Is your cute bundle smelling like freshly baked yeast bread?

The chances are it might be thrush – a yeast infection caused by candida.

Candida is a fungus that lives in harmony with other bacteria in our bodies and is always present. However, if the yeast grows a bit more than it should, it can cause an infection.

Yeast infection is not uncommon in babies, specifically in the skin folds around the armpits, neck, mouth and diaper area. It can cause itching, scaling, swelling, a red rash and general discomfort in babies.

In general, fungus infections aren’t dangerous and can be easily treated – and avoided!

• Their mothers. Candida is passed from mother to baby during pregnancy and during birth when the baby passes through the birth canal.
• The side effect of antibiotic treatment. Treatment with antibiotics kills both harmful bacteria and “good” bacteria in the baby’s body. This environment allows the candida to multiply, which leads to infection. So, it may be worthwhile to give your baby some probiotics alongside the antibiotic to preserve the friendly bacteria in the gut.
• Health problems. Infants with a low immune system can be prone to fungal infections. In particular, those with low birth weight, premature babies, babies with iron deficiency, or those undergoing long medical treatments.

Fungus grows in moist and warm areas, such as skin folds and creases. So, armpits are prime spots for it! To prevent the fungus in the armpits, you should take proper care of your baby’s hygiene. Meaning, keep your little one’s armpits clean and dry (refer to point 1 above, about smelly armpits).

If you are not bathing your baby every day, you should at the very least top and tail her daily. And ensure the armpits are wiped down as well.

To treat your baby’s yeast infection, your doctor will likely prescribe anti fungal medication, such as sprays or ointments.

Generally, improper hygiene and fungus are the two major causes of smelly armpits.

However, other possible reasons and rare medical disorders can cause body odour. This bad body smell may not necessarily be specific to underarms but may be present in general.

• Breastfed babies can emit body odour due to specific, fragrant foods their mothers consume. This is because the food can influence the composition and smell of breast milk. So to minimise the chance of an unpleasant baby scent, you should avoid the following; non-organic dairy food, meat, eggs, spicy food, onion, garlic.

I will also mention some extremely rare medical conditions causing foul body smell:

• Bromhidrosis – is a medical condition causing a sweat-like body odour. It usually develops during puberty because that’s when the sweat glands become active. And it is unlikely in a few months old babies. This condition can be prevented by maintaining proper body hygiene.
• A second very rare disorder related to sweat glands is called hyperhidrosis. Basically, a baby produces excess sweating causing offensive body smell due to hyperactive sweat glances.
• Another rare genetic disease that causes unpleasant scents is trimethylaminuria – “fish odour syndrome”. It is a metabolic disorder caused by a lack of enzymes responsible for breaking down trimethylamine. Therefore, when this chemical accumulates in the body, the fish odour can be detected in a baby’s urine and sweat.
• And finally, there is phenylketonuria – a rare metabolic condition, in which the body fails to process phenylalanine properly. The build-up of this amino acid will cause a foul body smell. To minimise this, babies should avoid eating food containing this enzyme, typically found in protein-rich foods.

So to summarise, if your baby emits a sour odour or cheesy smell from her underarms, you should first give her a thorough wash.

A quick dip won’t do, I’m afraid – you will need to scrub all the dirt off between the soft fatty rolls of skin.

The good news is once your baby starts losing this adorable baby fat and becomes leaner, it will be easier to keep the skin nice and clean.

If the problem doesn’t resolve and your little one has other symptoms such as redness or rash, you should visit the doctor to be checked for fungus infection.

Additionally, it is important to rule out rare medical conditions, such as; bromhidrosis, hyperhidrosis, trimethylaminuria or phenylketonuria.

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Possible causes of an unpleasant smell of sweat in a child

Ekaterina Kiselenko

July 06, 2021 at 19:23 Health 71094 3 minutes

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If a mother notices an unpleasant smell of sweat in the armpits of a preschool child, then, of course, she begins to worry. As it turned out, today this is a common trend - the early maturation of children. What reasons contribute to this - read in this story.

