> The polyester T-shirts smelled significantly less pleasant and more intense, compared to the cotton T-shirts.
This is consistent with my experience. I stopped buying expensive exercise clothing many years ago because they only last a season before they smell too bad. Instead, I buy them at the end-of-season sales or at discount retailers like Winners [0].
Unfortunately, in Canada it isn't feasible to hang them out in the sun to dry - for much of the year they'd just freeze.
> in Canada it isn't feasible to hang them out in the sun to dry
Collapsible drying racks are a thing. IKEA sells them for cheap. Just leave them by your window, vent or fan.
> I stopped buying expensive exercise clothing many years ago because they only last a season before they smell too bad
I'm very confused.
It still smells despite washing with laundry detergent after each use? My gym clothing has zero smell & I've had them for >5 years, with weekly use for each piece.
Atsko (also known as Penguin) sport wash will get out that smell, guaranteed.
In the wintertime just hang your washed clothes on a drying rack, either wall-mount or free-standing or what have you. "Free" humidification. Also air-drying works a lot better with front-loaders, which you should be using anyway because they use vastly less water and detergent and are much gentler on clothing.
My expensive-ish cycling clothing, after a ride, goes straight into a bucket of lukewarm water (spandex/lycra deteriorates in strength and stretch very rapidly at surprisingly low temperatures) with about a third of the bottlecap of sport wash. I give it a good swish and go shower. I give it some agitation after I'm done showering and changed. At some point I'll rinse it thoroughly. The cycling shorts get rolled up in a cotton towel and stepped on to wring them of excess water. Everything goes on a clothes hangar out in open air. If I'm riding again in the morning, or if it's humid, I point a small fan at everything so that the pad dries out quickly.
I never have issues with highend work gear smelling. They advertise they have silver ions infused into the fiber to control bacteria growth. Seems to work.
Personally I prefer cotton since we have dry heat and cotton keeps me cooler than synthetics or wool.
I have the opposite experience with cheap, synthetic "moisture wicking" style clothing.
My experience is that it lasts literally forever (assuming I don't tear it) and does not develop an odor problem over time. It actually feels fairly miraculous to me: space-age style comfortable breathable indestructable clothing.
We have active lives here in the NE USA where summers are hot, humid, and tropical. We sweat a looooooot in these clothes: dog walks, tennis, gym wear, yard work, etc. A loooot.
I get the majority of this clothing from Old Navy because they're cheap and sell most items in tall sizes. I've used other cheap brands that are also just as good; I don't think Old Navy is doing anything special in terms of materials but I think they deserve a shout-out for consistency and dedication to extended sizes both large and small.
I stopped buying expensive exercise clothing
many years ago because they only last a season
before they smell too bad
Good news! Absolutely doesn't have to be this way.
Something in your clothes washing routine needs an upgrade.
It may be as simple as cramming less laundry into the washer for each load so that the water:clothing ratio is higher. Another common mistake is using too much laundry detergent. Or maybe the washer is musty.
Assuming it's not either of those things a method that works for me is occasionally doing the "laundry stripping" hot water presoaking method.[1] "Recipes" for this vary and I'm not sure that the commonly recommended triple-ingredient mix is necessary; I suspect a few drops of laundry detergent alone would work just as well. However all of the ingredients are cheap as dirt and this method works so I haven't felt the need to experiment. Note that this isn't specific to synthetic fibers; cotton clothes can have their life multiplied this way as well.
Seems like a lot of work but it really isn't. I have a plastic bin in my basement next to the washer and dryer. I have Load B pre-soaking in the hot water mix while Load A is in the washer. You don't need to do this every time you wash your clothes. Just once every $SOME_OTHER_NUMBER loads.
Vinegar is also really effective in destroying odors. I have saved extremely moldy clothes with vinegar. Vinegar stinks but evaporates fast. If you truly can't stomach the smell (some can't) then tumble dry in the dryer until the vinegar smell is gone.
Also, for goodness' sake, don't toss wet sweaty clothes into the hamper. Let them air dry somehow first.
One more tip: try Gear Aid Revivex Odour Eliminator (formerly Myrazime). In my experience it’s like a reset switch for your synthetics - no matter how far gone.
I bought a bunch of clothes from the techwear brand Outlier and found their synthetic pants are basically indestructible, but the wool shirts get holes in them if you scratch them on anything.
