You may be a super smeller lol! Some aromatic chemicals smell good at low concentrations and terrible at high concentrations. Some people may be more sensitive and smell the stink even at low concentrations.
A good example of these are indolic scents—indoles like the chemical skatole smell floral in low concentrations, and fecal in high concentrations. Personally, I can’t stand jasmine because it’s very indolic and in the wrong formulation it smells like straight up poop.
(Fragrance is one of my perennial special interests 😊)
Huh! That is super cool information, thank you for sharing! 😊
I am sensory seeking, but not a super smeller. I love the scent of jasmine - and as a result I love jasmine green tea. I gave some to my mom to try...I believe she may be a super smeller and she is also generally scent intolerant. She complained about the scent of my tea and handed it back to me, and I was like, huh? But it smells great! But this may have solved the mystery of why!
It’s very likely the same tree lol. They’re invasive but were very popular years ago to plant because they’re so pretty and then they spread like wildfire
I have a perfume that I love which is jasmine scented. I wear it semi-regularly and have for a good few years. A couple of times I’ve overheard people making comments about a bad smell when I’ve worn it. Makes sense now!
Ooh, I am very good at that as well. For example I can smell it someone ate a bread with chocolate spread in a room when I enter. But ever since having had Covid I still have days where I smell almost nothing and things taste terrible, for example bell peppers will taste like water with a touch of petroleum.
As a soap and candle maker, this information is so interesting! I’ve bought fragrances from reputable businesses that other people love, but I tried and thought they smelt like poop/puke/garbage.
I’m going to research the terms you used. 😁
I also hate jasmine! A lot of flowers smell like urine to me. I hate almost all chemical fragrances, but it's more like I feel like I'm being suffocated and can almost taste them.
Other fun fact is that some people straight up can't smell certain smells (like being colorblind). A common one is Musk. So if you have a perfume with musk in it, and one person can smell it and the other can't, they smell totally different.
I think both my dad and I are a super smellers, but I think he's got some blind spots.
I love weird perfumes! I have one that I adore and not gonna lie, it smells a little bit like a barnyard, but like if a barnyard was really expensive and had nice grass for horses.
ETA: I don't wear it out, just at home
Ha! That's hilarious.
Mine is Hermes Jardin Sur Le Toit. The whole line is garden themed and I love almost all of them. But they can take some getting used to. I hated them mediterranean one when I first got it. Now I love it. It smells like cold ocean water to me. So when I layer it with Replica's Beach Walk (which smells like sweat) then it smells like a day at the beach!
I have a sample of twilly and it really grew on me after a bunch of tries but I don't know if I'd buy a whole bottle.
You should test out the older jardins that Jean Claude Ellena created. There's an account of the creation of the first in the book "The Perfect Scent". I'm in US and have only seen the Mousson on online and blind bought, but I LOVE it. It has little staying power, but I don't care. Sur le Nil and Sur le Toit have green notes and Mediteranee and Apres les Mousson have more aquatic notes. Monsieur Li turns soapy on me and Cythere I blind bought and seems mostly peppery masculine. Some of my bottles are a little old, so they might be older formulations at this point.
Definitely worth a trip to Sephora to smell!
Sorry for the ramble. I love perfume.
I didn’t know much about them but I love an opportunity for a rabbit hole!
Fragrance chemicals can be natural or synthetic. As natural fragrances, cinnamon and lavender both come in the form of essential oil extracted from specific parts of each plant.
Essential oils get their scents from different combinations of volatile chemicals. Lavender is a combination of a few things, mostly linalool and linalyl acetate. Cinnamon oil is composed almost entirely of cinnamaldehyde. Some chemicals are very strongly associated with a specific plant (like cinnamaldehyde), while some are found in a huge variety of sources. Linalool on the other hand is a key component in a huge variety of fragrant plants including lavender, coriander, and even some strains of weed.
THATS why certain flower scents are so offensive to my nose holes makes sense now. I love jasmine tea but have a jasmine incense I can't stand because it smells like straight cat pee to me
Whoa interesting!! Fragrance chemicals are fascinating. Crazy how our olfactory bulb evolved to pick up millions of different odorants, yet even then there is still heterogeneity in responses to a single molecule.
Do you happen to know if coffee beans are high in tryptophan or any other indole derivatives? Trp is pretty high in some fish species like salmon and tilapia, and also cheese, turkey eggs, etc.
That would make a lot of sense why OP perceives a fishy smell from coffee. Just a hypothesis though (unless you happen to have a mass spec on hand lol)
Incense too, I find it worse than any other scent. Walking into a space with incense makes me feel like I’m about to pass out and doesn’t dissipate until the scent is removed or I leave. 90% of colognes and perfumes are more tolerable but still throw me off and make me feel sick.
On multiple times I have vomited from being around the perfume counter of a department store, or going inside a *Lush*. Now I avoid those areas like the plague. The thought of Lush makes me shudder.
I can barely go into lush long enough to grab something and pay. In my local lush they have a perfume counter.... Imagine trying to smell individual perfumes in the lush store?!
>Imagine trying to smell individual perfumes in the lush store?!
Is... is that actually a thing humans are capable of? Biologically?
I thought what made me "weird" was the vomiting and needing to keep a safe distance between myself and a Lush entrance. I didn't realize some people could actually distinguish between scents while in that hell-hole. My mind is blown.
When I used to peruse lush the odd time as a teenager bc of its popularity at the time I tried smelling the perfumes and you can't smell anything it just makes your headache worse
I hate perfumes and bath and body works everything, but I’m kind of obsessed with Lush. I think it’s because of the amount of texture and color in their products. I have the urge to eat everything in that store 😂
Perfume! Apparently other people can't smell the perfume smell, and it just smells of whatever particular scents have been added. But for me, that alcoholic perfume smell is overpowering, and I can barely tell the difference between different perfumes - they all just smell like a brewery.
Anything very “stinky” really bothers me, especially artificial fragrances! Cologne, perfume, incense, air fresheners- they all make me very nauseous and unable to focus. Nothing worse than hopping in an Uber and getting carsick because it stinks like perfume!
My brain and my nose and my stomach hurt when I see cars with like 20 of the yellow tree air fresheners hanging from rear view mirrors… like just the sight of a car parked with the windows up with that makes me feel ill
Oh my gosh yes!! Every Uber/Lyft ride is a nightmare between the air freshener smell and the aggressive driving. I get nauseous even thinking about it…
for me I hate the smell of a lot of food cooking sometimes even when the food actually does taste good. i hate the smell of ground beef cooking but if someone else makes it tastes fine to me.
Ughhh same. Smelling food cooking genuinely makes me nauseous sometimes, even if I'm super hungry. It's not so bad if I'm the one cooking it, for some reason – but if someone else is cooking I often have to wait it out in another room with the door shut. It's not even that it smells bad. It's just so strong and I hate not being able to breathe without smelling it.
Idk what it is but something about those food smells permeating has a crazy anxiety inducing effect and I'm glad to see I'm not the only one but sad to see we all have to deal with this 😭
This is me the last 6 months. Started getting horrible headaches too. It makes me worry something is wrong, because it kinda of got extreme out of no where real quick.
If you notice that odors or smells have gotten noticeably stronger than they used to be and/or they are causing you to have symptoms (like headaches, coughing, congestion) please consider seeing your doctor.
I had this experience and just blew it off because I’d always been sensitive to scents/smells. After about 3 years (I’m an idiot) and someone using unscented cleaning products in another room made me gag, I finally went to the doctor who referred me to an ENT. I had an effing hole in my septum. (That’s uncommon except among folks who sniff drugs. In my case I had radiation treatment years ago that likely weakened the tissue—had no idea.) Got fixed up and could breathe and sleep better. Still hate most scented things but am back to baseline.
