What you need to know about you body odor

Most people spend a certain amount of time every day trying to get rid off body odor. For most people, body odor is completely normal; it’s the simple result of the interaction between sweat and bacteria on a person’s skin, the Fox News reports.

But while the average person can easily control his or her body odor with proper hygiene, for others it isn’t so simple.

Certain rare diseases can alter the way a person’s body odor smells, according to George Preti, an organic chemist at the Monell Chemical Senses Center, who focuses on the nature and origin of human odors. One such condition is trimethylaminuria (TMAU), which affects just 1 in 200,000 people.

“Metabolic diseases like trimethylaminuria will lend a very different odor to the individual,” Preti said. “It’s out of the ordinary. In the bad cases, the individual will produce a rotting fish.”

This rare condition is characterized by the body’s inability to properly metabolize trimethylamine, a byproduct of gut metabolism. As a result, individuals with TMAU develop an excess of trimethylamine within their body, causing them to give off a strange odor. TMAU is typically diagnosed in young people, and unusual body odor is the primary outward symptom of the disease.

Other metabolic conditions, like advanced kidney and liver disorders or diabetes, can also produce strange body odors – usually in the form of bad breath. However, this typically only occurs at very advanced stages of disease.

“There are groups looking to fund research with dogs as detectors because dogs can pick up the odor in people, particularly children who are not properly regulating themselves, type 1 diabetic children,” Preti said. “They can be trained to pick up this peculiar odor on the breath at an early stage.”

It’s a popular rumor that spicy foods or curry-flavored dishes can produce strange body odors. However, this theory is still being debated.

“Though I believe it can, because components in a lot of aromatic spicing are very fat soluble. So they’ll get stored in your body fat and get into your sweat and saliva and they’ll influence body odor over time, ” Preti said.

Follow NEWS.am Medicine on Facebook and Twitter