Dear Editor,
With regard to Charles Hudson’s “odor complaint,” most odors, except for garlic and underarm odor, cannot be washed off.
They originate in the colon and gases from the colon find their way to your lungs and are then breathed into the room. These odors come from what we eat. Olfactory senses accommodate very quickly, so we don’t notice our own odors. “Ethnic odors” originate with diet.
Back in ancient times, when boys dated girls and took them out to dinner before movies or other entertainments, girls learned to “eat what he eats.” Then her breath would not be different from his.
In dealing with other cultures, the first activity is to eat with the “others,” as to not offend them. As we age, our digestive system fails to handle some foods and they move to the colon undigested. The bacteria there quickly decompose those foods making different gases: some that are characterized as “sewer gases.”
They also make large volumes of carbon dioxide that may provide a force to push those gases out from other than the lungs.
Robert W, Rasch, M.D., Ph.D., Professor Emeritus of Physiology

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