Why do those of an advanced age often have that characteristic odor? It can be quite rank, and I’ve only ever smelled it on the elderly.
It can’t just be BO- there’s a bitterness to it so strong you can almost taste it. I once cared for an elderly woman with Alzheimer’s, and she never smelled that way. All I did was hang out with her, make her lunch, prevent her from wandering the streets, and reminded her to shower every other day. So, if a woman who needed a companion to remind her to shower 3-4 times a week didn’t smell, how do these folks that seem competent and independent enough to go grocery shopping or to the mall alone manage to smell so bad? My grandmother, who is 83, also doesn’t smell like that.
Is it incontinence or something? Neither my grandmother nor the woman I worked for had any bladder issues, so maybe that’s it? Could it just be a leaky Depends? But if that’s the case, wouldn’t these people go to the nearest bathroom to correct the problem? Perhaps they haven’t discovered an odor-free creme to relieve their arthritis? Or certain medications make people smell odd?
Do they not smell it?
My younger, ruder self once joked it must be their bodies getting a head start on the decomposition process, but there must be an answer.
Could be certain medications, or combinations thereof. Many elderly take a handful of prescriptions a day, and some of them could leak out through the pores, like garlic.
Plus, people don’t usually smell their own odor till they see everyone keeping away.
I’ve been reading “A Dirty Job” by Christopher Moore, a novel about a celebrated San Franciscan weirdo* who’s chosen to help Death do his job. The protagonist mentions that people whose livers and kidneys that aren’t what they used to be, have a distinct smell; and it’s because the various toxins that those organs normally filter out, are coming out through their skin instead. Could be bogus–it’s in a work of fiction, after all–but it sounds plausible.
Well, yeah, there is a minor character based on that guy in the book (and also in a couple other San Francisco-based books, Bloodsucking Fiends and its sequel You Suck – all of which are wonderful, by the way, like almost every Christopher Moore book) but he’s not the one who is chosen to help Death do his job, so I was thinking there must be another reference. But I can’t think of any other celebrated San Francisco weirdos, so maybe you’re right.
Someone around here suggested that it actually is the very beginning stages of death (which takes years to complete). Makes sense to me. Stuff breaking down, not functioning as well as it once did, etc.
The old people I knew who had odor issues did bathe often enough, as far as I knew, but they had a tendency to wear clothes a bunch of times before throwing things in the wash. It was especially noticeable when their wardrobes consisted of a lot of polyester knit “wash n wear” stuff, which would look clean on the outside loooooong after it should have met soap and a bit of water. At best the clothes smell really stale, but if somebody drinks a lot of liquor/takes meds/eats a lot of garlic/whatever and their sweat is… value added… the result is pretty pungent. And they won’t notice, because you really don’t smell yourself after a while.
Once the clothes smell, the upholstery of their furniture smells, their home smells. And then it’s going to be awful tough to correct the situation without a major cleaning of everything.
In some cases, what you’re smelling may well be fungus (i.e. Candida). All of us have a bit of Candida on our skin, but it tends to proliferate (and smell musty) in moist, warm areas such as under (pendulous) breasts and beneath large, heavy skin folds (as you might find in the obese). In addition, Candida is one of those bugs that tends to grow more readily in the presence of a compromised immune system - with declining immune function a feature of the elderly.