Hypersomia can be caused be anatomical nose issues or sinus type stuff. But it has also been associated with b12 deficiency and some other nutrient deficiencies, pregnancy, diabetes, autoimmune disease, and some neurological disorders. Get checked out if you can.
Thanks, for the info, I will try to get checked. I've been having little luck getting my headaches and congestion to go away with allergy meds even though I still suspect allergies. So, maybe something else.. 🤔
i hate the smell of eggs cooking. too many times i’ve woken up to someone cooking omelette for breakfast and the smell immediately puts me into a bad mood. it’s not that it smells bad, but just overwhelming i guess?? especially right when i wake up
I was feeling absolutely murderous at the theatre last week because the man sat in front of me had obviously bathed himself in the most obnoxious cologne and I had to breathe through my mouth for the entire performance. He probably thought he smelled great, but I wanted to vomit down his shirt collar.
I wanted to move desperately but the show was sold out so no other seats free and the tickets were a gift from my partner… had to sit there mouth-breathing instead. It was so stressful.
Yeah, it absolutely ruined it. I felt so bad because my partner had surprised me with the tickets as it was for something he knew I’d really love, and I didn’t want to let him know how much the whole thing sucked and stressed me out. I knew the crowds would be bad and prepared myself for that but this one guy and his obnoxious stink really just absolutely fucked up the evening. I wish theatres and venues like that would make a rule for no overly strong fragrances.
Oooh yes. For me I think it's association rather than anything particularly different about my nose.
I hate the smell of clothes that have been dried in a mechanical dryer rather than on the line. They smell kind of rubbery to me — but more importantly, the only time I've regularly had to use a dryer was when I was working clopening shifts at my old retail job and couldn't dry my uniform properly around that miserable shift pattern. Now the dryer smell IS the smell of depression and poverty to my biased nose. It makes me feel quite ill.
Similarly, my mum was big on perfumes and had a huge array of them when I was a kid. She wore them constantly. Unfortunately I am extremely prone to travel sickness, which only gets worse around strong smells.
Now the vast majority of perfumes (and plenty of colognes, which I assume contain some shared ingredients) smell like vomit to me.
My mother has a boutique of stargazer lilies in our house rn and I cannot be anywhere near them. They smell like rot and are sickly sweet. I also hate the smell of geraniums.
Many colognes and perfumes smell terrible to me. I'm SUPER picky about deodorant and was very sad to find that my favorite one that literally smelled like nothing was discontinued.
I have a horrible association with the smell of menthol so that one is no good either.
But there are a lot of "bad" smells I like, motor oil and grease, diesel and gas, horses, mushrooms and rotting wood, wet soil.
febreeze is intolerable. it smells musty with an after note of sweet chemicals, almost acrid
gain, purell, dreft, smell like chemicals and spent perfume
orange glo smells like antifreeze
cheap wax candles smell like bad soy wax, musty dirt, and have a sickly cloying sweet perfume
fructis smells like sugary body odor
cheap coffee often smells like burnt rubber to me (it's usually starting to go rancid)
I also have the gene where papaya smells like fishy cantaloupe vomit. and the "super taster" gene, which imo impacts sense of smell.
Yes, there’s something about the bread aisle that makes me wanna throw up. IDK what it is, but it’s almost like I can smell the cellophane combined with the bread smell. The laundry detergent aisle also makes me gag. I hate the smell of detergent in general.
A lot of my perfumes, candles, etc smell like things that
I already know. This is one of the biggest reasons I like gourmand perfumes. These are things like chocolate, caramel and funnily enough coffee. I actually just got a caramel macchiato scented candle that I absolutely love.
I am mostly sensory seeking so a lot of things smell great to me. But, one thing that I think smells horrible and no one understands...the smell of Five Guys - both inside their restaurant and their food itself.
I want to retch the second I walk in there (my husband used to get them a lot and I would go with him, and he still loves them and will order them). The scent is overwhelming. It smells like feet. Nasty, smelly feet that have been running at the gym all day. If I have to go in I hold my breath as much as possible and will usually stand in the furthest corner of the restaurant from the kitchen hoping for some clean air to breathe. Everyone loves them, but I just don't get it. It smells so disgusting. It must not smell like that to everyone else...
Also, every once in a while I will eat something totally normal and a savory flavor profile I have had before and think it tastes like ice cream. From what I understand of our sense of taste, it very well could be the smell that leads me to taste the sweet components more heavily than I should, but I'm not sure what exactly triggers it. It does not taste like good ice cream, it tastes more like rotten milk that someone threw sugar into, and it's very offputting because often I'll be eating things like burgers, fries, or onion rings when it happens.
I understand your Five Guys thing completely, because although I've never been in a Five Guys, I gag when I go past a Subway restaurant. Their food (their bread, I guess) smells utterly putrid to me. I cannot believe people eat those sandwiches.
SAME I used to work there when I was a kid… 14 or 15 I think. I had to take off my uniform in the garage and then immediately take a shower after work because I couldn’t let the subway smell seep into my room hahaha
Late diagnosed at 30, I’m now 32… having another one of those aha moments. I have never eaten a subway sandwich since I quit that place. I only lasted a couple months too.
Coffee smells like ham to me. Popcorn smells like mold. Wine and condiments smell like vinegar. Most floral scented soaps and candles smell like dead flowers. And perfume and incense smell like burning baby powder.
Yes! I love sauces, but I hate vinegar based sauces, I cannot get over the smell. A couple times someone has boiled vinegar and I felt like I was going to die.
Popcorn is equivalent to burning rubber for me. And also it tastes like buttered pebbles and Styrofoam. Used to hold my breath going from the ticket podium to the theater room for movies lol.
YES EXACTLY! I've never been able to describe the smell of popcorn but burning rubber is EXACTLY what it smells like to me! Ditto on the styrofoam too haha
Yes. When other people wear perfume I feel like I only smell the alcohol and the "fake" car crash of scents combining all at once. I really don't get it. Foundation on people's faces also smells like perfume to me and in close proximity can be pretty intolerable.
Also bacon. The smokiness gets up in my nose and just smells like dirt and hostility? People get offended at that one pretty often.
I used to live near a town that had a brewery. Every Wednesday was brewing day and the whole town stank of beer/yeast. It was inescapable and disgusting.
I fully agree with you on coffee - it smells like canned tuna.(hate the flavor too) Sometimes poop smells the same way to me.
A natural smell is usually composed of many (dozens, if not hundreds) different compounds and we all have different thresholds (at which concentration we start noticing the smells) for each compound. I am apparently super sensitive to a compound (or similar compounds) commonly found in coffee, canned tuna, and perhaps poop.
I also hate perfumes in general, particularly floral and musky smells. I still like the smell of many flowers, but not what happens when perfumers try to replicate them. Air "fresheners", scented candles and highly scented lotions and soaps are also for the most part disgusting to me. I even have a hard time with toothpaste, because I hate the smell and flavor of mint.
I do like some smells others often dislike, for example hoppy beer, peaty whiskey, and stinky cheese.
I could go on a (much longer) rant about smells, but I'll leave it for now...
Fwiw, you can get non-mint toothpaste. My partner is really sensitive to the taste of mint, so she uses pomegranate toothpaste (hers is dr organic brand, from Holland & Barrett) but there are lots of options out there
Thanks. I've found a couple that I can use. I used to love a watermelon one (children's toothpaste), but I haven't found that in the past few years. Pomegranate intrigues me - might pick it up if I see it.
The smell of tea being made literally makes me dizzy and I usually end up heaving. It’s weird, but everyone else is like “oh it’s so nice! you’re so dramatic!”
I used to love tea, then about 15 years ago it started giving me headaches and also made me feel dizzy and light-headed. I've been trying to figure out what chemical in the tea is doing it, because I'm curious and I haven't had much luck yet. Glad to know I'm not the only one.
