The Best Trick For Combatting Smelly Feet Is ... Deodorant

Now that it's getting refreshingly warmer outside, it's a safe bet that your feet don't feel so fresh in your shoes.

If you start noticing your boots emit a ... certain odor ... that rises with the humidity, don't worry: It's natural. It just has to do with sweat, your emotions and, unfortunately, bacteria.

You sweat to cool yourself, this you probably already know. But our feet, bless them, are especially susceptible to emotional sweating, which is a physical reaction to stress, anxiety, fear and pain.

More to the point, you have more sweat glands on the soles of your feet than you do on your armpits -- 250,000 per foot, according to Dr. Hillary Brenner, a podiatrist in New York City. "We sweat up to 8 fluid ounces per foot each day," she said. "That's like taking a Snapple bottle and pouring it into our shoes."

And we put deodorant on our armpits.

But think about it: When we keep our feet submerged in our shoes all day, bacteria and dead skin builds up with all that sweat for the unfortunate, perfect storm of pungent odor.

Dr. Winston Wong, a podiatrist based in Manhattan, has your simple solution: put deodorant on your feet.

"A lot of people use talcum powder, but that can be a little messy," he told The Huffington Post. "Hard deodorant antiperspirant works better."

Rub it once on the top of each foot across your knuckles and over the arch, and below from the ball of your foot to the heel.

Just make sure your feet get their own bar of deodorant, and that you keep your feet's deodorant away from your armpits. You don't want any possible foot fungus or athlete's foot to transfer from the bar to your armpits.

Brenner also recommends this treatment to her patients who have hyperhidrosis -- excessive sweating -- and tells her other patients to rub an antifungal ointment on their feet twice a week, or spray their shoes with her eponymous antifungal deodorizing shoe spray to kill the odor-causing bacteria.

If you don't like using antiperspirant, a great side step is to bring several pairs of socks to work with you every day, Wong advised, and change them out at lunch and before cocktails or dinner.

Think about it: "If you're sitting in the same socks for 12 hours, perspiration starts to accumulate. If someone’s suffering from a fungus or athlete's foot, it’s going to thrive. But if you remove the moist environment [by switching into clean socks], your feet will do better," he said.