glands work more, meaning you can sweat more. Although sweat doesn't smell, a smell comes when bacteria (germs) on our skin break down the sweat.

Maintaining good personal hygiene during puberty is therefore important. Ways you can do this include:

Having a bath or shower every day. Use soap or a shower gel to clean your skin. Pay particular attention to washing your armpits, groin and feet. Dry yourself thoroughly.
Using deodorants after washing. Deodorant uses perfume to disguise smell. They either come as a spray or a roll-on.
Using antiperspirants. An antiperspirant works by stopping you from sweating so much.
Washing your hair with a shampoo.
Changing your clothes and wearing clean ones. Sweat (and smell) stays on your clothes, so remember to wash them regularly too.
Brushing your teeth at least twice a day. Learn more about tooth brushing and flossing.
Washing your penis or vulva and vagina with warm water. If you wish, you can also use a mild or non-scented soap.

HealthInfo recommends the following pages

NHS
- Body odour
  Information about body odour and excessive sweating.
- Smelly feet
  Advice for preventing and improving smelly feet.
Patient.info – Bad breath (halitosis)
Factsheet about bad breath and how to improve it.

Written by HealthInfo clinical advisers. Last reviewed October 2023.

Sources

Page reference: 154821

Review key: HIPHY-154821