I am a long distance rec runner, and I use merino wool throughout the year (4 seasons in Canada). Since I started running ~ 15yrs ago I tried various blends/synthetics, nothing comes close to reduced odor, nor performance in general.
Sounds like a moot point because cotton chafes and synthetic doesnt. I hang up my clothes outside after I exercise (and before I have a chance to wash them) and it makes all the difference. In general, odor is not about the acute sweat - at least anecdotally, exercise sweat doesn't really smell, it's about what happens when you bunch up your clothes and let bacteria grow in them. So getting them dry and out in the sun matters more than the fabric.
1)Stop washing your body with the awful, artificial-perfumed crap sold by P&G and the likes. Guess what all that artificial perfume crap smells like after a few hours? Use naturally scented soaps and shampoos, with a washcloth or loofah (gently) to remove dead skin, and rinse with the washcloth or loofa unsoaped to removed excess soap.
2)Stop using fabric softener (which you shouldn't be using on sports clothing anyway.) It's basically rendered fat loaded with artificial perfumes. And people wonder why their clothes are rank...
3)Stop using scented laundry detergents. On sports clothing, use a "sport wash." Atsko band is the cheapest I've seen. If you want to "test drive" it, Penguin Sport wash is the same stuff, just sold in retail stores for more $/oz. Exactly the same stuff.
4)Use a bit of vinegar in the first or final rinse. You can get 20% vinegar in some places for convenience, just beware that it will knock you on your ass if you get a really good whiff of it, and you should rinse it off your skin quickly. Vinegar will among other things help kill mold spores (bleach does not!)
5)Clean out all the nooks and crannies in your washer, the dispensers, door seals, etc. Once in a while run the hottest cycle and a cup of citric acid, or a bunch of vinegar.
My expensive-ish cycling clothing, after a ride, goes straight into a bucket of lukewarm water (spandex/lycra deteriorates in strength and stretch very rapidly at surprisingly low temperatures) with about a third of the bottlecap of sport wash. I give it a good swish and go shower. I give it some agitation after I'm done showering and changed. At some point I'll rinse it thoroughly. The cycling shorts get rolled up in a cotton towel and stepped on to wring them of excess water. Everything goes on a clothes hangar out in open air. If I'm riding again in the morning, or if it's humid, I point a small fan at everything so that the pad dries out quickly
I don't use deoderant. Multiple partners have complemented me for my body smell, or lack thereof. Because I don't coat my body and clothes in shit cranked out of some frankenlab at Proctor and Gamble.
This may work for you, I’m not positive that the recommendations are globally applicable though…
Argument based largely on things not occurring in nature… especially loaded phrases like ”frankenlab,” “artificial perfume crap,” and “naturally scented” actually weaken your argument here by appealing to some sense of “what’s natural” instead of a less inflammatory description of what’s worked for you.
Body odour is surely partly genetic though - some people just never seem to have it, others do even straight out of the shower.
I'm more curious though whether your laundry habits help lycra/sportswear last longer - it typically starts to wear embarrassingly thin and fade within 3 years of regular use for me.
i stopped using ALL personal hygiene products except for generic unscented soap over a decade ago. for laundry i use unscented arm and hammer detergent. i used to stink after workouts or stressful workdays but now i basically do not smell at all, ever. confirmed by multiple partners after sexytimes over the years.
as i entered my late 20s i got weird scalp issues and that prompted me to look into it - turns out NOT using the products is what helped.
i wear rashguards for BJJ. The key is to oxidize the molecules that stink.
very light amounts of bleach work great. For example if you let them soak in a swimming pool (typically around 5ppm) for 10 minutes they will be stink free.
You can do the equivalent with 1tsp of bleach in a few gallons of water (really about 20ppm or a little more).
Obviously products like oxyclean can also oxidize the molecules.
I've never understood how polyester become the defacto choice of fitness/sports/performance clothing. I'm guessing its cheaper to manufacture, but they can still get very expensive.
I made the mistake of buying a bunch of this stuff a while back and I can't bring myself to wear it. I feel like it makes me sweat far more and it stinks very quickly.
I have far less of a problem wearing cotton and and a great experience wearing merino wool.
Unlike cotton they keep their colors and fit even after many washes. Also they quick airdry after washing and don't need ironing which is very practical for daily gym use.
