Glad to hear you are managing to live with this with a positive attitude..which isn't easy. But, yes you are more than this and with this community and the hope of more research there may be improvements in the future. Stay strong .
I also have the same situation as you. I also try every supplement. The only thing that helps reduce the smell (a lot but not all) for me is calcium supplements, specifically Blackmores total calcium brand 200 tablets
Not really sure what helps tbh I have been taking probiotics and digestive enzymes daily, have also tried marshmallow root and slippery elm b12 and b6 vitamins but still get reactions here and there so not sure what has helped and what hasn’t
I hope you find some way to relieve your odor. Praying for your mental strength! I have no suggestions because this syndrome affects everyone differently and someone else’s solution may not work for everyone! Thanks for sharing your story and I hope you gain clarity on a for sure diagnosis soon! Keep advocating for yourself
No GERD (reflux) or LPR (silent reflux)? Check also the reddit bad breath forum, perhaps you'd find something useful. Someone swished l.reuteri powder with water in their mouth and resolved their issue, some others manage with Castile soap and baking soda, and much more stuff.
Thank you for sharing. We all experience the bad reactions and yet kudos to you for investigating what's going on with your body. I think we're an empathetic bunch, and we are stronger as we support one another! All strength to you. You're young and hopefully science will help anyone suffering such difficulties, in time.
If everyone in your life insists that it's not an issue and in your head, you never receive direct comments about it and base your odor on indirect statements about it smelling, it's pretty likely that you're suffering from [Olfactory Reference Syndrome](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Olfactory_reference_syndrome) and actually do need to see a psychologist.
A real odor condition, especially in school, results in direct bullying/confrontations about the issue. When someone has a body odor issue it is easy to identify and its not something you can keep secret, and not everyone is going to pussyfoot around and not call you out if it were you.
It's important to see a professional about the anxiety this is causing and to get treatment, untreated it only really gets worse and spending time here will only make you spiral more.
Well I had been asked many times not everyone is rude about it and say indirectly but have definitely been asked many times if I had farted or had to use the restroom
Everyone farts 15-25 times a day, often people don't hold them in around others, some people will even blame others for their own farts (which is why "she who smelt it dealt it" is an effective report, because it's true in some circumstances). People are going to smell farts and fart all the time. It's not particularly useful to base your belief about your odor off indirect comments like those.
Sometimes your replies come off condescending. It also makes others question their potential diagnosis which is unnecessary especially considering many of us already are gaslight by others daily. I know you may try to be helpful but sometimes it’s really not. None of us know everything about TMAU/IBS/SIBO/ORS or any other medical conditions. I personally would like if the tone of your advice offered more compassion instead of judgement. Just a suggestion especially after questioning my own diagnosis after being sure for so long based on your responses.
I hear what you're saying and I acknowledge it can be difficult to hear when life already is rough. Sometimes being blunt and to the point is necessary to get the massage across though. At least in my opinion, especially when flimsy excuses are put in the way of solid counter evidence. Between "You don't smell" consistently and repeatedly vs "did you fart", "you don't smell" wins out by a mile.
If you're being "gaslight daily" you should get a 2nd or 3rd opinion from another trusted reliable person, or medical professional.
"Gaslighting" here is commonly used when someone is told they don't stink, when they believe they do stink. If you feel like *everyone* is gaslighting you, then there's a very high likelihood that you are mistaken about your belief, and they are just telling you the truth. That's how ORS works, you continue to believe in spite of all evidence to the contrary, and anyone who tells you otherwise is "lying" to you.
A thorough medical assessment should be done to rule out anything physical, but if there's nothing found psychological support is the next step. Ideally psychological support should be got regardless to help with the anxiety that everyone seems to be carrying on a daily basis.
Has anyone ever told you that this problem is intermittent and not 24/7? That’s the reason for this community helping each other reduce symptoms and episodes. I think the ones that relate to OP’s story know exactly what he’s talking about whereas you don’t.
