4 ms·
'Old Person Smell'
- sajithdilshan 1mo agoInteresting, I thought it's just individual perception. Never knew there is actually a chemical compound behind it that affects everyone.
- redsocksfan45 1mo ago[dead]
- dominotw 1mo agoany tips on how to get over this. i live with my mom and she has this smell now.
- alchemist1e9 1mo ago2-3 times per week shower and lather fully with persimmon extract soap. Plus wash clothes with a “sport”/“activewear” laundry detergent on extra heavy cycle, like Persil Activewear. And yes the soaps and detergents that are effective on nonenal are more expensive.
- fhdkweig 1mo agoI interpret that question as "what can I do to stop smelling it, because she is old, stubborn, and is never going to change anything she does and will smell like this 'til the day she dies?" I have a mother that is a Type-2 diabetic because for decades she refused to eat right or exercise like the doctors told her. She has tracked down every medication known to man to treat the symptoms just so that she doesn't have to give up junk food. And she will never change.
- estearum 1mo agoHas she tried GLPs? They pretty directly attack the desire to have junk food. Absolutely incredible drugs.
- fhdkweig 1mo agoShe is on GLPs, still only eats junk food. She is cognitively more alert, but it did nothing for her eating habits or weight. The problem is, if when you go shopping you only pick up junk food, when you get home you are only going to find junk food. To eat healthy would require a complete overhaul on her life, and she has never been willing to do it.
- bflesch 1mo agoYou cannot change others, you can only change yourself
- dominotw 1mo agoarticle seems to suggest parsimmon doesnt seem to help. but no harm in trying i guess.
- bookofjoe 1mo agoWashing and rinsing in hot rather than cold water helps.
- sajithdilshan 1mo ago2-3 times per week shower? How about taking a shower everyday?
- picofarad 1mo agoWith that soap, context...
- alchemist1e9 1mo agoYes with that soap. The soap is expensive but also it does dry skin and hair come, I find washing scalp helps for scalp health, and face, but requires moisturizer and conditioner use. Article claims it doesn’t help but I think that is wrong and many others agree.
- trashface 1mo agoIs the house clean? Apparently 2-nonenal can build up on surfaces. FWIW my parents house (mom 86, dad 90) doesn't smell like old person, but they keep it so clean (via a dedicated house cleaner that comes in every two weeks) that an engineer could probably work on spacecraft in the living room.
- comrade1234 1mo agoI think there's probably more going on than that one chemical. For example, if I don't go jogging for a week and then go for a run my shirt later after it dries smells like urine. I looked up why and it's because urea builds up in your skin and is excreted with sweat. Maybe this fact just made me paranoid but I swear that I can smell a urea smell on my skin when I don't exercise regularly. I imagine elderly people aren't out sweating regularly.
- LogicFailsMe 1mo agoI get exactly the same thing. It crept up on me over the past decade of a life where people commented I had to little to no actual distinctive smell, and alas, now I do. What will really make it come out is if I have 2 or more alcoholic drinks the day/night before. The smell reminds me of a friend/coworker from the '90s who didn't bathe regularly and P U. Daily sweaty cardio is more than enough to control it for me as well. But if you can't, deodorants like Lume cover it up and as others have posted and there are soaps that work better on it than others. I occasionally put all my athletic clothing through a hot wash myself because as someone once said on BlueSky, all clothing is washer-safe if you don't care what happens to it.
- somehnguy 1mo agoSomething that made a night and day difference to all my athletic clothing is adding laundry sanitizer to the wash load. We noticed our running clothes developing this very strong sickly sweet/sweaty smell and it would not go away. Spent time deep cleaning the washer and dryer to no avail. We now add Lysol laundry sanitizer (just 1 cap, not the recommended 2) to every wash load and the smell completely went away instantly. I still don't know why all the clothing suddenly developed that smell - I went my whole life without needing to do anything special to my athletic clothes until then.
- ptmcc 1mo ago> I still don't know why all the clothing suddenly developed that smell - I went my whole life without needing to do anything special to my athletic clothes until then. It's the takeover of synthetic fibers (i.e., plastic) for everything, but especially anything athletic. Damn near everything is 100% synthetic, not even a cotton or wool blend anymore. From the high end to the low end, all synthetic. I experience the same thing with any synthetic athletic clothes. They retain so much stink and it's so difficult to get out. And even using sanitizers the fix is very temporary and the stink comes back quickly. I've switched to wool shirts for running and they do not have this problem. Unfortunately they are harder to find and more expensive, but so worth it for both feel while wearing and not retaining stink.
- lookalike74 1mo agohttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oscar_(therapy_cat) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oscar_(therapy_cat)
- whacked_new 1mo agoI guess there's going to be a perfume that breaks down 2-noneal on the market soon. Tangentially, in my 20s I was in an audience seating and sat next to an old person. And I smelled a new kind of odor. It was displeasing, but not like body odor. I quickly realized it's an old person smell. It really just makes you think "old person". I assume there's some biological wiring in there.