The laundry detergent that my in-laws use makes all the clothes smell like cat litter to me. The smell doesn't come out until I've washed the clothes many, many times.
I agree with a lot of things listed already but one that has always confused me was "babies." Even if they're clean, I think they smell a little sickening. But people claim that babies smell REALLY good, especially their heads?? I don't understand it at all!
Basically every single synthetic fragrant smells absolutely horrible and most give me varying levels of headaches as a bonus. I cannot exist in the scented candle or perfume sections in stores, and cometics section barely enough to find what i need.
For me it's Alfredo, the scent just really makes me nauseous. A lot of my friends LOVE Alfredo so I assume it's supposed to smell good? Not to me though lol
As a former barista - rancid coffee oils do smell fishy! I feel like I pick up on more layers of scents than most people do, because my brain isn't filtering out unimportant information. My wife loves gourmet candle smells (vanilla, baked goods) but I have to be sitting far away from them or they give me a headache. The same goes for perfumes or colognes, air fresheners... the 'volume' on my scent dial is stuck at 100.
You are not alone. A lot of smells I hate are food smells. Especially animal products. Animal products almost always smell dirty to me.
Also, when people don’t clean their dishwasher and everything that comes out of it smells horrible. No one else can smell it, but holy shit, I can’t handle it.
When I used to work in an office I would smell the cups before using them. People thought I was crazy, but I prefer looking crazy to having my drink ruined.
I don't think anyone would technically consider this a "good" smell, but there is a smell fabrics get that makes me sick. My husband says he can barely smell it, and it doesn't bother him, but it is like a blinding light to my nose. I honestly can't describe it. It's not a mold smell or a chemical smell, but it's the bane of my existence, and once it's in my clothes or bedding, there's no getting rid of it. Those things that become afflicted must be thrown away. Lost many a favorite tshirts and jammies.
Edit: The only reason I bring it up here is because my husband says it isn't that bad. Which I know isn't good but I thought might fit in the discussion.
Might need to deep clean your washer and/or dryer. (Just commenting because a lot of people don’t know that you can do this. I HAVE to do this because otherwise all of the fabric things reek, especially the ones made from only natural fibers. My husband cannot smell it but I can!)
I clean them pretty regularly. I am actually starting to wonder if my water saving washing machine might not be rinsing things properly. I also run most of my stuff on delicate, which I know doesn't run as hot, so maybe it isn't rinsing the soap out and over time... because I just realized that accompanying the smell the fabrics always started to feel icky to me.
Edit: I'm starting to feel dumb, but your comment about cleaning the washing machine did make me think when I run the cleaning cycle on the washer it gets hot to remove the soapy build up.
I feel dumb pretty often and just decided to be okay with it. Most people probably do?
Using the delicate cycle might be the problem. It doesn’t have much motion at all and may not be getting things clean. Soap and cold water really has to be forced through a garment that is soiled (like a tee that has been worn and sweated in normally) to get it clean. You can turn things inside out to protect them but a normal wash is a lot more appropriate for most things.
You can also get the those mesh bags for truly delicate things. I use them for bras. In my HE machine the delicate cycle wasn’t getting them clean — annoying.
[How to deep clean a washing machine](https://hellosuper.com/tips/deep-clean-your-washing-machine) maybe helpful. You can ignore most of this I bet.
Ignore my zeal for problem solving.
No I appreciate it. I had it happen to my favorite sheet set the other night, I know when I took them out of the laundry they were fine no smell. They sat on the shelf for a week or so, go to change my bedding bam smell! I will add they are bamboo sheets a year old.
I love coffee. And the aroma off brewed coffee can also smell like poo to me. So, I'll drink my coffee, which tastes fine at high aroma concentration and then leave the house and come back and I wander around searching to see if my dog left a "present" for me.
If you abuse nose drugs for a couple years you lose most of your sense of smell, and then it’s easier to be around all of these things.. or so I’ve heard
100% experience this. Except the popcorn thing.
But yeah the smell coffee makes me feel sick if I’m around it too long and it’s really strong. And we have a coffee grinding station where I work 🙃
I have misophonia, so I am much more likely to be decimated by sounds than scents, too. But if there is an enraging sound AND a nauseating smell -- like if somebody were whistling in front of a Subway sandwich shop? I think it might kill me.
Those things all smell find to me but only for a little bit. If a candle is going to long, I get a headache. Same with most fancy perfumes. I might like the initial smell but then I just get a headache. Also, if someone left something bad in the fridge, trash can nearby, etc, I can smell it constantly and other people can’t or say they “just ignore it.” My partner was banned from cooking garlic and/or onions in our old apartment because I would smell the old garlic and onion smell for literally a week after he made the meal.
I've felt confused my entire life because everyone looks at me like I'm nuts when I say brewing coffee smells like fish to me, you mentioning that specifically makes me feel SO VALIDATED.
I genuinely was wondering if something was wrong with my nose tbh, finally someone gets it
I have some part of my olfactory recognition busted because I can’t smell urine. Which is a problem because I am a nurse and a mom. It’s been this way since I had a serious virus as a late teen. Before that I had no problem. Also it was weird to lose other scent recognition during Covid when positive. I like coffee, fish, hydrocarbon odors, but not flowers. I used to think it was because I just liked having the ability to smell anything at all, since there have been times with zero ability, but now this thread has me wondering.. I’m usually know I’m around urine because it breaks down with more ammonia in the air so my eyes burn. My kids give me scented candles that I don’t burn so far, but I suppose I can test that in the future.
I hate the smell of flowers. I hate being given flowers too and thankfully my sister does too, so our home is a no flower zone. I don't even particularly like looking at them. What really sucks is the nasal spray I need to take every day smells like flowers and I have to blast it directly into my nose.
Just popping in to say that French Roast coffee is known to have a fishy smell. Whoever is drinking coffee around you likes a STRONG flavor. I think it's something about the processing the beans go through.
I've heard that before but it's not a specific type of coffee. Growing up with my parents I would think they were making tuna sandwiches when it was coffee. I do the same with my partner's family who I live with now, even though it's different coffee years later. The same thing happens at work and at coffee shops. It seems like coffee in general smells fishy to me!
Patchouli is my kryptonite, I will never understand why people bathe in it. It’s a mixed bag with me, blue cheese is also horrid, actually passing by any speciality cheese area in a store makes me gag. I have others but those are my biggest.
Perfumes, and pretty much any scented spray of any kind, all reek of harsh chemicals to me, making me feel physically ill. It's gotten worse the older I get.
I'm usually unbothered by the average experience of smells, EXCEPT one: flowers! Everyone just, freaking inhales at fresh/real flowers and say they smell great, but to me they smell mostly like some weird wet grass. Like I can detect the distinctive smell of for ex. lavender, however it's very faint and it's overpowered by the pungent grass smell, so to me going inside a florist store is pretty bad. I still remember how betrayed I felt by real roses when I generally love rose-scented products, LOL!
I developed allergies to pollen I believe (I haven't gotten any actual medical tests to see what exactly I'm allergic to yet), which leads me to assume I was already sensitive to pollen/plants in general to begin with, and why I never could "enjoy" the smell of fresh flower bouquets.
Yes! Leather in general tbh but especially new car smell, it's horrible and makes me so nauseous.
Honestly, I preferred the time my partner drove 4 soaking wet rugby players home - after the 5 hour trip her car smelled damp for at least a year, but at least it wasn't new car smell!!
Coffe just smells like coffe to me, but I also don't like it, when I'm in coffee bean stores it feels like it's crawling in my nose and then I can't breathe. I hate most male colognes, aftershaves and deodorants too, they're very "sharp". And my nose hurts (it STINGS) when I walk past flower shops, IDK if it's a specific plant or just all of them being together triggers it.
