Arun's overview on body odor and halitosis

Arun's new forum:

• http://breathandbodyodour.proboards.com/index.cgi
• http://breathandbodyodour.proboards.com/index.cgi?action=newestthreads

Thanks to Pharmacist and sufferer, Arun Nagrath, [the owner of the new Body Odor Support Forum since January 2009] for posting this on the http://groups.msn.com/bodyodorsupport/managementinformation.msnw for us all. Arun is well-known in the online halitosis/body odor community and has arranged many UK meetups and been involved in other innovative projects on the health issue. He helps manage the MSN body odor forum.

From his excellent introduction article on MSN body odor support, here is a quote as to his opinion on why many don't seem to be able to currently solve their problem.

…it does appear that many of us on these sites appear to have some hitherto unresearched disorders related to their metabolism. Having done some research myself in the past, I believe these are in fact enzyme disorders (yes, more than one!) which bear some similarities to Trimethylaminuria (Fish Odour Syndrome) in that they are systemic but they have yet to be documented. This means that they do not have a name yet!!

Believe me, this lack of research is not particularly surprising since these are rare enzyme disorders (and let me assure you that it is very difficult to research rare enzyme disorders which do not cause serious illness but only result in odour). Breath odour and body odour are pretty common conditions however there are some types of odour conditions which are pretty rare. For instance, faecal breath and body odour that can fill an entire room in a few minutes is likely to only occur in perhaps 1 in 10,000-50,000 people.

Unfortunately, these types of rare strong odour conditions are difficult to treat but some people have had some success by following unusual diets e.g. vegan diet, low choline diet etc combined with excluding indole-producing vegetables from the diet. They have combined such diets with the use of supplements such as probiotics, chlorophyll, and used low PH body washes etc. It is my belief that for the systemic variety (means passed round the body via the blood) of breath/ body odour, if you do not get the diet right then no amount of supplement or body wash will help since you are still getting high levels of smell-forming metabolites being produced from the diet...

http://groups.msn.com/bodyodorsupport/managementinformation.msnw

Please participate in Arun's survey questionnaire at http://www.tmau.shareaflat.net/ Survey now closed