This experiment design feels pretty useless to me.
The T-shirts were collected, sealed in plastic bags,
and stored at room temperature in the dark, so
bacterial growth occurred
[...] The bags were kept at room temperature (20°C)
in the dark for 28 h.
Bad experiment, IMO. This is not a remotely useful approximation of what happens when you are actually wearing and using the clothing.
It's more of a simulation of what happens when you accidentally leave wet sweaty clothes in your gym bag, or are forced to wear sweaty clothes for multiple consecutive days without a wash. (It certainly be nice to have fabrics that could survive such conditions without stinking, I admit)
When actually wearing synthetic "moisture-wicking" fibers, I find they stay much fresher smelling as long as they are exposed to air so that they can actually do their job by encouraging evaporative cooling. As opposed to cotton, which soaks up gallons of sweat and takes ages to fully dry.
Remember, fresh sweat doesn't reek -- that's why you don't smell bad in a sauna, with fresh sweat pouring out of every pore. It's stale sweat that reeks. Specifically, it is the waste products of bacteria living in stale sweat. That is what eventually smells bad.
> This is not a remotely useful approximation of what happens when you are actually wearing and using the clothing.
They are trying to correlate materials with biological growth that causes BO in clothes in order to find out if certain types of material or treatments to material could be used to construct activewear that doesn't stink when you sweat in it.
I wonder if there's ever been research on why some people smell so bad at my gym. Are they smell-blind, or are they acclimated to their own powerful fumes? There's a couple of guys that will trigger your gag reflex from 6 feet away.
Is there any polite way to tell a stranger, "you smell really bad"?
A great reason to avoid sythetics in general is microplastics - your poisoning the water (each time you wash it, plastics go into the water system!) and to a less extent yourself.
I wouldn't be surprised if synthetic clothes are illegal in the future for this reason (or water lines are forced to have filters that catch all the micro plastics, although I'm not sure that's even feasible)
Cotton, linen and wool are superior fabrics. I think, esp poliester, has no place in high end anything. It was more of a marketing gimmick where the sports clothing brands wanted to sell higher margin, cheaper and easier to produce clothes.
Esp, now with the micro plastic concerns there is no reason to buy them except for outerware
The big issue with cotton is that it stays wet and then chafes. In my experience, it also doesn’t breathe well. I find cotton is fine for a 5km run but especially as I get above running 15km, it’s just asking for pain.
The difference in deodorant application frequency amongst participants was the most interesting take away for me. Some tracked as many as fourteen applications to their counterpart's zero. That alone should create a subcategory.
The figures are per week. 14 works out to twice a day, which doesn't seem to outrageous if you're sweaty and exercise daily. The median is 7, which also makes sense because it works out to one application for every day of the week. The 4 participants that don't use any deodorant might be asian[1] or aren't sweaty/active enough to warrant it.
Look to those error bars. It might be a great first work and give us some understanding but in no way it provides clear evidence. Even more when you factore in all the criteria for the pannel.
[+] [-] pards|2 years ago|reply
This is consistent with my experience. I stopped buying expensive exercise clothing many years ago because they only last a season before they smell too bad. Instead, I buy them at the end-of-season sales or at discount retailers like Winners [0].
Unfortunately, in Canada it isn't feasible to hang them out in the sun to dry - for much of the year they'd just freeze.
[0]: https://www.winners.ca/en/how
[+] [-] rmellow|2 years ago|reply
Collapsible drying racks are a thing. IKEA sells them for cheap. Just leave them by your window, vent or fan.
> I stopped buying expensive exercise clothing many years ago because they only last a season before they smell too bad
I'm very confused.
It still smells despite washing with laundry detergent after each use? My gym clothing has zero smell & I've had them for >5 years, with weekly use for each piece.
[+] [-] KennyBlanken|2 years ago|reply
In the wintertime just hang your washed clothes on a drying rack, either wall-mount or free-standing or what have you. "Free" humidification. Also air-drying works a lot better with front-loaders, which you should be using anyway because they use vastly less water and detergent and are much gentler on clothing.