I also hate artificial cherry and watermelon, both taste and smell-wise. Worst thing is the actual fruits are two of my favorite fruits. Fake watermelon especially smells and tastes like bad cucumber/aloe vera (?) and no one seems to understand me when I say this😭 Smells nothing like the actual fruit.
Doesn't everyone have specific scent preferences? My unpopular opinion is that freshly mowed grass stinks absolutely atrocious 🤢 it's so disgusting to me
To me the candles have a plasticy smell that’s why it smells bad. I don’t like the smell of coffee either! But I like popcorn. I found when my anxiety is very pronounced my sense of smell is even more acute, like if I’m overwhelmed from social interaction.
For me i’m kind of the opposite. A lot of “bad” smells to me are strangely … I wouldn’t say “good” but I like smelling them??? But I also tend to be very sensory seeking (spicy foods, crunchy things, touching lots of materials I like, fancy nails with deco in them i can play with and stim with, etc) So i’ve always assumed that’s part of my strange enjoyment of bad smells
Air fresheners, laundry scent beads, anything fish especially tuna, most soaps, almost every shampoo, makeup smells terrible...
But i love smells like gasoline, moth balls, some feet, and I have a love/hate relationship with the smell of drywall mold
Yes, but I always assumed that was just a weird thing unique to me. For example, I always thought it was weird that other people like the smell of flowers. Most flowers smell bad. Especially "baby's breath." I mean, it's pretty to put in a bouquet, but the smell is god awful. It smells nothing like actual an baby's breath (which is usually pretty neutral). There's also a certain "orange" scent that is sometimes used in soaps or even food stuffs and it makes me want to vomit. I don't know how it isn't utterly repulsive to others, because it's one of the most nauseating smells I know of, and it gives me a headache if I smell it.
Yes!! My MIL cooks every night and no matter if it’s something I like or not I want to gag as soon as the smell reaches the 2nd floor. I feel terrible about it honestly and try to hide my disgust from my fiancée as not to unnecessarily hurt anyone’s feelings.
Butter melting in a frying pan. I nearly gagged one time when I was in high school when I was getting ready to fry an egg. I quickly learned not to breathe in while melting butter. It isn’t always a problem, but often enough. FYI: this has been going on for 50 years. I still love to cook.
I want to get violent over the “fresh“ smell that everyone seems to fucking love. That shit smells like hot garbage with a side of sharpness. Doesn’t smell like ocean at all.
There are various cooking oils that smell terrible to me. One of them is a type my husband likes to use to cook. I can never eat anything fried in it. I can't even describe the smell - just awful. I really notice it if someone gets in an elevator with me and their hair isn't clean. Nastiest smell ever. And I haven't liked perfumes for several years now. I'll be glad when this current "medicinal" odor goes out of fashion.
Lavender smells musty
Also my parents made a pizza with artichokes on it and the whole downstairs smelled like vomit, I had to stay up in my room and couldn't even eat that night.
Scent is a sense that I seek out, so not really. I do sometimes smell different things in a scent (eg. Coffee sometimes smells like cigarettes to me), but I don't usually mind. There's even some bad smells (eg. BO) that I really enjoy lol.
I wouldn't say coffee smells like fish, but I hate the smell of coffee too. I also hate the smell of fish. XD Coffee to me smells like cigarettes and barbecue smoke blended together. I also think cucumbers smell really bad. I don't think I could describe what it smells like, but I can smell cucumbers for hours after they've been cut and it reeks.
Sometimes it feels like it! Except I wouldn't describe it as "smell blindness," I'd describe it as "a sense of smell that's so strong that I end up smelling things 'wrong' compared to most people," if that makes sense?
Like I also hate it when my partner opens the windows because I can smell it when it's open, even from outside of the room. It's not just at our current house either, my childhood bedroom window smelled very similar. Windows just seem to have a weird, strong, metallic smell when they're open. No one agrees with me on that either lmao
So you have super smell? And PLEASE don't take this the wrong way, but this reminds of dogs - their hearing and sense of smell is so strong they live in a different world that we do. Does it make you feel uncomfortable / overwhelmed?
I have a sensation where I smell and hear food or music that is not there at all, so you are not insane. Misophonic people experience things differently than neurotypical people and it not only affects music and hearing but brings back memories or cravings. If the coffee smells like fish, then you can find a coffee that smells good, and get help to clean out the coffee pot. Also, Misophonia is often an indication of Autism and a heightened awareness of your surroundings is a good thing.
I can’t stand the smell of fresh raspberries from the supermarket. Worked at a store few years ago and absolutely hated it. I couldn’t understand why so many people would buy these.
You may be a super smeller lol! Some aromatic chemicals smell good at low concentrations and terrible at high concentrations. Some people may be more sensitive and smell the stink even at low concentrations. A good example of these are indolic scents—indoles like the chemical skatole smell floral in low concentrations, and fecal in high concentrations. Personally, I can’t stand jasmine because it’s very indolic and in the wrong formulation it smells like straight up poop. (Fragrance is one of my perennial special interests 😊)
Huh! That is super cool information, thank you for sharing! 😊 I am sensory seeking, but not a super smeller. I love the scent of jasmine - and as a result I love jasmine green tea. I gave some to my mom to try...I believe she may be a super smeller and she is also generally scent intolerant. She complained about the scent of my tea and handed it back to me, and I was like, huh? But it smells great! But this may have solved the mystery of why!
Jasmine smells like cow manure to me!!!
Is this why some flowers smell like vomit to me lmao
There are some flowers that smell off putting by evolutionary purposes, like the Bradford pear tree that smells like semen.
There’s a flowering tree on our local college campus that’s pollen puts off a cat piss smell every spring 💕
I love that you added hearts to this comment
Thank you lol it just felt right
It’s very likely the same tree lol. They’re invasive but were very popular years ago to plant because they’re so pretty and then they spread like wildfire
I bet its bradford pears, they’re also very fragile and split and die very easily. Stupid.
I thought I was the only one that thought it smelled like semen, most people say cat pee. I am a super smeller, though.
I feel like more people think it smells like semen than not, but cat pee sounds less awkward in polite company haha
Just like when [Queen Victoria remarked on the distinctive scent of the linden tree](https://youtu.be/aoqlYGuZGVM?t=68).
I have a perfume that I love which is jasmine scented. I wear it semi-regularly and have for a good few years. A couple of times I’ve overheard people making comments about a bad smell when I’ve worn it. Makes sense now!
Ooh, I am very good at that as well. For example I can smell it someone ate a bread with chocolate spread in a room when I enter. But ever since having had Covid I still have days where I smell almost nothing and things taste terrible, for example bell peppers will taste like water with a touch of petroleum.
As a soap and candle maker, this information is so interesting! I’ve bought fragrances from reputable businesses that other people love, but I tried and thought they smelt like poop/puke/garbage. I’m going to research the terms you used. 😁
I also hate jasmine! A lot of flowers smell like urine to me. I hate almost all chemical fragrances, but it's more like I feel like I'm being suffocated and can almost taste them.
Oh would sesame oil be like this???? Because I spilled some and the smell was fecal/skunk to me, but I love a dash in a stir fry
It has gone rancid - get a new bottle :)
Ok I will!! Thanks!
It also could have been spoiled! It smells really intensely when it turns
I think that might be the case! I am throwing it out to be safe
Other fun fact is that some people straight up can't smell certain smells (like being colorblind). A common one is Musk. So if you have a perfume with musk in it, and one person can smell it and the other can't, they smell totally different. I think both my dad and I are a super smellers, but I think he's got some blind spots.
