My husband is a relief milker. He is lovely, and rather relaxed as those who know him will testify. He is also large, and we have a smallish bath. So when I started smelling him when in bed, I thought he was getting overly relaxed in the hygiene section.
I mentioned this tactfully, and he did his best, but without noticeable results. So I bought him a sponge to better clean his back. No improvement. I bought a fancy sponge. Nothing. I came and washed his back personally. Nope. I supplied more hot water, so he could rinse with clean.
Proudly he came out and I smelled - lovely.
Until that night in bed, when the vapours started to rise, again.
Maybe he had a health problem? Some diseases make you smell. I went on the internet. ‘Smell and health’ gave the wrong results, till I found the correct word was ‘odour’.
What do you think? Way down the page, in the Huffingdon Post’s “7 Surprising Odour Causes”, between “You have too few favourite bras” and a rare genetic disorder, there it was “You love broccoli too much”.
We don’t eat broccoli but kale, another brassica. We grow our own and have rather a glut at the moment, so it’s kale every day …..
“And where does yoga come in?” I hear you ask. Well, I have recently been practising alternate nostril breathing on the advise of my teacher. Apparently, it can enhance your sense of smell. I have noticed this on other occasions.
These days my husband has better baths, which is never amiss. The smell I put up with. Kale is too good a food to drop for a minor inconvenience like sulphur.
Certainly different foodstuffs can cause different body odours. Certainly, "bad" body odours are typically caused by the bacteria on the skin (especially in the warm damp areas) consuming the sweat we naturally produce, and it's the bacteria causing the nasty smells, but there can also be odour that is directly within the sweat with certain stronger substances (curry is a very common one, though I can imagine brassicas also produce strong odour - never really tested it).
Of course many people cover up the odour with sh!tty anti-perspirants which block the pores to prevent the sweat coming out as well as sticky fake perfumed rubbish that sticks to you. As you can probably tell, I'm no fan of these, and there is some indications (obviously disproven by the anti-perspirant manufacturers) that they can be cancer causing as they are not letting the body sweat naturally. For over 10 years I've used natural deodorants (not anti-perspirants) such as the pit-rok style crystals that you wet and rub on, though there's some suggestion that these are not made naturally either and are in fact the by product of some chemical process (when I questioned pit rok about it, the never replied, so I don't use theirs any more). Those natural deodorants help suppress the bacteria that eat your sweat so you can still sweat naturally, but don't smell as much. Works ok for me.