My expensive-ish cycling clothing, after a ride, goes straight into a bucket of lukewarm water (spandex/lycra deteriorates in strength and stretch very rapidly at surprisingly low temperatures) with about a third of the bottlecap of sport wash. I give it a good swish and go shower. I give it some agitation after I'm done showering and changed. At some point I'll rinse it thoroughly. The cycling shorts get rolled up in a cotton towel and stepped on to wring them of excess water. Everything goes on a clothes hangar out in open air. If I'm riding again in the morning, or if it's humid, I point a small fan at everything so that the pad dries out quickly.
[+] [-] sp332|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] adrr|2 years ago|reply
Personally I prefer cotton since we have dry heat and cotton keeps me cooler than synthetics or wool.
[+] [-] JohnBooty|2 years ago|reply
My experience is that it lasts literally forever (assuming I don't tear it) and does not develop an odor problem over time. It actually feels fairly miraculous to me: space-age style comfortable breathable indestructable clothing.
We have active lives here in the NE USA where summers are hot, humid, and tropical. We sweat a looooooot in these clothes: dog walks, tennis, gym wear, yard work, etc. A loooot.
I get the majority of this clothing from Old Navy because they're cheap and sell most items in tall sizes. I've used other cheap brands that are also just as good; I don't think Old Navy is doing anything special in terms of materials but I think they deserve a shout-out for consistency and dedication to extended sizes both large and small.
Good news! Absolutely doesn't have to be this way.Something in your clothes washing routine needs an upgrade.
It may be as simple as cramming less laundry into the washer for each load so that the water:clothing ratio is higher. Another common mistake is using too much laundry detergent. Or maybe the washer is musty.
Assuming it's not either of those things a method that works for me is occasionally doing the "laundry stripping" hot water presoaking method.[1] "Recipes" for this vary and I'm not sure that the commonly recommended triple-ingredient mix is necessary; I suspect a few drops of laundry detergent alone would work just as well. However all of the ingredients are cheap as dirt and this method works so I haven't felt the need to experiment. Note that this isn't specific to synthetic fibers; cotton clothes can have their life multiplied this way as well.
Seems like a lot of work but it really isn't. I have a plastic bin in my basement next to the washer and dryer. I have Load B pre-soaking in the hot water mix while Load A is in the washer. You don't need to do this every time you wash your clothes. Just once every $SOME_OTHER_NUMBER loads.
Vinegar is also really effective in destroying odors. I have saved extremely moldy clothes with vinegar. Vinegar stinks but evaporates fast. If you truly can't stomach the smell (some can't) then tumble dry in the dryer until the vinegar smell is gone.
Also, for goodness' sake, don't toss wet sweaty clothes into the hamper. Let them air dry somehow first.
_______
[1] https://www.google.com/search?q=laundry+stripping
[+] [-] fuzzy2|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] natedub|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] unknown|2 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] achenatx|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jgoldber13|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] lancewiggs|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] astrange|2 years ago|reply
It's always possible I have moths though.
[+] [-] elchief|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] yeeeloit|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mdtancsa|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] gruez|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] version_five|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] KennyBlanken|2 years ago|reply
1)Stop washing your body with the awful, artificial-perfumed crap sold by P&G and the likes. Guess what all that artificial perfume crap smells like after a few hours? Use naturally scented soaps and shampoos, with a washcloth or loofah (gently) to remove dead skin, and rinse with the washcloth or loofa unsoaped to removed excess soap.
2)Stop using fabric softener (which you shouldn't be using on sports clothing anyway.) It's basically rendered fat loaded with artificial perfumes. And people wonder why their clothes are rank...
3)Stop using scented laundry detergents. On sports clothing, use a "sport wash." Atsko band is the cheapest I've seen. If you want to "test drive" it, Penguin Sport wash is the same stuff, just sold in retail stores for more $/oz. Exactly the same stuff.
4)Use a bit of vinegar in the first or final rinse. You can get 20% vinegar in some places for convenience, just beware that it will knock you on your ass if you get a really good whiff of it, and you should rinse it off your skin quickly. Vinegar will among other things help kill mold spores (bleach does not!)
5)Clean out all the nooks and crannies in your washer, the dispensers, door seals, etc. Once in a while run the hottest cycle and a cup of citric acid, or a bunch of vinegar.
