'Old Person Smell' | Hacker News Reader

'Old Person Smell'

theguardian.com

103 pointsbookofjoe55 comments

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/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.

The 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-answe...

https://miraiclinical.com/pages/why-this-ucla-trained-anti-a...

2001 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!

I 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.

I 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.

Something 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.

> 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.

Look up how the wool in your wool shirts is prepared. It is likely coated in plastic...

The concept of "athletic clothes" implies it is a synthetic material inherently. If you wanted a cotton athletic shirt, that's just a cotton shirt of which everyone has many. The thing that makes it 'athletic' is the synthetic material.

Finding 100% cotton clothes is not very difficult

> We now add Lysol laundry sanitizer

I do as well for super stinky clothes (usually trail running stuff), but I am not sure how worried we should be about the active ingredients (quats). Since I can smell Lysol's fragrance, I assume some of those quats must be left behind as well.

"They identified chemicals that selectively damaged oligodendrocytes belong to two classes: organophosphate flame retardants and quaternary ammonium compounds"

https://medicalxpress.com/news/2024-03-common-household-chem...

FWIW, Lysol laundry sanitizer is a quaternary ammonium disinfectant, and the safety story is not necessarily amazing:

https://cen.acs.org/safety/consumer-safety/know-enough-safet...

Hopefully most of it washes out with the rest of your laundry soap.

I am personally a big fan of sodium percarbonate (just buy it from any chemical supply - don’t bother with formulations sold for laundry). It leaves no meaningful residue (once the hydrogen peroxide is released and decomposes and the pH comes back to neutral by exposure to any acid or just rinsing, any residue would be sodium bicarbonate), and it cleans and deodorizes very well, especially in hot water. Don’t get it in your hands, though, especially if it or your hands are at all damp - it, like all alkaline substances, can be nasty to any part of your body that it touches. Don’t inhale it either. Use appropriate PPE.

(In general, we humans are much more tolerant of mild and even decently strong acids than we are of bases. Even mild bases like baking soda feel a bit soapy because they saponify a tiny bit of your skin. A perfectly clean pool or tub with slightly slimy water might just have too high a pH. But you can touch fruit juices without any ill effects as long as you don’t have a cut.)

P.S. Sodium percarbonate is also the active ingredient in most coffee equipment cleaners. A little bit of it plus very hot water will remove tea and coffee stains from almost anything in a few minutes without scrubbing. Just remember the part about not touching it.

6% or better white vinegar in the rinse cycle removes exercise smell from synthetic clothes too. IME it’s cheaper and better than the sanitizer. I just put a cup of it in the bleach cup in the washer. It vaporizes in the dryer. I wash everything in cold water with mild detergent and vinegar.

You can also soak clothes in it to remove concrete/cement.

PSA for everyone reading this: don't mix vinegar with bleach. Hypochlorite decomposes at pH < 11 and releases chlorine gas.

Unfortunately vinegar was unsuccessful for me. I tried that, borax, and baking powder - all on different washes of course without any change. The laundry sanitizer immediately fixed the problem.

So I've noticed this in the past also, stinky sweat especially if I've had any beer. I've also had gout a couple of times and now it seems that the two are related. There are various "tart cherry" supplements available that reduce urea pretty quickly, at least for me.

If the smell mostly reminds you of bad BO, it could trichomycosis axillaris. It's build-up of a common bacteria that feeds on hair shafts in sweaty areas. If you image search this, you're going to see some extreme cases, but even minor cases are stinky.

Look closely at some armpit hairs under a bright light (pulling them up or just plucking one out). If you see any semi-transparent, waxy build-up at all, anywhere on the hair, that's probably trichomycosis biofilm. All you have to do to treat it is keep your pits closely shaved for a few weeks to starve any colonies clinging to the skin. Improvement in body odor should be immediate.

On a recommendation of a friend we started using Finish Oxi Action in the washer when the odor is detected. Fitness clothing which we were ready to throw away was like new afterwards. Hope it helps.

Urea is odorless

Only pedantically. Pragmatically it definitely stinks.

Many of them are not in good physical shape which makes washing hard for some of them. Poverty is also a major factor for many elderly people.

As 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.

so 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!

If you've been around alcoholics, you know the smell. You can smell their sweat on their body, clothes, sheets, etc.

I 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.

Already exists in soap form https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Old_person_smell#In_Japan

https://miraiclinical.com/products/deodorizing-soap-with-per...

2-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...

where does this persimmon come from?

https://miraiclinical.com/products/deodorizing-soap-with-per...

I'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.

I 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?

Or the number of years left to live since the onset of the smell, maybe it is telling us other things.

Interesting, I thought it's just individual perception. Never knew there is actually a chemical compound behind it that affects everyone.

Over 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.

reminds me of the stories about dogs who can smell cancer - might be worth to do some checkups

I get the intent, but that's a brutal thing to say.

any tips on how to get over this. i live with my mom and she has this smell now.

2-3 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.

I 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.

Has she tried GLPs?

They pretty directly attack the desire to have junk food. Absolutely incredible drugs.

She 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.

You cannot change others, you can only change yourself

article seems to suggest parsimmon doesnt seem to help. but no harm in trying i guess.

Washing and rinsing in hot rather than cold water helps.

2-3 times per week shower? How about taking a shower everyday?

With that soap, context...

Yes 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.

Is 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.

japanese 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.

++ sauna. and do not live in a moldy apartment / house.

> “It’s just a natural byproduct of skin ageing – not dirt, not poor hygiene,” Javid says.

Did Javid really say this

I stopped reading after seeing the 3rd name:

Jillian Pretzel

Roya Javid

Arshad Rather

Why?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oscar_(therapy_cat)

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