6 ms·

This is awesome. I've always been a super 'smeller' and seem to be able to taste/smell very minute concentrations of bad stuff well before others. Being careful

This is awesome. I've always been a super 'smeller' and seem to be able to taste/smell very minute concentrations of bad stuff well before others. Being careful what I say, I also work in EMS and have been able to identify 'sick' patients, even just on walking in the room, often their smell of their 'sickness' gives them away - even when they're not showing a lot of outward signs. Hopefully someday we'll have some kind of tricorder device that can identify disease processes by gas/scents/smells.

jcims 7y ago
The idea that our skin is permeable to smells seems really weird, but there have been a number of documented cases where pets seem to detect similar sicknesses in their owners. Part of it is I don't think we realize how weird and sensitive smell is even for us. Imagine the world through the nose of a dog or bear.
- wahern 7y ago
  For Parkinson's the odor comes from chemicals expressed by sebaceous glands. I didn't know this until reading your comment. It does seem weird that the skin is so permeable, so I looked it up. At least in this case, it doesn't seem to have anything to do with permeable skin. EDIT: It's mentioned in passing in the linked article: "For one experiment in Manchester, sebum samples were taken from the upper backs of test participants." Other sources are more clear about the relationship to sebaceous glands.
  - jcims 7y ago
    Well pointed, thank you. I did some looking and it seems the 'dog sniffing ovarian cancer through the belly' hasn't been reproduced in any controlled study yet (that i could find). Could just be via breath/skin secretions/etc.
    - jacobush 7y ago
      Dogs can smell so tiny concentrations I'd be surprised to find out they could not smell ovarian cancer. Instead, the trick I imagine is to train them to care and alert a handler.
      - 1_over_n 7y ago
        Pigeons have been trained in pathology imaging for breast cancer https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0141357 https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal...
        exikyut 7y ago
        > ... The birds proved to have a remarkable ability to distinguish benign from malignant human breast histopathology after training with differential food reinforcement; even more importantly, the pigeons were able to generalize what they had learned when confronted with novel image sets. ... > ... However, when given a different (and for humans quite difficult) task—namely, classification of suspicious mammographic densities (masses)—the pigeons proved to be capable only of image memorization and were unable to successfully generalize when shown novel examples. ...
- TheSpiceIsLife 7y ago
  Have a look in to how the skin can pick up the slack from stressed or under performing kidneys.
- Nasrudith 7y ago
  Well given that we breath some through the skin it not being permeable to smells would be weirder really.
wahern 7y ago
> Hopefully someday we'll have some kind of tricorder device that can identify disease processes by gas/scents/smells. It can hasten the process of identifying these chemicals if people with such a sense of smell present themselves to researchers. To me that's the most important takeaway of this story. Unfortunately, most articles reporting on the story bury the lede as the fact that people can smell disease draws more attention than what they're smelling, and that researchers either didn't seriously consider there might be such a chemical indicator or didn't know where to start until they had access to a super smeller. This sort of diagnostic approach isn't new. Once upon a time doctors would taste urine samples! It just fell out of favor because machine and chemical tests are more reliable and consistent. But if you're not drinking other people's pee on a regular basis, or running a large scale, shot gun experiment (like a super smeller spending decades learning scents), initial discovery of such markers can become more difficult.
- markdown 7y ago
  > Once upon a time doctors would taste urine samples! "Ayurvedic physicians (5th/6th century BCE) first noted the sweet taste of diabetic urine, and called the condition madhumeha ("honey urine")." - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_diabetes https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_diabetes A more palatable way to diagnose diabetes is to check if your urine attracts ants and flies.
  - sfgweilr4f 7y ago
    Or turn your diabetic urine into Single-Malt Whisky because there's sugar and you can filter such things. For artistic reasons. https://www.wired.co.uk/article/pissky https://www.wired.co.uk/article/pissky
  - deleted 7y ago
    [deleted]
  - klmr 7y ago
    It’s funny that you cite only the ayurvedic name, since the scientific name, diabetes mellitus, has the exact same etymology: “mellite” is Latin and translates to “sweetened [with honey]”, and the disease was thus named in 1675 because of the patients’ urine’s sweet taste. That said, it’s definitely interesting that this isn’t a relatively recent discovery and was already known two thousand years before the modern naming.