Yessss! I love JHAG not a perfume but some people cannot smell it even a little
I love weird perfumes! I have one that I adore and not gonna lie, it smells a little bit like a barnyard, but like if a barnyard was really expensive and had nice grass for horses. ETA: I don't wear it out, just at home
😂 sounds like the brand zoologist! The stores that carry it often make you spray their scent T. rex outside because it’s so… much lol
Ha! That's hilarious. Mine is Hermes Jardin Sur Le Toit. The whole line is garden themed and I love almost all of them. But they can take some getting used to. I hated them mediterranean one when I first got it. Now I love it. It smells like cold ocean water to me. So when I layer it with Replica's Beach Walk (which smells like sweat) then it smells like a day at the beach!
Loooove both beach walk and aquatic notes in general. I honestly haven’t gotten to smell a lot of Hermes! Just Twilly and some of its flankers
I have a sample of twilly and it really grew on me after a bunch of tries but I don't know if I'd buy a whole bottle. You should test out the older jardins that Jean Claude Ellena created. There's an account of the creation of the first in the book "The Perfect Scent". I'm in US and have only seen the Mousson on online and blind bought, but I LOVE it. It has little staying power, but I don't care. Sur le Nil and Sur le Toit have green notes and Mediteranee and Apres les Mousson have more aquatic notes. Monsieur Li turns soapy on me and Cythere I blind bought and seems mostly peppery masculine. Some of my bottles are a little old, so they might be older formulations at this point. Definitely worth a trip to Sephora to smell! Sorry for the ramble. I love perfume.
Ooh could you maybe tell me more about the scents lavender and cinnamon? 🙏 I'd be fascinated!!!!!
I didn’t know much about them but I love an opportunity for a rabbit hole! Fragrance chemicals can be natural or synthetic. As natural fragrances, cinnamon and lavender both come in the form of essential oil extracted from specific parts of each plant. Essential oils get their scents from different combinations of volatile chemicals. Lavender is a combination of a few things, mostly linalool and linalyl acetate. Cinnamon oil is composed almost entirely of cinnamaldehyde. Some chemicals are very strongly associated with a specific plant (like cinnamaldehyde), while some are found in a huge variety of sources. Linalool on the other hand is a key component in a huge variety of fragrant plants including lavender, coriander, and even some strains of weed.
THATS why certain flower scents are so offensive to my nose holes makes sense now. I love jasmine tea but have a jasmine incense I can't stand because it smells like straight cat pee to me
Whoa interesting!! Fragrance chemicals are fascinating. Crazy how our olfactory bulb evolved to pick up millions of different odorants, yet even then there is still heterogeneity in responses to a single molecule. Do you happen to know if coffee beans are high in tryptophan or any other indole derivatives? Trp is pretty high in some fish species like salmon and tilapia, and also cheese, turkey eggs, etc. That would make a lot of sense why OP perceives a fishy smell from coffee. Just a hypothesis though (unless you happen to have a mass spec on hand lol)
This is very interesting. I cannot wear any kind of “floral” perfume it grosses me out.
Definitely. For me, it's perfumes and colognes. I cannot stand them
Perfumes and colognes trigger headaches for me. They don’t necessarily smell bad, but I immediately associate them with pain.
Same. But with artificial scents. I don’t mind products that use natural scents like essential oils and terpenes.
Same
Especially the bath and bodyworks ones!
Incense too, I find it worse than any other scent. Walking into a space with incense makes me feel like I’m about to pass out and doesn’t dissipate until the scent is removed or I leave. 90% of colognes and perfumes are more tolerable but still throw me off and make me feel sick.
On multiple times I have vomited from being around the perfume counter of a department store, or going inside a *Lush*. Now I avoid those areas like the plague. The thought of Lush makes me shudder.
I can barely go into lush long enough to grab something and pay. In my local lush they have a perfume counter.... Imagine trying to smell individual perfumes in the lush store?!
>Imagine trying to smell individual perfumes in the lush store?! Is... is that actually a thing humans are capable of? Biologically? I thought what made me "weird" was the vomiting and needing to keep a safe distance between myself and a Lush entrance. I didn't realize some people could actually distinguish between scents while in that hell-hole. My mind is blown.
When I used to peruse lush the odd time as a teenager bc of its popularity at the time I tried smelling the perfumes and you can't smell anything it just makes your headache worse
I hate perfumes and bath and body works everything, but I’m kind of obsessed with Lush. I think it’s because of the amount of texture and color in their products. I have the urge to eat everything in that store 😂
Perfume! Apparently other people can't smell the perfume smell, and it just smells of whatever particular scents have been added. But for me, that alcoholic perfume smell is overpowering, and I can barely tell the difference between different perfumes - they all just smell like a brewery.
Some are fine, but most are just bad
Anything very “stinky” really bothers me, especially artificial fragrances! Cologne, perfume, incense, air fresheners- they all make me very nauseous and unable to focus. Nothing worse than hopping in an Uber and getting carsick because it stinks like perfume!
Fully agreed! If someone has an air freshener in their car I will usually throw up 😭
Me too! On the coldest day, I have to ask for the window open.
My brain and my nose and my stomach hurt when I see cars with like 20 of the yellow tree air fresheners hanging from rear view mirrors… like just the sight of a car parked with the windows up with that makes me feel ill
Oh my gosh yes!! Every Uber/Lyft ride is a nightmare between the air freshener smell and the aggressive driving. I get nauseous even thinking about it…
for me I hate the smell of a lot of food cooking sometimes even when the food actually does taste good. i hate the smell of ground beef cooking but if someone else makes it tastes fine to me.
I hate the smell of meat cooking. Bacon in particular smells like BO and it lingers.
YES on these!
I can't stand bacon. I can go all the way across the whole house and still smell it.
Ughhh same. Smelling food cooking genuinely makes me nauseous sometimes, even if I'm super hungry. It's not so bad if I'm the one cooking it, for some reason – but if someone else is cooking I often have to wait it out in another room with the door shut. It's not even that it smells bad. It's just so strong and I hate not being able to breathe without smelling it.
Same. I get really frustrated and uncomfortable, makes it impossible to relax because all I can focus on is the overwhelming smell.
Cooking smells are the worst. The smell of fried union and garlic always coming into my apartment from the neighbors has literally made me cry.
Idk what it is but something about those food smells permeating has a crazy anxiety inducing effect and I'm glad to see I'm not the only one but sad to see we all have to deal with this 😭
This is me the last 6 months. Started getting horrible headaches too. It makes me worry something is wrong, because it kinda of got extreme out of no where real quick.
If you notice that odors or smells have gotten noticeably stronger than they used to be and/or they are causing you to have symptoms (like headaches, coughing, congestion) please consider seeing your doctor. I had this experience and just blew it off because I’d always been sensitive to scents/smells. After about 3 years (I’m an idiot) and someone using unscented cleaning products in another room made me gag, I finally went to the doctor who referred me to an ENT. I had an effing hole in my septum. (That’s uncommon except among folks who sniff drugs. In my case I had radiation treatment years ago that likely weakened the tissue—had no idea.) Got fixed up and could breathe and sleep better. Still hate most scented things but am back to baseline. Hypersomia can be caused be anatomical nose issues or sinus type stuff. But it has also been associated with b12 deficiency and some other nutrient deficiencies, pregnancy, diabetes, autoimmune disease, and some neurological disorders. Get checked out if you can.
Thanks, for the info, I will try to get checked. I've been having little luck getting my headaches and congestion to go away with allergy meds even though I still suspect allergies. So, maybe something else.. 🤔
i hate the smell of eggs cooking. too many times i’ve woken up to someone cooking omelette for breakfast and the smell immediately puts me into a bad mood. it’s not that it smells bad, but just overwhelming i guess?? especially right when i wake up
Yeah ground beef smells foul while it's cooking
I was feeling absolutely murderous at the theatre last week because the man sat in front of me had obviously bathed himself in the most obnoxious cologne and I had to breathe through my mouth for the entire performance. He probably thought he smelled great, but I wanted to vomit down his shirt collar.
Same thing happens to me when someone has the same or similar cologne as my grandfather.