My expensive-ish cycling clothing, after a ride, goes straight into a bucket of lukewarm water (spandex/lycra deteriorates in strength and stretch very rapidly at surprisingly low temperatures) with about a third of the bottlecap of sport wash. I give it a good swish and go shower. I give it some agitation after I'm done showering and changed. At some point I'll rinse it thoroughly. The cycling shorts get rolled up in a cotton towel and stepped on to wring them of excess water. Everything goes on a clothes hangar out in open air. If I'm riding again in the morning, or if it's humid, I point a small fan at everything so that the pad dries out quickly
I don't use deoderant. Multiple partners have complemented me for my body smell, or lack thereof. Because I don't coat my body and clothes in shit cranked out of some frankenlab at Proctor and Gamble.
[+] [-] cpfohl|2 years ago|reply
Argument based largely on things not occurring in nature… especially loaded phrases like ”frankenlab,” “artificial perfume crap,” and “naturally scented” actually weaken your argument here by appealing to some sense of “what’s natural” instead of a less inflammatory description of what’s worked for you.
[+] [-] wizofaus|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] JohnBooty|2 years ago|reply
Upping one's laundry-fu is, seriously, one of the biggest life upgrades a person can make.
It is a money-saver and a major life upgrade in various other ways. All for very little effort.
[+] [-] thrawa8387336|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] inconceivable|2 years ago|reply
as i entered my late 20s i got weird scalp issues and that prompted me to look into it - turns out NOT using the products is what helped.
[+] [-] Schnitz|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] wkdneidbwf|2 years ago|reply
if you’re talking a 1 hour workout, then i agree.
the bummer is that synthetic materials are so comfortable to wear during exercise compared to cotton and so easy to care for compared to merino wool.
i just accept it and smell like my body has been turned inside out after long exertions.
[+] [-] Riseed|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] achenatx|2 years ago|reply
very light amounts of bleach work great. For example if you let them soak in a swimming pool (typically around 5ppm) for 10 minutes they will be stink free.
You can do the equivalent with 1tsp of bleach in a few gallons of water (really about 20ppm or a little more).
Obviously products like oxyclean can also oxidize the molecules.
[+] [-] dcl|2 years ago|reply
I made the mistake of buying a bunch of this stuff a while back and I can't bring myself to wear it. I feel like it makes me sweat far more and it stinks very quickly.
I have far less of a problem wearing cotton and and a great experience wearing merino wool.
[+] [-] maxerickson|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] PeterStuer|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] JohnBooty|2 years ago|reply
It's more of a simulation of what happens when you accidentally leave wet sweaty clothes in your gym bag, or are forced to wear sweaty clothes for multiple consecutive days without a wash. (It certainly be nice to have fabrics that could survive such conditions without stinking, I admit)
When actually wearing synthetic "moisture-wicking" fibers, I find they stay much fresher smelling as long as they are exposed to air so that they can actually do their job by encouraging evaporative cooling. As opposed to cotton, which soaks up gallons of sweat and takes ages to fully dry.
Remember, fresh sweat doesn't reek -- that's why you don't smell bad in a sauna, with fresh sweat pouring out of every pore. It's stale sweat that reeks. Specifically, it is the waste products of bacteria living in stale sweat. That is what eventually smells bad.
[+] [-] Eisenstein|2 years ago|reply
They are trying to correlate materials with biological growth that causes BO in clothes in order to find out if certain types of material or treatments to material could be used to construct activewear that doesn't stink when you sweat in it.
What about the process seems useless to that end?
[+] [-] khazhoux|2 years ago|reply
Is there any polite way to tell a stranger, "you smell really bad"?
[+] [-] distortionfield|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] petre|2 years ago|reply
Cotton takes a lot of time to dry.
Now Decathlon also has acessible merino wool products so I don't have to spend a fortune on some other technical brands.
[+] [-] fdgwhite|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] unknown|2 years ago|reply
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[+] [-] ggm|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] pers0n|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] buildbot|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] JackMorgan|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Eisenstein|2 years ago|reply
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[+] [-] unknown|2 years ago|reply
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[+] [-] thrawa8387336|2 years ago|reply
Esp, now with the micro plastic concerns there is no reason to buy them except for outerware
[+] [-] procinct|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] cuttysnark|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] gruez|2 years ago|reply
[1] https://www.nytimes.com/2018/02/02/business/china-consumers-...
[+] [-] eurier_br|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] beeforpork|2 years ago|reply