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Do older people have a different smell?

nytimes.com

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Re: Do older people have a different smell?

#21

Post by beat »

jraph wrote: post #15
_wbux wrote: post #3

As someone that sees smells (synesthesia), the answer is yes. The reason I presume is simple, hormone levels change as you age and thus you smell different.

How did you notice you were seeing smells (and not everybody is)?

Synesthesia is very hard to explain. It's like explaining color to the blind.

I have mild synesthesia myself - I hear flavors. I can say "I hear flavors", but that doesn't help to tell you what different flavors sound like, because sounds themselves are very hard to describe in words.

The best way to experience something like synesthesia is under the influence of LSD or similar drugs. Not that I recommend it, but it does work. "When colors taste like music" is my favorite description ever.

Re: Do older people have a different smell?

#22

Post by avip »

lonelappde wrote: post #11
dredmorbius wrote: post #4

Babies smell. My friend, undergoing radiation therapy for cancer, had a distinct smell. As have those treated with specific chemotherapies. Athletes smell. Indoor and outdoor athletes differently. Pool swimmers of chlorine, open-water swimmers of the sea. Parkinsons and Alzheimers appear to have distinctive smells. Diabetes is characterised for its distinct smell (and taste). We are chemically-regulated, processing,…

Swimming seems a special case because that's a clearly foreign substance attached to the body. More interesting are cases where the lifestyle causes smellable long-term changes to body chemistry that can't be cleaned off.

Remove modern chemicals (detergents, perfumes) from the equation, and lots/most of what we call “body smell” would be VOCs, the composition of which depends on nutrition and microbiome among other things. So I find the concept of age/culture/lifestyle related smell very plausible.

But these things are not easy to research as reliable VOC detection requires lab setup (GC-MS)

Re: Do older people have a different smell?

#23

Post by r0ze-at-hn »

salawat wrote: post #16
r0ze-at-hn wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Smells for me are sphere like with usually one color, but occasionally a gradient between two or three. But the big difference is the texture or peaks and valleys on the shape.

Is it overlaid on your visual field, or more of a parallel mental construct? Also, are there any particularly noteworthy smells in terms of representation? I have to admit, the idea of a visual artifact for smells is amazing!

It isn't overlaid in my visual field, more like how you imaging or remember things in your head, very hard to describe. I usually don't pay attention but it is just there.

noteworthy? If I concentrate I can follow the trail of someone with a strong sent that had walked by in the last say 10 minutes like a blood hound. I _know_ when fish is labeled incorrectly when I do my weekly grocery shopping. I know when that person from work says they are quitting smoking, but have had a smoke and are lying. Just walking around outside, the amount of death from animals would surprise you.

Very specifically on the visually side I come across a food item that looks slightly different. No one else notices this change in smell but it is a fun game realizing that maybe the recipe changed ever so slightly or something.

Mostly I learned long ago to not talk about it in person because then people get very curious and then get extremely self conscious.

Re: Do older people have a different smell?

#25

Post by jmull »

joker3 wrote: post #20

A lot of older people don't shower or bathe as often as young people because they're worried about slips and falls. I'm surprised that the article didn't consider that.

Two of the three studies defined "old" as people 40 or 41 and older, so frailty might not be a large factor.

(Those two studies had different conclusions. The third study defined "old" as 75 and older, but found the most intense and unpleasant orders in middle-ages males, 45-55, so again, frailty doesn't seem likely to be a significant factor in terms of a strong or bad old smell.)

Edit: also, I kinda doubt your assertion about the bathing habits of older people. I wonder what you base that on?

Re: Do older people have a different smell?

#26

Post by jraph »

beat wrote: post #21
jraph wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How did you notice you were seeing smells (and not everybody is)?

Synesthesia is very hard to explain. It's like explaining color to the blind. I have mild synesthesia myself - I hear flavors. I can say "I hear flavors", but that doesn't help to tell you what different flavors sound like, because sounds themselves are very hard to describe in words. The best way to experience something like synesthesia is under the influence of LSD or similar drugs. Not that I recommend it, but it…

Do noises prevent you from fully tasting food? (sorry if these questions are boring to you)

I asked this question in my previous comment because I've read about people having synesthesia discovering quite late that no, to most people, smells or figures don't have any specific color or character (depending on the involved senses), during a conversation in which they take for granted that their interlocutor experiences it too.

My father himself kind of realized that contrary to many people, he sees months of the year as a ring, when I spoke about synesthesia, and said that some people having synesthesia may see numbers or years in a specific shape, that does not change across their whole life (and, indeed, he confirmed this point about him).

Re: Do older people have a different smell?

#27

Post by bradly »

dredmorbius wrote: post #4

Babies smell. My friend, undergoing radiation therapy for cancer, had a distinct smell. As have those treated with specific chemotherapies. Athletes smell. Indoor and outdoor athletes differently. Pool swimmers of chlorine, open-water swimmers of the sea. Parkinsons and Alzheimers appear to have distinctive smells. Diabetes is characterised for its distinct smell (and taste). We are chemically-regulated, processing,…

Backpacking can cause an ammonia type smell from burning fat and muscle breakdown. It's a smell similar to the smell from homeless people that I always just assumed was because both backpackers and homeless bathe less often than others, but that is just a coincidence of both group's bodies breaking down muscle from not enough of protein/carbs/nutrients.

Re: Do older people have a different smell?

#30

Post by ColanR »

cbanek wrote: post #28

Penn & Teller: Bullshit Season 8 Episode 8 did an experiment to try to verify this. They couldn't find that people could predict who is old and who isn't via a sniff test.

Unfortunately, that experiment could just as well have been testing people's ability to smell the difference.
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