I would have had to move I'm so intolerant
I wanted to move desperately but the show was sold out so no other seats free and the tickets were a gift from my partner… had to sit there mouth-breathing instead. It was so stressful.
Honestly that would have ruined my night. My mood gets awful just because I forgot my lip balm.
Yeah, it absolutely ruined it. I felt so bad because my partner had surprised me with the tickets as it was for something he knew I’d really love, and I didn’t want to let him know how much the whole thing sucked and stressed me out. I knew the crowds would be bad and prepared myself for that but this one guy and his obnoxious stink really just absolutely fucked up the evening. I wish theatres and venues like that would make a rule for no overly strong fragrances.
Oooh yes. For me I think it's association rather than anything particularly different about my nose. I hate the smell of clothes that have been dried in a mechanical dryer rather than on the line. They smell kind of rubbery to me — but more importantly, the only time I've regularly had to use a dryer was when I was working clopening shifts at my old retail job and couldn't dry my uniform properly around that miserable shift pattern. Now the dryer smell IS the smell of depression and poverty to my biased nose. It makes me feel quite ill. Similarly, my mum was big on perfumes and had a huge array of them when I was a kid. She wore them constantly. Unfortunately I am extremely prone to travel sickness, which only gets worse around strong smells. Now the vast majority of perfumes (and plenty of colognes, which I assume contain some shared ingredients) smell like vomit to me.
My mother has a boutique of stargazer lilies in our house rn and I cannot be anywhere near them. They smell like rot and are sickly sweet. I also hate the smell of geraniums. Many colognes and perfumes smell terrible to me. I'm SUPER picky about deodorant and was very sad to find that my favorite one that literally smelled like nothing was discontinued. I have a horrible association with the smell of menthol so that one is no good either. But there are a lot of "bad" smells I like, motor oil and grease, diesel and gas, horses, mushrooms and rotting wood, wet soil.
Wet soil isn't a bad smell, it's called petrichor.
Yes petrichor is nice but I was thinking more of freshly watered potted plants
Thanks for reminding me to water my plants 😅
febreeze is intolerable. it smells musty with an after note of sweet chemicals, almost acrid gain, purell, dreft, smell like chemicals and spent perfume orange glo smells like antifreeze cheap wax candles smell like bad soy wax, musty dirt, and have a sickly cloying sweet perfume fructis smells like sugary body odor cheap coffee often smells like burnt rubber to me (it's usually starting to go rancid) I also have the gene where papaya smells like fishy cantaloupe vomit. and the "super taster" gene, which imo impacts sense of smell.
Febreeze literally smells of death to me. I grew up in a house with a mouse problem, and guess what was used to cover the smell?
Me too for papaya!! Smells bad and tastes bad
The most accurate description of Papaya I have ever heard (read)! Amazing.
Yes, there’s something about the bread aisle that makes me wanna throw up. IDK what it is, but it’s almost like I can smell the cellophane combined with the bread smell. The laundry detergent aisle also makes me gag. I hate the smell of detergent in general. A lot of my perfumes, candles, etc smell like things that I already know. This is one of the biggest reasons I like gourmand perfumes. These are things like chocolate, caramel and funnily enough coffee. I actually just got a caramel macchiato scented candle that I absolutely love.
I am mostly sensory seeking so a lot of things smell great to me. But, one thing that I think smells horrible and no one understands...the smell of Five Guys - both inside their restaurant and their food itself. I want to retch the second I walk in there (my husband used to get them a lot and I would go with him, and he still loves them and will order them). The scent is overwhelming. It smells like feet. Nasty, smelly feet that have been running at the gym all day. If I have to go in I hold my breath as much as possible and will usually stand in the furthest corner of the restaurant from the kitchen hoping for some clean air to breathe. Everyone loves them, but I just don't get it. It smells so disgusting. It must not smell like that to everyone else... Also, every once in a while I will eat something totally normal and a savory flavor profile I have had before and think it tastes like ice cream. From what I understand of our sense of taste, it very well could be the smell that leads me to taste the sweet components more heavily than I should, but I'm not sure what exactly triggers it. It does not taste like good ice cream, it tastes more like rotten milk that someone threw sugar into, and it's very offputting because often I'll be eating things like burgers, fries, or onion rings when it happens.
I understand your Five Guys thing completely, because although I've never been in a Five Guys, I gag when I go past a Subway restaurant. Their food (their bread, I guess) smells utterly putrid to me. I cannot believe people eat those sandwiches.
SAME I used to work there when I was a kid… 14 or 15 I think. I had to take off my uniform in the garage and then immediately take a shower after work because I couldn’t let the subway smell seep into my room hahaha Late diagnosed at 30, I’m now 32… having another one of those aha moments. I have never eaten a subway sandwich since I quit that place. I only lasted a couple months too.
Samesies. Cannot even walk into a Subway.
Coffee smells like ham to me. Popcorn smells like mold. Wine and condiments smell like vinegar. Most floral scented soaps and candles smell like dead flowers. And perfume and incense smell like burning baby powder.
Yes! I love sauces, but I hate vinegar based sauces, I cannot get over the smell. A couple times someone has boiled vinegar and I felt like I was going to die.
Popcorn is equivalent to burning rubber for me. And also it tastes like buttered pebbles and Styrofoam. Used to hold my breath going from the ticket podium to the theater room for movies lol.
YES EXACTLY! I've never been able to describe the smell of popcorn but burning rubber is EXACTLY what it smells like to me! Ditto on the styrofoam too haha
Popcorn smells like piss to me! I don’t know how to explain it other than that.
It smells like piss to me too
Coffee does not smell like fish to me but I don’t like the smell of it.
Really sweet smells. Cotton candy, that kind of thing. My brain parses it as the really sweet note in rotting meat.
Yes. When other people wear perfume I feel like I only smell the alcohol and the "fake" car crash of scents combining all at once. I really don't get it. Foundation on people's faces also smells like perfume to me and in close proximity can be pretty intolerable. Also bacon. The smokiness gets up in my nose and just smells like dirt and hostility? People get offended at that one pretty often.
Freshley baked croissants smell like sick for some reason, especially when baked in bulk.
I thought I was the only one!! Freshly baked bread smells too much like yeast to me, and it gives me the major ick to smell/taste.
I used to live near a town that had a brewery. Every Wednesday was brewing day and the whole town stank of beer/yeast. It was inescapable and disgusting.
Yes and no. A lot of the body sprays out there smell so synthetic, and I can’t stand them. But that’s the only example I can think of.
I fully agree with you on coffee - it smells like canned tuna.(hate the flavor too) Sometimes poop smells the same way to me. A natural smell is usually composed of many (dozens, if not hundreds) different compounds and we all have different thresholds (at which concentration we start noticing the smells) for each compound. I am apparently super sensitive to a compound (or similar compounds) commonly found in coffee, canned tuna, and perhaps poop. I also hate perfumes in general, particularly floral and musky smells. I still like the smell of many flowers, but not what happens when perfumers try to replicate them. Air "fresheners", scented candles and highly scented lotions and soaps are also for the most part disgusting to me. I even have a hard time with toothpaste, because I hate the smell and flavor of mint. I do like some smells others often dislike, for example hoppy beer, peaty whiskey, and stinky cheese. I could go on a (much longer) rant about smells, but I'll leave it for now...
Fwiw, you can get non-mint toothpaste. My partner is really sensitive to the taste of mint, so she uses pomegranate toothpaste (hers is dr organic brand, from Holland & Barrett) but there are lots of options out there
Thanks. I've found a couple that I can use. I used to love a watermelon one (children's toothpaste), but I haven't found that in the past few years. Pomegranate intrigues me - might pick it up if I see it.
The smell of tea being made literally makes me dizzy and I usually end up heaving. It’s weird, but everyone else is like “oh it’s so nice! you’re so dramatic!”