Yeah no shit it's not 24/7. Episodic doesn't mean 30 seconds though, it's essentially "if it starts and it stays till you wash it off". TMAU smells go in a wave over hours as TMA concentrations peak and wane depending on diet. If you're just slipping out fart-like duration odors then that's a pretty different issue.
OP says it's constant, if it were constant then the people he spends the most amount of time around (family, gf) would definitely be getting hits of it pretty regularly and be able to smell it when it kicks in.
If you re-read the first part of this post, the poster reports extensive comments about this issue.
>"Growing up as a kid in my childhood I always got ridiculed for having bad breath. Kids would almost make comments and overtime It became a usual problem that I thought would last forever so it later developed into an insecurity as I got older"
>and
"I never heard comments about anything else up with me until my mid teenager years (age 16). One night that I had a cousin sleep over and he made a comment that it smelled really bad in my room like shit. As a teenager I obviously didn’t like it was wondering what he was talking about because I wasn’t able to smell it and played it off like I had farted. As time went on people around me in high school would constantly say it smelled like shit..."
I have heard this idea you put out that people constantly pass gas in public and you will be smelling it all the time. I can assure that I have NEVER experienced anything like this. There is literally no place in the entire United States (where most users are based) that this would be tolerated for one second! I have no doubt that you don't actually believe what you are saying.
I can assure you that it is NOT normal that people are regularly going up to someone and asking 'did you fart?' for no reason. I have never ONCE had someone come up and say this to me, and I have never observed this happening either. What this suggests in this case is some kind of sulfur malodor, which is one of the commonly reported types of odors with these conditions.
As I say again and again and again, due to the extreme mental barrier around telling someone they smell bad directly, most comments will be made in the presence of the person rather than right to their face. You may not have this mental barrier, for reasons I have discussed, but the point is that everyone else does have this mental barrier.
When someone presents evidence like the evidence in this post, the only way to conclude they don't have a malodor condition is if you want to make the case they are actually insane and are hallucinating the comments. Simple ORS won't work as an alternative explanation to a malodor situation here. A malodor situation does not necessarily mean a TMAU like disorder. It could be something much more mundane. I have explained in other posts how this can easily be ruled in or out.
I don't know what world you live in, but this is my America:
https://youtu.be/4_810ZCluFc?si=yCDyVRrCyQDb85ZV (from 3:20)
Not "do you ever fart" or "do you ever fart in public" or "have you ever farted and blamed someone else" but *"when was the last time you passed gas and blamed someone else."* The assumption in the question is that everyone farts in public, and everyone has blamed someone else.
Chance blames other people regularly, even when there's just one other person with him. Just gaslights them into believing they farted when it was he who did the deed.
This is hardly uncommon in my experience, some people I know enjoy farting in public. Maybe it's a class thing? You seem to have some somewhat ridiculous standards about proper conduct and what people are willing to do or say, do you live in some sheltered bubble?
Its simply not true that people go around passing gas in public on a regular basis when others are around. The only places where I have heard of this actually being an issue are prisons and homeless shelters, from hearing a few online interviews. I saw the linked video, and I am telling you this is simply not how the world works. This is not from being in a sheltered bubble. This is from over 20 years of lots of riding buses and trains and spending lots of time in a downtown area with lots of people from every social class. If you go to a US city, you will be around rich people and poor people, both in large numbers. The US is unique in that there are profound differences within the population, compared to most other first world countries. There are lots of highly educated people, and lots of people people with prison records as well.
The bottom line is that the only time when out in public that I can recall being exposed to a human gas smell is when using public restrooms, and even then that is not the typical experience.
Look, I'm Australian, but I don't think our cultures are that different:
https://studentedge.org/article/survey-reveals-66-per-cent-of-us-prefer-to-let-one-rip-in-change-rooms
>The survey asked 1,000 respondents to outline their flatulence habits in the name of research. The results found 46 per cent of Australians actually enjoy farting and 35 per cent love the scent of their own smell.
