“The results of this study support the cross-culturally popular concept of an old person odor,” writes the international team in a study published today in the journal PLoS ONE.

My topic is about the difference between the smell emitted by young people, middle-aged and elderly, the research was conducted by Dr. Johan Lundstrom of the University of Pennsylvania researchers with Monell Chemical Sense Center of the United States. first asked for volunteers to test them to be young, middle-aged and elderly people who put a tablet under the armpit for five nights and then Dr. Johan analyze these tests and reached the conclucion along with researchers that older people have a pleasant odor in your armpits, and young people also gave their contribution and said it was scientifically proven true as older people emit a pleasant odor in your armpits and Dr. Johan found that older people do not smell bad and that's a myth.

Body Odors originate from an interaction between skin gland secretions and bacteria on our skin. As people age, the activity of different types of skin glands changes, evidently, and this factor may contribute to the perceived change in body odor with age.

Two things are certain:

1 - The smell of elderly people’s skin is different, compared with younger one. Scientifically the real reason isn’t clear yet, with those who say that it is a sign of the “good genes” that have allowed a male to live into old age, as it happens in the animal world, making him more attractive to females. While other scientists believe that the change could be associated with increased inflammation (part of an immune response) within the bodies of the elderly.

2 – The smell of the elderly people body seems less intense and less unpleasant than the body odor of young or middle-aged people, according to study researcher Johan Lundström, at the Monell Chemical Senses Center in Philadelphia. On the contrary, most young people affirms and guess that old people’s odor is unpleasant. But this probably has more to do with negative perceptions of old age, rather than with the odor itself, as the new study indicates.

STUDY: Science says that old people smell good…wait what?

May 31, 2012The ChiefLeave a commentGo to comments

Old people do indeed have a distinctive odor, say scientists, but it’s a lot better than reputation and bad jokes would suggest. A study involving the unenviable task of sniffing underarm pads found that those aged 75 to 95 gave off a scent more pleasant and less intense than most of those in two younger groups, ages 20 to 30 and 45 to 55, reports the Los Angeles Times. Another quirk: Sniffers could detect gender differences in the younger groups, but not the oldest one, notes the Washington Post. ”As you grow older, you smell more and more like a woman,” says the lead scientist, citing changes in men’s hormones. “It’s almost as if you’re going back to what happened before puberty.” Their female counterparts fared the best overall

This is why people don’t respect science anymore.  Yeah, maybe old people don’t sweat anymore because they can’t move, but that doesn’t mean they smell better than young people.  Old man smell is about as bad as it gets.  It’s combination of original scent Old Spice, cigarette smoke, sarsaparilla, mold, and the weird shit they eat like sour krout and prune juice.  It’s not good.  And they are typically so old that can’t smell themselves or they simply don’t care anymore.  Just sitting around in their old decaying bodies without a concern for the senses of anyone around them.  I know all of that and I didn’t need a grant to fund a study where I sit around smelling arm pits.  Science is such a joke.

ALL PEOPLE SMELL BETTER THAN YOUNGER ONES

Scientific Fact: Young people smell worse than old people

Despite the jaw-dropping accomplishments  of impressive senior citizens , our amazing elders suffer under the malodorous stigma that they somehow stink. Plenty of jokes can be found throughout pop culture suggesting the existence of a notorious Old Person Smell. Thankfully, science  is here to save the day and prove that unfounded stigma is false. It turns out that the spice scent from the Old Spice Guy  is actually old after all!

Chemosensory experts discovered that old people do have a smell... but it's actually preferable to the one produced by younger folks. The researchers conducted the study by having a huge range of volunteers from multiple age groups all shower with odor-free soap and go to bed in scent-free linens. Researchers then gathered up the the volunteers' shirts, cut out the armpit pads, and separated that cloth by age group. The samples were well-mixed within their own age groups so that an individual's odor couldn't influence the result.

A subsequent group of 41 volunteers received the unenviable task of sniffing those armpit pads and then rating their preferences. The scent of 75 to 95-year-olds turned out to be far less intense and much more pleasant than the scent of young or middle-aged adults! The nastiest smell was produced by 45 to 55-year-old men. In general, men smelled worse than women, but that distinction faded away with age. The beleaguered sniffers could even identify similar scents, grouping the smell of age groups together.

"Old-person smell" is for real, according to a new study into body odour. And what's more, it's not as bad as the smell of younger people. Researchers at the Monell Chemical Senses Centre in the USA tested people's perceptions of the body odour emitted by people aged 20 to 30, 45 to 55, and 77 to 95. Volunteers in each age group wore a T-shirt containing underarm pads to bed for five nights. Samples from the pads were then tested on 41 "sniffers," who had the task of evaluating each armpit smell. The evaluators were able to distinguish between the different age groups and said the smell from the older age group was less intense and less unpleasant than the others.

The study is part of wider research into how our brain interprets different human smells and how we react to them. Lead researcher Dr Johan Lundstrom said: "Similar to other animals, humans can extract signals from body odours that allow us to identify biological age, avoid sick individuals, pick a suitable partner, and distinguish kin from non-kin." He said of his test results: "Elderly people have a discernible underarm odour that younger people consider to be fairly neutral and not very unpleasant. This was surprising given the popular conception of old age odour as disagreeable." He said other bodily smells other than B.O. might also differ with age, especially that of our breath.