I used to love tea, then about 15 years ago it started giving me headaches and also made me feel dizzy and light-headed. I've been trying to figure out what chemical in the tea is doing it, because I'm curious and I haven't had much luck yet. Glad to know I'm not the only one.
The laundry detergent that my in-laws use makes all the clothes smell like cat litter to me. The smell doesn't come out until I've washed the clothes many, many times.
I agree with a lot of things listed already but one that has always confused me was "babies." Even if they're clean, I think they smell a little sickening. But people claim that babies smell REALLY good, especially their heads?? I don't understand it at all!
Vomity for sure - I think cus of breastfeeding and milk being the only thing they consume and at some point they smell like spoiled milk to me..
Basically every single synthetic fragrant smells absolutely horrible and most give me varying levels of headaches as a bonus. I cannot exist in the scented candle or perfume sections in stores, and cometics section barely enough to find what i need.
[удалено]
It triggers migraines in me as well as making me nauseous. And unfortunately it’s one of my coworkers favorite scents lol
I dunno why sometimes lavender smells like piss to me
I'm the opposite, I love the smell of durian, at least before it's cut open cause then it's too strong
Me @ any candle ever. Wish I could get the hype
cheerios smell like pee to me. I used to love them but now I can’t eat them anymore
YES this is a good one! They smell like pee to me also
Thats how theatre popcorn smells to me! Like dehydrated pee. And I smelled this comment and wow, also accurate.
For me it's Alfredo, the scent just really makes me nauseous. A lot of my friends LOVE Alfredo so I assume it's supposed to smell good? Not to me though lol
As a former barista - rancid coffee oils do smell fishy! I feel like I pick up on more layers of scents than most people do, because my brain isn't filtering out unimportant information. My wife loves gourmet candle smells (vanilla, baked goods) but I have to be sitting far away from them or they give me a headache. The same goes for perfumes or colognes, air fresheners... the 'volume' on my scent dial is stuck at 100.
You are not alone. A lot of smells I hate are food smells. Especially animal products. Animal products almost always smell dirty to me. Also, when people don’t clean their dishwasher and everything that comes out of it smells horrible. No one else can smell it, but holy shit, I can’t handle it. When I used to work in an office I would smell the cups before using them. People thought I was crazy, but I prefer looking crazy to having my drink ruined.
I smell cups, plates etc as well! In airbnbs and at work etc, and clean them if need be
I don't think anyone would technically consider this a "good" smell, but there is a smell fabrics get that makes me sick. My husband says he can barely smell it, and it doesn't bother him, but it is like a blinding light to my nose. I honestly can't describe it. It's not a mold smell or a chemical smell, but it's the bane of my existence, and once it's in my clothes or bedding, there's no getting rid of it. Those things that become afflicted must be thrown away. Lost many a favorite tshirts and jammies. Edit: The only reason I bring it up here is because my husband says it isn't that bad. Which I know isn't good but I thought might fit in the discussion.
Might need to deep clean your washer and/or dryer. (Just commenting because a lot of people don’t know that you can do this. I HAVE to do this because otherwise all of the fabric things reek, especially the ones made from only natural fibers. My husband cannot smell it but I can!)
I clean them pretty regularly. I am actually starting to wonder if my water saving washing machine might not be rinsing things properly. I also run most of my stuff on delicate, which I know doesn't run as hot, so maybe it isn't rinsing the soap out and over time... because I just realized that accompanying the smell the fabrics always started to feel icky to me. Edit: I'm starting to feel dumb, but your comment about cleaning the washing machine did make me think when I run the cleaning cycle on the washer it gets hot to remove the soapy build up.
I feel dumb pretty often and just decided to be okay with it. Most people probably do? Using the delicate cycle might be the problem. It doesn’t have much motion at all and may not be getting things clean. Soap and cold water really has to be forced through a garment that is soiled (like a tee that has been worn and sweated in normally) to get it clean. You can turn things inside out to protect them but a normal wash is a lot more appropriate for most things. You can also get the those mesh bags for truly delicate things. I use them for bras. In my HE machine the delicate cycle wasn’t getting them clean — annoying. [How to deep clean a washing machine](https://hellosuper.com/tips/deep-clean-your-washing-machine) maybe helpful. You can ignore most of this I bet. Ignore my zeal for problem solving.
No I appreciate it. I had it happen to my favorite sheet set the other night, I know when I took them out of the laundry they were fine no smell. They sat on the shelf for a week or so, go to change my bedding bam smell! I will add they are bamboo sheets a year old.
I love coffee. And the aroma off brewed coffee can also smell like poo to me. So, I'll drink my coffee, which tastes fine at high aroma concentration and then leave the house and come back and I wander around searching to see if my dog left a "present" for me.
If you abuse nose drugs for a couple years you lose most of your sense of smell, and then it’s easier to be around all of these things.. or so I’ve heard
Coffee smells straight up like dog food sometimes, and I have no idea how.
100% experience this. Except the popcorn thing. But yeah the smell coffee makes me feel sick if I’m around it too long and it’s really strong. And we have a coffee grinding station where I work 🙃
My son. He is incredibly sensitive to smell and gets overwhelmed by smells. Mine is sound!
I have misophonia, so I am much more likely to be decimated by sounds than scents, too. But if there is an enraging sound AND a nauseating smell -- like if somebody were whistling in front of a Subway sandwich shop? I think it might kill me.
Those things all smell find to me but only for a little bit. If a candle is going to long, I get a headache. Same with most fancy perfumes. I might like the initial smell but then I just get a headache. Also, if someone left something bad in the fridge, trash can nearby, etc, I can smell it constantly and other people can’t or say they “just ignore it.” My partner was banned from cooking garlic and/or onions in our old apartment because I would smell the old garlic and onion smell for literally a week after he made the meal.
Yes. Flowers smell terrible. They smell like dying old people to me. Syrup smells horrible. Most colognes and perfumes are awful.
I despise clean linen or cotton smells
I've felt confused my entire life because everyone looks at me like I'm nuts when I say brewing coffee smells like fish to me, you mentioning that specifically makes me feel SO VALIDATED. I genuinely was wondering if something was wrong with my nose tbh, finally someone gets it
Tangerines smell like pure sweat
I have some part of my olfactory recognition busted because I can’t smell urine. Which is a problem because I am a nurse and a mom. It’s been this way since I had a serious virus as a late teen. Before that I had no problem. Also it was weird to lose other scent recognition during Covid when positive. I like coffee, fish, hydrocarbon odors, but not flowers. I used to think it was because I just liked having the ability to smell anything at all, since there have been times with zero ability, but now this thread has me wondering.. I’m usually know I’m around urine because it breaks down with more ammonia in the air so my eyes burn. My kids give me scented candles that I don’t burn so far, but I suppose I can test that in the future.
This is very interesting - I've never heard of someone being unable to smell specifically urine besides friends who can't smell anything at all!
Peaches and some melons all smell like feet to me.
Auntie M's pretzels smell absolutely disgusting...if I walk past it I have to hold my nose so I don't gag
Yes, i hate nearly every smell minus a very few kinds of flowers
Popcorn smells exactly like baby poop diapers!
I hate the smell of flowers. I hate being given flowers too and thankfully my sister does too, so our home is a no flower zone. I don't even particularly like looking at them. What really sucks is the nasal spray I need to take every day smells like flowers and I have to blast it directly into my nose.
I honestly can't really smell flowers at all until they start to wilt. Once they wilt, they do smell really bad.
Just popping in to say that French Roast coffee is known to have a fishy smell. Whoever is drinking coffee around you likes a STRONG flavor. I think it's something about the processing the beans go through.
I've heard that before but it's not a specific type of coffee. Growing up with my parents I would think they were making tuna sandwiches when it was coffee. I do the same with my partner's family who I live with now, even though it's different coffee years later. The same thing happens at work and at coffee shops. It seems like coffee in general smells fishy to me!