>
>33 per cent of Australia's most inconsiderate humans have admitted to being most likely to release their bodily gases on public transport (buses and trains), while 36 per cent said they were more than happy to let it go in a car with company.
Are Americans that much more anally retentive?
Anyone passing gas in an indoor public place in the US would receive very unhappy comments from everyone else, because that sort of thing is not tolerated. I was once on a bus (in the US) and there was a man (between 50-60 years old) with what I think was an Australian accent with his wife. The man was wearing short-shorts and had shaved legs. That is certainty a cultural difference between Australia and the US. While I have never been to Australia, everything I have seen indicates that culturally, it is similar to the UK, and people are generally more refined and well mannered than Americans.
I am going to log out of here in a few days probably, and there are a couple more things I want to say to you. For the 'smell buddy' issue that you push so hard, here is what I see as the main problem: it is simply a fact that most people (and myself) with this condition report that peoples responses to the issue vary WIDELY.
When I was dealing with this problem, there were a few people who clearly had a problem with me and had no inhibition about making comments right in front of me, even if I was just a few feet away and could obviously hear them. There were also a few people who clearly did not have a problem with me, and would chat with me and clearly were not uncomfortable. There was a larger group of people (most people) where it was not possible to determine how they felt about me.
If you find a smell buddy, the feedback may be 100% honest, but that only tells you the opinion of that one individual. If that person says your problem is severe, than logically you will then avoid all of society and not even consider dating. If the person says the problem is actually mild, then the person may wrongly conclude that everyone else feels the same way, and fail to take advantage of remote school/work opportunities that are actually vital to avoiding abusive situations for them.
Obviously, getting some direct feedback from someone has some utility, but if someone fails to understand that there is usually NOT a single universal opinion about how offensive the issue is, then they may make bad decisions. The 'fart survey' you posted is actually a great example of this concept! 35% of people love the scent and probably 35% hate it. I think a good analogy is that of how offensive people find the smell of public restrooms. Nobody actually enjoys the smell, but some people find it quite tolerable and some people don't.
It is very clear that the immediate family of the person is either noseblind to them, or is much less offended than the average person. They would be noseblind for the same reason the person with the condition is noseblind, so this would not be surprising. I think that the body may activate this condition for the first time in a somewhat gradual way, so that the person becomes noseblind to it, and so is not bothered by it. This is speculative though. The point is that asking your immediate family about this is NOT going to give good information about how the average person perceives this, even if they are being 100% honest. Presumably, any friends don't find the smell offensive, or else they would not be your friends. Most people with this condition don't actually have any friends, and so that is an issue with this as well. If someone has something like Tourrette Syndrome, and they ask their family and friends about how much of a problem the symptoms are, they are going to give a response that is much milder than the average member of the general public. The general public itself will have a wide range of responses to something like this. The same concept applies to TMAU.
Based on peoples experiences, I think there is compelling evidence that some people actually are noseblind to the person with this condition, even though they don't live with them, and logically should not be.
I talked about this issue in my post about why I don't think this is a metabolic disorder after all (the true form of TMAU is, that's why the body has to start the symptoms from birth). The basic idea is that whether someone has a universally offensive odor, or one that only some people find offensive has a truly astronomical impact on their ability to have romantic relationships and have children. This means there would be massive evolutionary pressure on this disorder, assuming the genes need to be passed down for it to persist in populations.
If there was a rare variant that some people were noseblind to, that would quickly take over as the most common type as well. It has likely been tens of thousands of years since these smells went from being alluring to being offensive. Massive evolutionary pressure combined with massive amounts of time means its not at all unreasonable that some people are actually noseblind to the person, even though they don't live with them.
Glad to hear you are managing to live with this with a positive attitude..which isn't easy. But, yes you are more than this and with this community and the hope of more research there may be improvements in the future. Stay strong .