TheSpiceIsLife 7y ago
I can identify when a woman is ovulating by the smell of something being exhaled on the breathe and excreted through the skin. Only ever happens with close female friends, but I’ve identified the smell from regular standing conversation distance away with friends I haven’t seen for weeks and don’t otherwise know their cycle.
- tasogare 7y ago
  That seems a huge evolutive advantage in reproduction, I'm surprised this trait isn't more common.
  - TheSpiceIsLife 7y ago
    I suspect it is common, probably even normal. Our culture and schooling doesn't encourage the development of the subtle senses.
    - xolox 7y ago
      What is a conscious process for some can be a completely unconscious process for others.
  - aaron695 7y ago
    Smell is a important part of interpersonal relationships. It's another example of what's lost working virtually. It's not an advantage knowing why the person smells the way they do. Just what to do. https://businessinsider.com/women-more-attractive-during-ovulation-2016-7 https://businessinsider.com/women-more-attractive-during-ovu... There are very strong relationships between couples and known smell genetics. (I think being different is good?) It's an interesting question how deodorant has changed our genes.
- martin_a 7y ago
  Oh, I have this "condition" or something similar, too. Not even with close friends but with strangers I pass in the supermarket. It doesn't happen often but it's very significant. I think I somewhere read, but unrelated to ovulating, that this was made by nature to find suitable partners. Probably that natural smell is intensified by ovulating. edit: And to be honest: I never told anyone before that I sometimes sense this different smell and I'm not sure I should. Women could probably feel uncomfortable and think their smell is somehow "bad" when others can sense it. Not sure.
sschueller 7y ago
I am a "super" smeller and I hate it. Particularly annoying at the gym as I seems to be only one who can tell who didn't shower or is using deo. Those who smell really bad I can smell even if they already left. Very strong smells also tend to linger for the rest of the day even if the source is long gone. How do you tell someone they should use more deodorant without upsetting them?
- sshagent 7y ago
  Perhaps you relate a story about another situation to reveal your super smelling powers, they might taken it upon themselves to double up on deo.
- DoofusOfDeath 7y ago
  If you're the only person that's bothered by those persons' odor, it might be more practical (in social terms) to deal with it from your side. Is there anything you can do to reduce your sensitivity to bad odors when at the gym? (Serious question. Not a problem I've looked into before.)
  - acuozzo 7y ago
    > Is there anything you can do to reduce your sensitivity to bad odors when at the gym? Surgeons use peppermint concentrate.
the_af 7y ago
When I was a teenager I had a "super smell" sense which seems pretty ordinary compared to what others here are saying: I could detect whether a used glass of drink was mine by smelling the saliva in the glass (in fact I found it shocking that my friends couldn't). My friends mocked me, I suppressed my ability, and now I'm not sure if I can't smell it anymore or I simply don't care.
- aesh2Xa1 7y ago
  Related, I simply cannot stand the smell of eggs on dishes even after a couple of runs through a dishwasher. Love eggs for breakfast, though, so it's a tough life.
- derefr 7y ago
  Perhaps, when you were a teenager, your friends/relatives just had particularly awful-smelling saliva.
  - labawi 7y ago
    I'd occasionally notice taking the wrong used glass by the smell and even know who used it if it was someone close. Lots of pheromones and stuff, nothing unusual about it. I wouldn't say it's a bad smell, I just don't like using cups after my relatives, close friends, or well, other people. Drinking after single attractive ladies being mostly non-weird. The sense does depend heavily on state of mind, and body, so sometimes I'd only notice when already drinking. Works better on people I know well.
PopeDotNinja 7y ago
My current guest is a super smeller. It's mildly annoying. She finds the scent of everything to be too strong, from a pizza box in the trash to the soap in the bathroom to the dirty laundry in the closet. She'll literally wake up in the middle of the night and ask if someone ate pizza because the smell is overwhelming her nose.
- tzs 7y ago
  Spider Robinson's novel "Telempath" [1] concerns a world where someone released a virus that made everyone a super smeller, increasing human sense of smell hundreds of times. So many people were not able to tolerate the smells of our civilization that the result was widespread rioting and mass insanity, pretty much bringing down civilization. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Telempath https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Telempath
ladyattis 7y ago
I hope it's not too personal of a question, but does this trait sometimes overwhelm you? If so, how do you cope?

