I’m a guy who turns 31 this year and I know this might seem like a strange thing to ask, but it came to mind yesterday afternoon when I was about to take a shower at work after a long shift and I could actually smell myself as I was about to turn the water on, I had been sweating so heavily.
If it was possible to have taken and preserved a sample once a year of my natural body odour scent from when I was born all the way to this year, which year’s sample would likely have smelt the strongest? Would changes to my diet over the years have a part to play?
Odor does apparently change with age as the amount of natural antioxidants decrease.
The lede is that it increases but the character changes:
Diet also matters.
Thing is that the aging smell is different than the foul musk one. Anecdotally I think teen to young adulthood is peak for that correlating with peak hormone levels and I suspect that some level of that stink is communicative of sexual and reproductive status. But brief search is not finding substantiation of that suspicion.
Maybe later I can try some other search approaches.
I believe, based on my own personal experience, that “old person” smell in men is mostly due to men whose bodies and clothing don’t get washed as often as they did when they were younger. My father lived to 87 but was scrupulous about being clean, and never had old person smell. It would be an interesting subject to study, but there’s no money in it so I don’t expect to see one.
Diet can make a huge difference in one’s natural smell, but it won’t be noticeable in normal circumstances with people who keep themselves clean, barring a lot of personal intimacy.
I don’t need to stand very close. I’ve stood in my cubical and realized that i knew my neighbor was in the office, even though he wasn’t currently there, because i could smell his scent. That was an applied scent, not his natural odor. But lots of people have enough natural odor for me to smell it at birthday social distances, especially in the evening.
Also, sick people often smell “off”.
I find it a little depressing that my clothes often have a hint of " old lady" when i remove them.
I think this is part of it for me as well. The one time I had to apply an anti-fungal cream for a few weeks, I smelled the distinctive smell on me for awhile after I applied it (and presumably probably others could as well after my nose got used to it.)
The cream itself didn’t smell particularly old person. It just smelled that way after I applied it. I wonder if some gels and/or creams interact with the skin in a way that creates or enhances the smell.
My gut feeling is that there is something to the antioxidant angle as well, since my skin smells like that ever so slightly when I get sunburned (at least as far as I can remember since it’s been a few years), which to me says that my body was temporarily unable to keep up with repairs. Maybe the reason the anti-fungal cream caused the smell was that it was doing the same thing to the fungus which then gave of the scent, which would explain why it didn’t smell before I applied it.
Tweens and teenagers have the strongest body odors. If you have any doubts open up a hockey bag stashed with equipment (gloves, pads, etc.) used by someone in this age group. You’ll keel over.