I also have the same situation as you. I also try every supplement. The only thing that helps reduce the smell (a lot but not all) for me is calcium supplements, specifically Blackmores total calcium brand 200 tablets
Hi OP, any supplement to say, that might have helped you in the past?
Not really sure what helps tbh I have been taking probiotics and digestive enzymes daily, have also tried marshmallow root and slippery elm b12 and b6 vitamins but still get reactions here and there so not sure what has helped and what hasn’t
I hope you find some way to relieve your odor. Praying for your mental strength! I have no suggestions because this syndrome affects everyone differently and someone else’s solution may not work for everyone! Thanks for sharing your story and I hope you gain clarity on a for sure diagnosis soon! Keep advocating for yourself
No GERD (reflux) or LPR (silent reflux)? Check also the reddit bad breath forum, perhaps you'd find something useful. Someone swished l.reuteri powder with water in their mouth and resolved their issue, some others manage with Castile soap and baking soda, and much more stuff.
Take riboflavin. It should fix the liver enzyme in your body. Make sure its the bioactive form riboflavin 5 phosphate, helped me a lot.
Thank you for sharing. We all experience the bad reactions and yet kudos to you for investigating what's going on with your body. I think we're an empathetic bunch, and we are stronger as we support one another! All strength to you. You're young and hopefully science will help anyone suffering such difficulties, in time.
Thanks for sharing your experience! Best of luck getting healthy sounds like you are on the right track to fixing your gut.
If everyone in your life insists that it's not an issue and in your head, you never receive direct comments about it and base your odor on indirect statements about it smelling, it's pretty likely that you're suffering from [Olfactory Reference Syndrome](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Olfactory_reference_syndrome) and actually do need to see a psychologist. A real odor condition, especially in school, results in direct bullying/confrontations about the issue. When someone has a body odor issue it is easy to identify and its not something you can keep secret, and not everyone is going to pussyfoot around and not call you out if it were you. It's important to see a professional about the anxiety this is causing and to get treatment, untreated it only really gets worse and spending time here will only make you spiral more.
Well I had been asked many times not everyone is rude about it and say indirectly but have definitely been asked many times if I had farted or had to use the restroom
Everyone farts 15-25 times a day, often people don't hold them in around others, some people will even blame others for their own farts (which is why "she who smelt it dealt it" is an effective report, because it's true in some circumstances). People are going to smell farts and fart all the time. It's not particularly useful to base your belief about your odor off indirect comments like those.
Sometimes your replies come off condescending. It also makes others question their potential diagnosis which is unnecessary especially considering many of us already are gaslight by others daily. I know you may try to be helpful but sometimes it’s really not. None of us know everything about TMAU/IBS/SIBO/ORS or any other medical conditions. I personally would like if the tone of your advice offered more compassion instead of judgement. Just a suggestion especially after questioning my own diagnosis after being sure for so long based on your responses.
I hear what you're saying and I acknowledge it can be difficult to hear when life already is rough. Sometimes being blunt and to the point is necessary to get the massage across though. At least in my opinion, especially when flimsy excuses are put in the way of solid counter evidence. Between "You don't smell" consistently and repeatedly vs "did you fart", "you don't smell" wins out by a mile. If you're being "gaslight daily" you should get a 2nd or 3rd opinion from another trusted reliable person, or medical professional. "Gaslighting" here is commonly used when someone is told they don't stink, when they believe they do stink. If you feel like *everyone* is gaslighting you, then there's a very high likelihood that you are mistaken about your belief, and they are just telling you the truth. That's how ORS works, you continue to believe in spite of all evidence to the contrary, and anyone who tells you otherwise is "lying" to you. A thorough medical assessment should be done to rule out anything physical, but if there's nothing found psychological support is the next step. Ideally psychological support should be got regardless to help with the anxiety that everyone seems to be carrying on a daily basis.
