Study Reveals People Can Identify Age Based On Body Odours – And Dispels The ‘Old Person Smell' Myth

Forget trying to disguise the signs of ageing with Botox, anti-ageing creams or surgery - because humans are able to sniff out a person's age through their body odour.

According to a team of scientists, humans can identify other people’s ages based on the scent of their body odour – and contrary to belief, the ‘old person smell’ is less intense and unpleasant than the scent of a younger person.

Researchers from the Monell Chemical Senses Center in Philadelphia, collected a selection of body odours by asking participants (ranging from young, middle-aged and elderly) to insert underarm pads into their t-shirts and wear them for five days.

The sweat patches were then cut up and placed into jars ready for researchers to sniff.

The scents were assessed by a group of 41 'evaluators' aged 20 to 30 years old, who rated the intensity and pleasantness of each smell. They were also asked to guess the ages of the person who produced the smell and identify which odours came from older participants.

The study found that the evaluators were able to distinguish between the three age categories but interestingly - the body odours taken from elderly people were described as less intense and unpleasant than the smells taken from young and middle-aged donors.

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The unique and so-called "old person smell" is recognised across human cultures. In Japanese it even has a special name, 'kareishu'.

Researchers claim the change in our smell is driven by the chemicals we release through our glands and the bacteria on our skin, which varies as we get older.

"Elderly people have a discernible underarm odor that younger people consider to be fairly neutral and not very unpleasant," explained study author Johan Lundström, said in a statement.

"This was surprising given the popular conception of old age odor as disagreeable. However, it is possible that other sources of body odors, such as skin or breath, may have different qualities."

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