Bromidrophobia may be the result of today's emphasis on cleanliness that has led us to believe that bodily scents are dirty or taboo. This mental health issue can lead to an unhealthy obsession with ensuring that our regular odors are removed or masked. Bromidrophobics can also have a fear of others' body odors.
NEW YORK (Reuters Health) - To most people, believing you smell when you don't would probably seem like less of a problem than oozing a foul BO without noticing. But for those suffering from olfactory reference syndrome -- a false belief that you smell bad -- the delusion can have serious consequences.
Smell your armpits, feet, and groin area.
If you think you have body odor but you're not sure, take a whiff of your underarms, your feet, and your genitals. If you smell something, then chances are, you probably have B.O. Try doing a sniff test toward the end of the day, or whenever you feel the sweatiest.
Olfactory reference syndrome (ORS) is a psychiatric condition in which there is a persistent false belief and preoccupation with the idea of emitting abnormal body odors which the patient thinks are foul and offensive to other individuals.
Smelling things that aren't there is called phantosmia. It can be unpleasant and affect how things taste. But it isn't usually serious and may go away by itself in a few weeks or months. See your GP if the strange smell doesn't go away in a few weeks.
ODOR AFTER A SHOWER IS DUE TO LINGERING BACTERIA
In addition to bacteria, oftentimes there is deodorant residue and other impurities that are trapped in the underarm pores and within the hair if you have armpit hair.
Brain able to differentiate our scent from that of others. You might not be able to pick your fingerprint out of an inky lineup, but your brain knows what you smell like.
In fact, according to research published in Nature, your nose can detect about one trillion smells! But your own underarms could reek and you might not be able to tell: Humans are prone to what scientists call olfactory fatigue; our sense of smell just gets plain tired out by familiar odors and stops detecting them.
A distinctive unpleasant smell emanating from the body could be a huge source of embarrassment. While most people associate it with personal hygiene or lack thereof, these smells could be your body's way of alerting you that something is not right, and needs to be checked with a professional at the earliest.
Parosmia is a distorted sense of smell. Things that used to smell pleasant now smell foul to people with parosmia. People get parosmia for many reasons, including infections, medications and trauma. You can't always prevent it, but in most cases, it's temporary.
Anxiety makes people more sensitive to very small changes in the senses, and smells are no exception. It's possible that you've become more sensitive to your own smell, or more cognizant of your own smell, in a way that wasn't true previously.
Yet, whether we like it or not, humans do smell each other, and we can glean useful social cues and health information from the body odor of others, albeit sometimes unconsciously.
Go by the golden rule of body odor: If you can smell any odor on yourself at all, others can smell it a lot more.
“If the receptors didn't regenerate, we'd all be anosmic [unable to smell] by the time we were 1 year old.” So unless some sudden event makes you profoundly more pungent than usual or you stick your nose right into a sweat stain, you're probably not going to smell yourself.
Showering destroys these happy bacterial colonies; they're completely wiped out by all of our frequent rubbing and scrubbing. And when the bacteria washed off by soap repopulate, they tend to favour microbes which produce an odor – yes, too-frequent showering may actually make you smell more.
However, unlike antiperspirant, deodorant does not block sweat. Thus, the potential mingling of sweat and bacteria might lead to unexpected odors even after deodorant has been applied.
As bacteria repopulate, those that produce more odor are favored. As a result, body odor may be more pungent in frequent bathers. On the flip-side, if individuals are more prudent with the frequency of bathing, this ecosystem will achieve balance and body odor will become less noticeable.
It could be parosmia, a disorder in which the odors of certain things -- or, in some cases, everything -- are distorted. This happens when smell receptor cells in your nose, called olfactory sensory neurons, don't detect odors and translate them to your brain the way they should.
Sniff something with a strong fragrance for a few minutes several times a day, and you'll help your system create new neural pathways for heightened smell sensitivity.
Phantom Smells, such as odd, strong, acrid, metallic, blood-like, sour, ammonia-like, acidy, and repugnant smells, to name a few, are common anxiety disorder symptoms. Many anxious people report having phantom and odd smells as an anxiety symptom.
"The evolutionary theory behind why stress sweat smells so bad is that it's believed the odor triggers an alert response in our brains," Hafeez said in an email to CNET. "When humans smell this type of perspiration, we can tell it's the physical response to a mental concern, like fear or anxiety."