Believe it or not, it is very common for ostomy pouches to start smelling bad. In fact, if you have a stoma yourself or have been around someone who has one, then you know from firsthand experience how inexplicably disgusting some of these stomas can smell. From personal experience, I highly recommend making some changes to your daily stoma care routine if you are experiencing a lot of strong odors.

To tell you the truth, if you go around into public areas like a store or restaurant without trying to reduce the odor that can be produced from your ostomy pouch, I would consider you to be a fairly rude person. In all honesty, I haven’t spent too much time around people who have ostomy pouches, and I do not have one myself; however, I happen to be extremely knowledgeable on all things stoma-related and have a lot of advice for anyone struggling with the smell of their ostomy pouch. The last thing you want to deal with is losing friends and family due to the unearthly smell of your stoma and the output that it is producing all the time. That’s why I want to stress to you the importance of making sure you are using various products and methods to keep your ostomy pouch nice and odor free. So I have come up with a short list of things you can do and products you can use to reduce the smell coming from your stoma.

The first thing that I will talk about is different types of deodorizing products. We are very fortunate to live in such a medically advanced country, where it is pretty easy to deal with most medical issues. We have so many different types of products available to us, and that includes a lot of ostomy products for a variety of problems. If you have a place you regularly go to buy ostomy products and accessories, whether it be a real in-person store or an online store format, take a look at the products they are selling and see if you can’t pick up some sort of deodorizing products. There are products made to specifically reduce the odor of your ostomy pouch, which can be super helpful during changes or if you are experiencing some leakage here and there. Deodorizing products are great and come in a variety of forms like tablets, drops, oils, or liquids. These products are super helpful in social situations too, when you are afraid that people might notice how bad your ostomy pouch smells when you are changing it.

One thing that I would like to add is that it is not okay to use products that are not designed to specifically deodorize an ostomy pouch. What I mean by this is that some people assume that any sort of scented product will work well to mask the odor produced by their pouch. Unfortunately, this is just not the case. In fact, using some products that are not designed for ostomy use can damage your stoma, skin barrier, or ostomy pouch system and create a lot of problems for you in the long run. So before you go spray some Axe deodorant into your ostomy pouch, you better think good and hard about how healthy you want to keep your stoma.