jcims 7y ago

The idea that our skin is permeable to smells seems really weird, but there have been a number of documented cases where pets seem to detect similar sicknesses in their owners. Part of it is I don't think we realize how weird and sensitive smell is even for us. Imagine the world through the nose of a dog or bear.

wahern 7y ago
For Parkinson's the odor comes from chemicals expressed by sebaceous glands. I didn't know this until reading your comment. It does seem weird that the skin is so permeable, so I looked it up. At least in this case, it doesn't seem to have anything to do with permeable skin. EDIT: It's mentioned in passing in the linked article: "For one experiment in Manchester, sebum samples were taken from the upper backs of test participants." Other sources are more clear about the relationship to sebaceous glands.
- jcims 7y ago
  Well pointed, thank you. I did some looking and it seems the 'dog sniffing ovarian cancer through the belly' hasn't been reproduced in any controlled study yet (that i could find). Could just be via breath/skin secretions/etc.
  - jacobush 7y ago
    Dogs can smell so tiny concentrations I'd be surprised to find out they could not smell ovarian cancer. Instead, the trick I imagine is to train them to care and alert a handler.
    - 1_over_n 7y ago
      Pigeons have been trained in pathology imaging for breast cancer https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0141357 https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal...
      - exikyut 7y ago
        > ... The birds proved to have a remarkable ability to distinguish benign from malignant human breast histopathology after training with differential food reinforcement; even more importantly, the pigeons were able to generalize what they had learned when confronted with novel image sets. ... > ... However, when given a different (and for humans quite difficult) task—namely, classification of suspicious mammographic densities (masses)—the pigeons proved to be capable only of image memorization and were unable to successfully generalize when shown novel examples. ...
TheSpiceIsLife 7y ago
Have a look in to how the skin can pick up the slack from stressed or under performing kidneys.
Nasrudith 7y ago
Well given that we breath some through the skin it not being permeable to smells would be weirder really.

wahern 7y ago

> Hopefully someday we'll have some kind of tricorder device that can identify disease processes by gas/scents/smells. It can hasten the process of identifying these chemicals if people with such a sense of smell present themselves to researchers. To me that's the most important takeaway of this story. Unfortunately, most articles reporting on the story bury the lede as the fact that people can smell disease draws more attention than what they're smelling, and that researchers either didn't seriously consider there might be such a chemical indicator or didn't know where to start until they had access to a super smeller. This sort of diagnostic approach isn't new. Once upon a time doctors would taste urine samples! It just fell out of favor because machine and chemical tests are more reliable and consistent. But if you're not drinking other people's pee on a regular basis, or running a large scale, shot gun experiment (like a super smeller spending decades learning scents), initial discovery of such markers can become more difficult.

markdown 7y ago
> Once upon a time doctors would taste urine samples! "Ayurvedic physicians (5th/6th century BCE) first noted the sweet taste of diabetic urine, and called the condition madhumeha ("honey urine")." - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_diabetes https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_diabetes A more palatable way to diagnose diabetes is to check if your urine attracts ants and flies.
- sfgweilr4f 7y ago
  Or turn your diabetic urine into Single-Malt Whisky because there's sugar and you can filter such things. For artistic reasons. https://www.wired.co.uk/article/pissky https://www.wired.co.uk/article/pissky
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
- klmr 7y ago
  It’s funny that you cite only the ayurvedic name, since the scientific name, diabetes mellitus, has the exact same etymology: “mellite” is Latin and translates to “sweetened [with honey]”, and the disease was thus named in 1675 because of the patients’ urine’s sweet taste. That said, it’s definitely interesting that this isn’t a relatively recent discovery and was already known two thousand years before the modern naming.

