I just read an article that many older people have a ' old people smell '. that it is a natural occurrence and that is not because lack of hygiene. Showering does not help, I do not smell of Old - yet. I know the smell of Death as I have been around that with several people over the years. But just a common odor of being old? I remember working around female customers, who stank with over use of Ester Lauder. Maybe they were covering up The Smell. Just passing this info along, let's get ya'lls take on another so called fact of growing older. Oh heck - it's my day to shower - Toodles
I don’t stink—at least I hope I don’t. I think the idea that older people “smelled” came from years ago before folks had indoor plumbing available to them. Not a lot of baths or showers going on, just maybe just a splash of water on the face and arms out of a basin or outside at the water pump. Also, I don’t think a person didn’t change clothes as often, or have any other clothes to change into, having to wear the same ones for a few days. I remember one of my grandmothers always had bad body odor. When I was young, and when my family would go visit her, I hated it when she hugged me because she smelled so bad. She lived with her oldest son and family long before I was born, who also had 8 kids living in the same house.
I think many times it is simply that older people lose mobility and don't bathe or change clothes as often. I remember my grandma hounding my grandfather to take a shower, because if she didn't... he wouldn't. I still bathe daily so I hope I'm not "musty." Also, I don't believe people are aware when they chronically smell bad. We become accustomed to our own "smell" whether it's too much cologne or BO. Kind of like our individual homes; we are used to the smell and don't even notice it.
My sister had the same fights with her live-in father in law. Some people get into a Retirement Malaise.
the article stated - that it is a natural occurrence and that is not because lack of hygiene. Showering does not help. So. I am guessing that our bodies at some point just acquire the smell. Who knows for sure.
I guess we're all denying an uncomfortable reality. I don't doubt the possibility. I know that strict vegans I've been around give off an order of the spice & garlic-heavy foods they eat, while people from some other cultures say that our meat-heavy diet makes us smell sickly sweet. So changes in our hormonal balance could have the same effect. Maybe we could do a group buy on a gross of Avon shower head dispensers. Ding-Dong! Old people calling.
I don't recall my grandparents or my mother having an odor. I was in my teens when my grandparents died and my mother was 76 years of age when she died. So my question is at what age is this suppose to happen since it's a natural occurrence?
Dunno. Aging body parts and skin? Diet? The XM-3 was a “people sniffer” that we used in Vietnam. The ones I saw were mounted on UH-1 series Bell helicopters and could detect and differentiate the sweat of ground bound soldiers and of course, civilians from a hundred or so feet in the air. To be sure, I do believe that diet played a huge part in the way the Vietnamese people smelled versus that of American or other allied soldiers. But, to the question of “older” people having a smell, there’s a definite giveaway when granny is using a menthol rub on her joints or grandpa is ever so slightly incontinent regarding his water retention. And then there’s the overuse of talcum powder in the footwear because the corns are acting up and too much denture adhesive because the store bought teeth are always slipping around. And fiber. Let’s not forget that we gotta stay regular so the tell tale smells leaching through our skin of fiber based food and bottles of metamucil and such are odors one doesn’t have when one is younger. How about that doctor’s office visit? Everyone knows what a doctor’s office or hospital smells like and guess what we older people smell like when we exit that office? And single Grandpas: Please put away that age related Old Spice, English Leather and Witch Hazel. Note: And do NOT replace those old splashes with a full can of Axe. You’re not gonna hide the smells of age and attract the younger chicks with anything but the smell of money anyway.
Aqua Velva is another one. Now you’re really dating yourself. I think that stuff came out during the Bruce Lee “Enter the Dragon” days. Ya know, those days when kids would go to a karate movie and come out practicing their black belt techniques? Which, brings us back to smells. Old people don’t go to the movies much so there goes the smell of popcorn we used to smell like.
As @Beth Gallagher said, we get used to our own smells. So it makes one wonder if the baseline smell for people in a given society changes as their diets change. We all know that Americans are eating way more processed foods than before. So some of us may smell "different than," but the "than" is a moving target. More to the topic, our smell may change as we age, but everyone's smell changes based upon several variables, and we only notice "different than us" on any given day.