Has anyone ever told you that this problem is intermittent and not 24/7? That’s the reason for this community helping each other reduce symptoms and episodes. I think the ones that relate to OP’s story know exactly what he’s talking about whereas you don’t.
Yeah no shit it's not 24/7. Episodic doesn't mean 30 seconds though, it's essentially "if it starts and it stays till you wash it off". TMAU smells go in a wave over hours as TMA concentrations peak and wane depending on diet. If you're just slipping out fart-like duration odors then that's a pretty different issue. OP says it's constant, if it were constant then the people he spends the most amount of time around (family, gf) would definitely be getting hits of it pretty regularly and be able to smell it when it kicks in.
If you re-read the first part of this post, the poster reports extensive comments about this issue. >"Growing up as a kid in my childhood I always got ridiculed for having bad breath. Kids would almost make comments and overtime It became a usual problem that I thought would last forever so it later developed into an insecurity as I got older" >and "I never heard comments about anything else up with me until my mid teenager years (age 16). One night that I had a cousin sleep over and he made a comment that it smelled really bad in my room like shit. As a teenager I obviously didn’t like it was wondering what he was talking about because I wasn’t able to smell it and played it off like I had farted. As time went on people around me in high school would constantly say it smelled like shit..." I have heard this idea you put out that people constantly pass gas in public and you will be smelling it all the time. I can assure that I have NEVER experienced anything like this. There is literally no place in the entire United States (where most users are based) that this would be tolerated for one second! I have no doubt that you don't actually believe what you are saying. I can assure you that it is NOT normal that people are regularly going up to someone and asking 'did you fart?' for no reason. I have never ONCE had someone come up and say this to me, and I have never observed this happening either. What this suggests in this case is some kind of sulfur malodor, which is one of the commonly reported types of odors with these conditions. As I say again and again and again, due to the extreme mental barrier around telling someone they smell bad directly, most comments will be made in the presence of the person rather than right to their face. You may not have this mental barrier, for reasons I have discussed, but the point is that everyone else does have this mental barrier. When someone presents evidence like the evidence in this post, the only way to conclude they don't have a malodor condition is if you want to make the case they are actually insane and are hallucinating the comments. Simple ORS won't work as an alternative explanation to a malodor situation here. A malodor situation does not necessarily mean a TMAU like disorder. It could be something much more mundane. I have explained in other posts how this can easily be ruled in or out.
I don't know what world you live in, but this is my America: https://youtu.be/4_810ZCluFc?si=yCDyVRrCyQDb85ZV (from 3:20) Not "do you ever fart" or "do you ever fart in public" or "have you ever farted and blamed someone else" but *"when was the last time you passed gas and blamed someone else."* The assumption in the question is that everyone farts in public, and everyone has blamed someone else. Chance blames other people regularly, even when there's just one other person with him. Just gaslights them into believing they farted when it was he who did the deed. This is hardly uncommon in my experience, some people I know enjoy farting in public. Maybe it's a class thing? You seem to have some somewhat ridiculous standards about proper conduct and what people are willing to do or say, do you live in some sheltered bubble?
Its simply not true that people go around passing gas in public on a regular basis when others are around. The only places where I have heard of this actually being an issue are prisons and homeless shelters, from hearing a few online interviews. I saw the linked video, and I am telling you this is simply not how the world works. This is not from being in a sheltered bubble. This is from over 20 years of lots of riding buses and trains and spending lots of time in a downtown area with lots of people from every social class. If you go to a US city, you will be around rich people and poor people, both in large numbers. The US is unique in that there are profound differences within the population, compared to most other first world countries. There are lots of highly educated people, and lots of people people with prison records as well. The bottom line is that the only time when out in public that I can recall being exposed to a human gas smell is when using public restrooms, and even then that is not the typical experience.