- complex_fir_rea 1mo agoAlready exists in soap form https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Old_person_smell#In_Japan https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Old_person_smell#In_Japan
- bookofjoe 1mo agohttps://miraiclinical.com/products/deodorizing-soap-with-persimmon?nbt=nb%3Aadwords%3Ax%3A23512475519%3A%3A&nb_adtype=pla&nb_kwd=&nb_ti=&nb_mi=257021513&nb_pc=online&nb_pi=nonenal-soap&nb_ppi=&nb_placement=&nb_li_ms=&nb_lp_ms=&nb_fii=&nb_ap=&nb_mt=&tw_source=google&tw_adid=&tw_campaign=23512475519&tw_kwdid=&gad_source=1&gad_campaignid=24027583880&gbraid=0AAAAADxQlICqQ2kUxZNN9cNyP81QFLbgK&gclid=CjwKCAjwnvTUBhBoEiwAZNDxZxAxtvPtH_ZalRnZEBj3n19FrbYQ_FlrlmQ4GdGfkcz2DkMCNV8NKBoCwtAQAvD_BwE https://miraiclinical.com/products/deodorizing-soap-with-per...
- bookofjoe 1mo ago2-Nonenal was discovered to be the source of "old person smell" 25 years ago and we're still waiting: >2-Nonenal Newly Found in Human Body Odor Tends to Increase with Aging [2001] From the paper's abstract: "2-Nonenal, an unsaturated aldehyde with an unpleasant greasy and grassy odor, was detected only in older subjects (40 y or older). https://www.jidonline.org/article/S0022-202X(15)41198-4/full https://www.jidonline.org/article/S0022-202X(15)41198-4/full...
- anonymous344 1mo agowhere does this persimmon come from?
- bookofjoe 1mo agohttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2-Nonenal https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2-Nonenal >2-Nonenal Newly Found in Human Body Odor Tends to Increase with Aging [2001] From the paper's abstract: "2-Nonenal, an unsaturated aldehyde with an unpleasant greasy and grassy odor, was detected only in older subjects (40 y or older). https://www.jidonline.org/article/S0022-202X(15)41198-4/fulltext https://www.jidonline.org/article/S0022-202X(15)41198-4/full... The fact that it's been 25 years since the causative chemical with a "unpleasant greasy and grassy odor" was discovered and yet there's still no counteracting substance available is very surprising.
- kurthr 1mo agoThe Japanese have been obsessed with it since the study came out and have a variety of treatments (tannins in persimmons and greentea) though none have passed large scale clinical trials :) I was fed a YT video about it recently so it must be part of the "moment". Also a topic on menopause blogs from searching. https://asayujapan.com/blogs/asayu-blog/persimmon-soap-answer-nonenal-odor https://asayujapan.com/blogs/asayu-blog/persimmon-soap-answe... https://miraiclinical.com/pages/why-this-ucla-trained-anti-aging-expert-swears-by-persimmon-products https://miraiclinical.com/pages/why-this-ucla-trained-anti-a...
- bookofjoe 1mo ago2001 paper's authors and affiliations: Shinichiro Haze Send email to shinichiro.haze@to.shiseido.co.jp ∙ Yoko Gozu ∙ Shoji Nakamura ∙ … ∙ Kiyohito Sawano† ∙ Hideaki Ohta† ∙ Kazuo Yamazaki† Affiliations & Notes 1 Shiseido Co. Ltd., Product Development Center, Yokohama, Japan * Shiseido Co. Ltd., Basic Research Center, Yokohama, Japan † Takasago International Corporation, Central Research Laboratory, Hiratsuka, Japan You'd think Shiseido would've put this on the front burner what with Japan's aging population but no sign of a product — lotion/spray etc. — after 25 years!
- EyeEmOe 1mo ago[flagged]
- chomp 1mo ago> “It’s just a natural byproduct of skin ageing – not dirt, not poor hygiene,” Javid says. Did Javid really say this
- ralusek 1mo agoOver the course of about a month, this went from being vaguely detectable on my mom to very overpowering (to me). I have a particularly sensitive nose, but now I can be across the room and if she comes over to our house I can smell her by the time I enter the room, even if she's just been let in. It's been about 1 year now and it's just getting stronger.
- nlanier 1mo agoAs a professional brewer by trade, I did not have it on my bingo card that the culprit behind 'old person smell' would be the same as the compound prevalent in stale beer.
- anonymous344 1mo agoso beer drinkers will smell more? every time ive been mainly fasting with smoothies wit alot of watermelon, my skin starts to smell of the green part of watermelon..strongly!
- Rendello 1mo agoIf you've been around alcoholics, you know the smell. You can smell their sweat on their body, clothes, sheets, etc.
- anonymous344 1mo agojapanese have products and market for these. just eat ginger, turmeric.and coconut oil daily and u will not get this awful smell. also,.avoid pork.
- anonymous344 1mo ago++ sauna. and do not live in a moldy apartment / house.
- epicureanideal 1mo agoI wonder if we work backward from this smell, from the chemical that causes the smell, would we find some fundamental cause of aging that we could try to develop medicines for?
- genxy 1mo agoOr the number of years left to live since the onset of the smell, maybe it is telling us other things.
- syngrog66 1mo agoI stopped reading after seeing the 3rd name: Jillian Pretzel Roya Javid Arshad Rather
- einsteinx2 1mo agoWhy?
- ddmf 1mo agoI'm allergic to bio washing powders with enzymes, and I typically wash everything at 30c so I've noticed this smell on some of my shirts over the last year or so (I'm 51) So far to conquer it I gather the shirts with the smell together and wash them with a bio washing powder at 40c, then wash them straight away at 30c with the non bio, I've noticed a huge reduction in the smell and it doesn't irritate my skin and cause eczema - double bonus! They say that persimmon soap is supposed to be good, or anything with tannins in, but I'll stick to my imperial leather.