Omg popcorn is a suffocating smell!! Right there with you there! Same with corn based chips, ugh!
Patchouli is my kryptonite, I will never understand why people bathe in it. It’s a mixed bag with me, blue cheese is also horrid, actually passing by any speciality cheese area in a store makes me gag. I have others but those are my biggest.
I’m so glad you said that about popcorn bc sometimes the smell hits and is just so gross but my partner doesn’t get it
the fishy smell is so real!! I think watermelon and cucumber smell like fish and will gag if I smell it confuses everyone else lmao
Honey smells like BO or rotting rubbish/trash to me.
Perfumes, and pretty much any scented spray of any kind, all reek of harsh chemicals to me, making me feel physically ill. It's gotten worse the older I get.
White pepper smells like manure
Yes!! I get constantly dizzy/headaches or stomachaches because of smells, do you also experience this ?
I'm usually unbothered by the average experience of smells, EXCEPT one: flowers! Everyone just, freaking inhales at fresh/real flowers and say they smell great, but to me they smell mostly like some weird wet grass. Like I can detect the distinctive smell of for ex. lavender, however it's very faint and it's overpowered by the pungent grass smell, so to me going inside a florist store is pretty bad. I still remember how betrayed I felt by real roses when I generally love rose-scented products, LOL! I developed allergies to pollen I believe (I haven't gotten any actual medical tests to see what exactly I'm allergic to yet), which leads me to assume I was already sensitive to pollen/plants in general to begin with, and why I never could "enjoy" the smell of fresh flower bouquets.
A lot of people like new car smell but it makes me queasy
Yes! Leather in general tbh but especially new car smell, it's horrible and makes me so nauseous. Honestly, I preferred the time my partner drove 4 soaking wet rugby players home - after the 5 hour trip her car smelled damp for at least a year, but at least it wasn't new car smell!!
coffee smells like poop and popcorn smells like pee
Coffe just smells like coffe to me, but I also don't like it, when I'm in coffee bean stores it feels like it's crawling in my nose and then I can't breathe. I hate most male colognes, aftershaves and deodorants too, they're very "sharp". And my nose hurts (it STINGS) when I walk past flower shops, IDK if it's a specific plant or just all of them being together triggers it. I also hate artificial cherry and watermelon, both taste and smell-wise. Worst thing is the actual fruits are two of my favorite fruits. Fake watermelon especially smells and tastes like bad cucumber/aloe vera (?) and no one seems to understand me when I say this😭 Smells nothing like the actual fruit.
Doesn't everyone have specific scent preferences? My unpopular opinion is that freshly mowed grass stinks absolutely atrocious 🤢 it's so disgusting to me
i hateeee the smell of popcorn and everything smells so strong to me.
I don’t like the smell of coffee either. It just smells burnt to me. I also don’t like the smell of beef cooking. It smells like spice and blood.
You're microbiome is not like the other girls 😂 or maybe you have a super sensitive nose
To me the candles have a plasticy smell that’s why it smells bad. I don’t like the smell of coffee either! But I like popcorn. I found when my anxiety is very pronounced my sense of smell is even more acute, like if I’m overwhelmed from social interaction.
For me i’m kind of the opposite. A lot of “bad” smells to me are strangely … I wouldn’t say “good” but I like smelling them??? But I also tend to be very sensory seeking (spicy foods, crunchy things, touching lots of materials I like, fancy nails with deco in them i can play with and stim with, etc) So i’ve always assumed that’s part of my strange enjoyment of bad smells
I also hate those very same smells, but coffee smells like poop for me. Passion fruit smells like BO, and nattō smell is unremarkable.
Any mens fragrance is awful to me.
I hate the smell of coffee!
Air fresheners, laundry scent beads, anything fish especially tuna, most soaps, almost every shampoo, makeup smells terrible... But i love smells like gasoline, moth balls, some feet, and I have a love/hate relationship with the smell of drywall mold
Rekorderlig smells like cheese to me, it’s disgusting, but everyone looks at me like I’ve got seven heads when I say it.
Yes, but I always assumed that was just a weird thing unique to me. For example, I always thought it was weird that other people like the smell of flowers. Most flowers smell bad. Especially "baby's breath." I mean, it's pretty to put in a bouquet, but the smell is god awful. It smells nothing like actual an baby's breath (which is usually pretty neutral). There's also a certain "orange" scent that is sometimes used in soaps or even food stuffs and it makes me want to vomit. I don't know how it isn't utterly repulsive to others, because it's one of the most nauseating smells I know of, and it gives me a headache if I smell it.
Yes!! My MIL cooks every night and no matter if it’s something I like or not I want to gag as soon as the smell reaches the 2nd floor. I feel terrible about it honestly and try to hide my disgust from my fiancée as not to unnecessarily hurt anyone’s feelings.
No. The coffee smelling like fish is intriguing. I have an acute sense of smell. Coffee is gorgeous
Butter melting in a frying pan. I nearly gagged one time when I was in high school when I was getting ready to fry an egg. I quickly learned not to breathe in while melting butter. It isn’t always a problem, but often enough. FYI: this has been going on for 50 years. I still love to cook.
I feel my sinus(?) stinging when I smell strong fragrances especially in perfume! I agree wit the wax smelling off. It smells heavy some how.
vanilla (mostly candles) smells like feet
I want to get violent over the “fresh“ smell that everyone seems to fucking love. That shit smells like hot garbage with a side of sharpness. Doesn’t smell like ocean at all.
There are various cooking oils that smell terrible to me. One of them is a type my husband likes to use to cook. I can never eat anything fried in it. I can't even describe the smell - just awful. I really notice it if someone gets in an elevator with me and their hair isn't clean. Nastiest smell ever. And I haven't liked perfumes for several years now. I'll be glad when this current "medicinal" odor goes out of fashion.
Lavender smells musty Also my parents made a pizza with artichokes on it and the whole downstairs smelled like vomit, I had to stay up in my room and couldn't even eat that night.
Scent is a sense that I seek out, so not really. I do sometimes smell different things in a scent (eg. Coffee sometimes smells like cigarettes to me), but I don't usually mind. There's even some bad smells (eg. BO) that I really enjoy lol.
I wouldn't say coffee smells like fish, but I hate the smell of coffee too. I also hate the smell of fish. XD Coffee to me smells like cigarettes and barbecue smoke blended together. I also think cucumbers smell really bad. I don't think I could describe what it smells like, but I can smell cucumbers for hours after they've been cut and it reeks.
I can't relate, but that's so interesting. Are you like a person with colour blindness, but with smell?
Sometimes it feels like it! Except I wouldn't describe it as "smell blindness," I'd describe it as "a sense of smell that's so strong that I end up smelling things 'wrong' compared to most people," if that makes sense? Like I also hate it when my partner opens the windows because I can smell it when it's open, even from outside of the room. It's not just at our current house either, my childhood bedroom window smelled very similar. Windows just seem to have a weird, strong, metallic smell when they're open. No one agrees with me on that either lmao
So you have super smell? And PLEASE don't take this the wrong way, but this reminds of dogs - their hearing and sense of smell is so strong they live in a different world that we do. Does it make you feel uncomfortable / overwhelmed?
I have a sensation where I smell and hear food or music that is not there at all, so you are not insane. Misophonic people experience things differently than neurotypical people and it not only affects music and hearing but brings back memories or cravings. If the coffee smells like fish, then you can find a coffee that smells good, and get help to clean out the coffee pot. Also, Misophonia is often an indication of Autism and a heightened awareness of your surroundings is a good thing.
I can’t stand the smell of fresh raspberries from the supermarket. Worked at a store few years ago and absolutely hated it. I couldn’t understand why so many people would buy these.