Believe it or not, I’m a sensitive gal, and I am particularly sensitive to smells. Nothing can disturb me quite like a smell I don’t like can, however barely detectable it might be.
Anyway, I have this coworker who does not “stink” in the traditional sense/have a body odor that would be offensive to the general public, but somehow he smells repulsive to me. It’s very hard to explain it; I did the best I could in the title, but I’m still not sure that’s quite right. The smell is vaguely sweet, but in a fecal sort of way. It kind of smells like hospitals in the sense that he smells unwell or imbalanced, but he doesn’t appear to have any obvious maladies.
Anyway, the smell itself is as bothersome as the fact that I can’t figure out why he smells like this (or why I’m reacting to his smell like this). If it turns out he has a condition, I’ll feel a bit bad about it, but at least I would know why. Unfortunately, nothing I’ve googled has enlightened me, so I’m left feeling both confused and disgusted.
“The underlying theory is that you somehow select immune compatibility in a mate,” says Noam Sobel, an expert in olfaction and professor of neurobiology at the Weizmann Institute of Science in Israel. The human version of the MHC, called the human leukocyte antigen, or HLA, is also linked to a large number of olfactory receptors and appears to be particularly important for how we smell other people. Like the MHC, the HLA has genes that influence how one’s immune system recognizes cells as belonging to oneself or an invader; HLA fit is one test used to determine whether or not an organ donor and recipient will be compatible.
The possibility of this occurred to me, knowing body odor is related to the immune system. I just didn’t think it could be this extreme. What is he, my long lost brother or something?
I skimmed this same article recently when searching for an answer. It’s an interesting theory, and I have definitely liked people’s natural smells before. I just can’t remember the last time I had such a negative reaction to someone’s smell. He just smells wrong.
White people can smell like onions to me. This is my number one issue with dating white women in the past. Every race smells different to me. I guess my nose is racist or something.
