TB Smells Like Stale Beer, Diabetes Like Rotten Apples: Your Body Odour Can Tell A Lot About Your Health

Studies have also shown how dogs sniffed bladder cancer in urine and detected lung cancer in exhaled breath

Animals have long used the power of smell to detect food sources and to differentiate between kin and predators. Much like animals, humans have also navigated years using their oldest sense, the sense of smell. It might be interesting to know that even physicians have for long used odour as a means of diagnosis. But over years, medical practitioners have moved from sniffing their patients to more socially acceptable and reliable forms of diagnosis like blood tests and others. Since the early days of medical science, researchers have linked certain diseases to a certain smell.

Body odour is a mixture of bacteria and sweat on your skin. It can change under the influence of hormones, certain diets, infections and medications you might be taking. There could be several reasons that your body might smell bad and all aren't troublesome, reasons could be hormonal fluctuations, excessive stress, genetics or even dietary changes. However, sometimes your odour can say a lot about your health. It would be a good idea to see how smell is strongly integrated with your bodily functions and diseases.

Sniff the diseases

As per a paper published in 1998 Chemical signals and parasite-mediated sexual selection, any kind of infection can trigger an immune response that can further change how a person smells. One of the originators of Hindu Medicine, Susruta Smhita claimed that by the sense of smell, one can recognize peculiar perspiration associated with health conditions. For instance, a diabetic person can have a fruity aroma of decomposing apples. Here are a few body odours associated with specific diseases-

1. If you are having typhoid, you might smell like a freshly baked brown bed
2. If a person has Tuberculosis, you might smell like a stale beer
3. Infected with diphtheria, you might smell sweet
4. Infected mucus might have a foul smell

Smell and Parkinson's- an intriguing relationship

Studies have shown that the diagnosis of Parkinson's is often preceded by a decreased ability to smell. Some research has shown that a certain odour is associated with people suffering from Parkinson's. A case study chronicled in Lancet Neurology (2016) talks about a woman who had a higher sense of smell and who could detect whether a person had Parkinson's or not. The Scottish nurse was the caretaker of her husband who had Parkinson's and for years she noticed that he emitted a musky odour. The nurse later could sniff the same smell from other patients who possibly suffered from the same condition.

Your dog could smell cancer

Over recent years, scientists have been investigating whether dogs can smell cancer on you. As per reports, the question was first raised in 1989 when doctors described a case study of a woman concerned about a mole that her dog would often sniff at and had tried to bite her at the spot that later was found to be a malignant tumour. Studies in the past have shown how dogs have identified the urine of patients with bladder cancer and detected lung cancer in exhaled breath. Tumours are known to produce some volatile organic compounds that can get released into the urine, breath and sweat.