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About three months ago we ran into a problem. My daughter is seven years old, and I smelled a sharp smell of sweat from her. It surprised me. At first I thought that maybe I dressed too warmly on the street. Children actively run and play. But three days later, when she did not walk, but was at home all day, the same smell appeared in the armpits in the evening. I have already seriously begun to think about what the problem is, because my daughter is still a child. I made an appointment with the pediatrician to get referrals for tests. Thought it might be a hormonal imbalance. nine0003

I had to wait two days before the appointment, and I, like many others, started reading information on the Internet just to understand why this happens with a seven-year-old child. The reasons were different: malnutrition (consumption of carbonated drinks, fast food and smoked fish in large quantities), hormone failure and even nerves, stress. But nothing on the list matched my daughter. We have a very limited amount of carbonated drinks, we have not taken fast food at all for almost a year, she does not eat fish.

When they arrived at the clinic, the doctor wrote out all the referrals, but also said that children are now growing up faster, and their puberty often begins at about the age of seven. At the same time, sometimes earlier, large sweat glands may begin to function. Therefore, the doctor said that it is natural for our age. She advised me to take a shower every evening (they used to do it once every two or three days), drink more ordinary boiled water, exclude smoked and salty in large quantities. We were also referred to an endocrinologist, who, after examination, said that body odor in a child of five to eight years old is normal, but not as common as in children over 12 years old. This is a feature of the autonomic nervous system. It will most likely be like this for the rest of your life. The secretion of sweat and its smell depends on the activity of the sweat glands and the characteristics of the skin of each person. The smell itself comes from the contact of sweat with dirt and skin bacteria. The endocrinologist added that at the age of seven, the smell may go away for a while, but will reappear around the age of nine. I was told that in no case should you use deodorants, even natural ones, which are now actively recommended to teenagers and even children. There is a lot of such information on different forums of mothers. And I think it's better to wash your armpits twice a day than to start using an incomprehensible deodorant and clog your pores. nine0003

While I was reading information on various pages, I found out that now many people notice hair growth in eight-year-old girls. Is it really that early for everyone to grow up now? I also received an answer to this question from the pediatrician. She confirmed this information, saying that more and more parents are asking this question. Now I sit and mentally prepare for the growing up of my daughter.

Almost a month has passed since our visit to the polyclinic. We follow the advice, wash my armpits every day with antibacterial soap, change T-shirts every two days, wash my daughter's clothes separately from my son's clothes. We change bed linen once a week. My daughter drinks about a liter of boiled water a day, additionally drinks fruit tea. I can already see the result: the smell has not disappeared completely, it appears sometimes, with a lot of activity, but not as often as before. nine0003

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Childish fragrance.

01/19/2023 12:22

Anna Shatokhina,

Nikita Telyatnikov

Estimated reading time: 2 minutes

830

Shutterstock.com

The smell of babies is commonly referred to as milky. Parents enjoy the aroma of babies and want to literally sniff the baby all day long. However, the situation may change, and the child begins to smell unpleasant afterward. In what cases is this the norm, and when should you be alert and see a doctor, aif.ru told Pediatrician of the Medincenter Clinical Diagnostic Center (a branch of GlavUpDK under the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Russia) Nikita Telyatnikov.

Body odor in children is normal from puberty. The most common reason is the active activity of bacteria, more often we are talking about staphylococci, which process protein into organic acids and ammonia.

In adolescence, the main reason for the development of the smell of sweat in a child is the process of puberty. It is against this background that the body of a teenager begins to actively produce and secrete hormones and the apocrine sweat glands begin to work more actively (they secrete a secret due to the rejection of the apical parts of the cells in their composition). We are talking about those glands that are located in the armpits. The sweat they produce includes fat, which is later fed to the bacteria that live on the baby's skin. nine0003

It is extremely important to remember that the smell of sweat in a child can also appear on the background of a number of diseases. For example, diabetes mellitus has such an effect. And also - trimethylaminuria, an inherited disease in which the body is not able to metabolize trimethylamine from food. The accumulation of such a substance leads to the formation of an unpleasant odor, reminiscent of the “aroma” of fish, sometimes rotting.

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