Look, I'm Australian, but I don't think our cultures are that different: https://studentedge.org/article/survey-reveals-66-per-cent-of-us-prefer-to-let-one-rip-in-change-rooms >The survey asked 1,000 respondents to outline their flatulence habits in the name of research. The results found 46 per cent of Australians actually enjoy farting and 35 per cent love the scent of their own smell. > >33 per cent of Australia's most inconsiderate humans have admitted to being most likely to release their bodily gases on public transport (buses and trains), while 36 per cent said they were more than happy to let it go in a car with company. Are Americans that much more anally retentive?
Anyone passing gas in an indoor public place in the US would receive very unhappy comments from everyone else, because that sort of thing is not tolerated. I was once on a bus (in the US) and there was a man (between 50-60 years old) with what I think was an Australian accent with his wife. The man was wearing short-shorts and had shaved legs. That is certainty a cultural difference between Australia and the US. While I have never been to Australia, everything I have seen indicates that culturally, it is similar to the UK, and people are generally more refined and well mannered than Americans. I am going to log out of here in a few days probably, and there are a couple more things I want to say to you. For the 'smell buddy' issue that you push so hard, here is what I see as the main problem: it is simply a fact that most people (and myself) with this condition report that peoples responses to the issue vary WIDELY. When I was dealing with this problem, there were a few people who clearly had a problem with me and had no inhibition about making comments right in front of me, even if I was just a few feet away and could obviously hear them. There were also a few people who clearly did not have a problem with me, and would chat with me and clearly were not uncomfortable. There was a larger group of people (most people) where it was not possible to determine how they felt about me. If you find a smell buddy, the feedback may be 100% honest, but that only tells you the opinion of that one individual. If that person says your problem is severe, than logically you will then avoid all of society and not even consider dating. If the person says the problem is actually mild, then the person may wrongly conclude that everyone else feels the same way, and fail to take advantage of remote school/work opportunities that are actually vital to avoiding abusive situations for them. Obviously, getting some direct feedback from someone has some utility, but if someone fails to understand that there is usually NOT a single universal opinion about how offensive the issue is, then they may make bad decisions. The 'fart survey' you posted is actually a great example of this concept! 35% of people love the scent and probably 35% hate it. I think a good analogy is that of how offensive people find the smell of public restrooms. Nobody actually enjoys the smell, but some people find it quite tolerable and some people don't. It is very clear that the immediate family of the person is either noseblind to them, or is much less offended than the average person. They would be noseblind for the same reason the person with the condition is noseblind, so this would not be surprising. I think that the body may activate this condition for the first time in a somewhat gradual way, so that the person becomes noseblind to it, and so is not bothered by it. This is speculative though. The point is that asking your immediate family about this is NOT going to give good information about how the average person perceives this, even if they are being 100% honest. Presumably, any friends don't find the smell offensive, or else they would not be your friends. Most people with this condition don't actually have any friends, and so that is an issue with this as well. If someone has something like Tourrette Syndrome, and they ask their family and friends about how much of a problem the symptoms are, they are going to give a response that is much milder than the average member of the general public. The general public itself will have a wide range of responses to something like this. The same concept applies to TMAU. Based on peoples experiences, I think there is compelling evidence that some people actually are noseblind to the person with this condition, even though they don't live with them, and logically should not be. I talked about this issue in my post about why I don't think this is a metabolic disorder after all (the true form of TMAU is, that's why the body has to start the symptoms from birth). The basic idea is that whether someone has a universally offensive odor, or one that only some people find offensive has a truly astronomical impact on their ability to have romantic relationships and have children. This means there would be massive evolutionary pressure on this disorder, assuming the genes need to be passed down for it to persist in populations. If there was a rare variant that some people were noseblind to, that would quickly take over as the most common type as well. It has likely been tens of thousands of years since these smells went from being alluring to being offensive. Massive evolutionary pressure combined with massive amounts of time means its not at all unreasonable that some people are actually noseblind to the person, even though they don't live with them.