What makes your body odor change?

[led37zep]

Dr Steve,

Is it possible for stress to change a persons body odor?

I was in Seattle on a really stressful shoot a year or so ago and I noticed that my sweat started smelling different. I'm not sure if it was the well brewed coffee or the extreme stress I was under.

I'll hang up and listen to your calls offline.

Your Friend,

Led

[Dr Steve]

Dr Steve,

Is it possible for stress to change a persons body odor?

I was in Seattle on a really stressful shoot a year or so ago and I noticed that my sweat started smelling different. I'm not sure if it was the well brewed coffee or the extreme stress I was under.

I'll hang up and listen to your calls offline.

Your Friend,

Led

Led:

The stink in sweat is not from the sweat itself, generally, but from the bacteria that multiply in a moist, stanky environment (like your arm pits). Now, some of the oils you secrete also have an odor, and things you eat can affect them. Heavy garlic intake will make a person smell different than heavy parsley intake, for example. Mix these oils with salty water and bacteria and you have a great recipe for stink soup.

You may have been colonized by a different bacterium than you're used to when you switched geographic locations. Certainly you've been under stressful circumstances before...did you ever notice a change in your body odor before this? if not, it may truly be a case of geography rather than anything else. Changing your diet certainly seems like a reasonable theory as well; coffee, though, is just coffee when it comes to what you secrete in your exocrine glands.

I know this is an unsatisfying answer. :-)


your pal,


steve

[Devo37]

could science develop a bacteria that eats sweat, dead skin, etc. and produces a pleasant fragrance?

[biggirl]

maybe it's hormones causing problems.

[Dr Steve]

Also, there are "APOCRINE" glands that produce oily fluid...this apparently is increased when you're under stress. Again, the oil and salty water and bacteria on your skin make for some really odoriferous secretions.

I think science could indeed fix this problem...but why stop there? Let's make intestinal bacteria engineered so that when they produce gas, we fart cologne! It'd probably somehow end up destroying mankind, like the cancer vaccine did in "I am Legend". Ok, ok, science is bad, we get it, Will.