TheSpiceIsLife 7y ago

I can identify when a woman is ovulating by the smell of something being exhaled on the breathe and excreted through the skin. Only ever happens with close female friends, but I’ve identified the smell from regular standing conversation distance away with friends I haven’t seen for weeks and don’t otherwise know their cycle.

tasogare 7y ago
That seems a huge evolutive advantage in reproduction, I'm surprised this trait isn't more common.
- TheSpiceIsLife 7y ago
  I suspect it is common, probably even normal. Our culture and schooling doesn't encourage the development of the subtle senses.
  - xolox 7y ago
    What is a conscious process for some can be a completely unconscious process for others.
- aaron695 7y ago
  Smell is a important part of interpersonal relationships. It's another example of what's lost working virtually. It's not an advantage knowing why the person smells the way they do. Just what to do. https://businessinsider.com/women-more-attractive-during-ovulation-2016-7 https://businessinsider.com/women-more-attractive-during-ovu... There are very strong relationships between couples and known smell genetics. (I think being different is good?) It's an interesting question how deodorant has changed our genes.
martin_a 7y ago
Oh, I have this "condition" or something similar, too. Not even with close friends but with strangers I pass in the supermarket. It doesn't happen often but it's very significant. I think I somewhere read, but unrelated to ovulating, that this was made by nature to find suitable partners. Probably that natural smell is intensified by ovulating. edit: And to be honest: I never told anyone before that I sometimes sense this different smell and I'm not sure I should. Women could probably feel uncomfortable and think their smell is somehow "bad" when others can sense it. Not sure.

sschueller 7y ago

I am a "super" smeller and I hate it. Particularly annoying at the gym as I seems to be only one who can tell who didn't shower or is using deo. Those who smell really bad I can smell even if they already left. Very strong smells also tend to linger for the rest of the day even if the source is long gone. How do you tell someone they should use more deodorant without upsetting them?

sshagent 7y ago
Perhaps you relate a story about another situation to reveal your super smelling powers, they might taken it upon themselves to double up on deo.
DoofusOfDeath 7y ago
If you're the only person that's bothered by those persons' odor, it might be more practical (in social terms) to deal with it from your side. Is there anything you can do to reduce your sensitivity to bad odors when at the gym? (Serious question. Not a problem I've looked into before.)
- acuozzo 7y ago
  > Is there anything you can do to reduce your sensitivity to bad odors when at the gym? Surgeons use peppermint concentrate.

the_af 7y ago

When I was a teenager I had a "super smell" sense which seems pretty ordinary compared to what others here are saying: I could detect whether a used glass of drink was mine by smelling the saliva in the glass (in fact I found it shocking that my friends couldn't). My friends mocked me, I suppressed my ability, and now I'm not sure if I can't smell it anymore or I simply don't care.

aesh2Xa1 7y ago
Related, I simply cannot stand the smell of eggs on dishes even after a couple of runs through a dishwasher. Love eggs for breakfast, though, so it's a tough life.
derefr 7y ago
Perhaps, when you were a teenager, your friends/relatives just had particularly awful-smelling saliva.
- labawi 7y ago
  I'd occasionally notice taking the wrong used glass by the smell and even know who used it if it was someone close. Lots of pheromones and stuff, nothing unusual about it. I wouldn't say it's a bad smell, I just don't like using cups after my relatives, close friends, or well, other people. Drinking after single attractive ladies being mostly non-weird. The sense does depend heavily on state of mind, and body, so sometimes I'd only notice when already drinking. Works better on people I know well.

PopeDotNinja 7y ago

My current guest is a super smeller. It's mildly annoying. She finds the scent of everything to be too strong, from a pizza box in the trash to the soap in the bathroom to the dirty laundry in the closet. She'll literally wake up in the middle of the night and ask if someone ate pizza because the smell is overwhelming her nose.

tzs 7y ago
Spider Robinson's novel "Telempath" [1] concerns a world where someone released a virus that made everyone a super smeller, increasing human sense of smell hundreds of times. So many people were not able to tolerate the smells of our civilization that the result was widespread rioting and mass insanity, pretty much bringing down civilization. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Telempath https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Telempath

ladyattis 7y ago

I hope it's not too personal of a question, but does this trait sometimes overwhelm you? If so, how do you cope?