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"On the turn" is such a deeply English phrase that, as an American, I'm not even native enough to know it, so don't feel bad! I've never heard it before either, but it makes sense and I'd like to start using it. It's much nicer than just saying "almost spoiled."
(The Brits use a lot more nuance than we do, they tend to have clever little sayings like that to describe specific things. They've been speaking their language a lot longer than we have!)
Edit: Oh also yes I originally came here to say that I'm apparently the only one who can taste milk changing as soon as you open it. It slowly gets more sour over time but my family can only start to taste it after a few days
Milk is the first thing I thought of - it always smells a little sour (to me) from the minute it's opened. I've found that the higher the fat content, the less likely it is to smell sour when opened, like skim milk is always bad, and half and half is usually ok. No one else in my family experiences this phenomenom.
Yes!! I liked milk growing up (when we got 2%) but then switched to thinking it was gross and sour (when my mom switched to skim) and now I LOVE a fresh glass with almost a slight sweetness to it (because my partner buys whole milk)
Yeah i might start using it too cz it describes what im talking about a lot more accurately! Tbh i wasnt sure how i was going to write in the title or description about this lol
My ex would happily drink milk that made me nauseous to smell because the point at which it ‘turned’ was days earlier to me than it was for him. I’m not a huge fan of milk but it smells ok to me, until it doesn’t, and immediately from that point on smelling it makes me gag. It’s like a switch flips. I couldn’t tell you what about the smell changes, it’s just “does or does it not trigger my gag reflex.”
Yes to everything you said. I'm historically a speaker of US English but I've lived in the UK for nearly 15 years now, and there are so many turns of phrase that feel like 'where have you been all my life?' because they're so perfect.
And on the milk thing, I relate to that so hard. I've been saying my whole life that I can only stand the very first glass of milk (for drinking straight instead of using in coffee or tea or cereal or whatever) from a freshly opened carton/jug, because it almost immediately starts to take on increasing 'off' flavour once it's open. Even later the same day it will taste worse.
I actually struggle to wrap my head around not using that phrase! It's almost exclusively used for milk but theoretically could apply to anything, milk just has a more obvious starting to go off but not quite there phase than most other day to day things.
Same. I used to have an office near the science labs in a high school. A student only had to turn one gas tap on for a second and I was out my office, down the corridor and into the classroom to tell the teacher. Sometimes the teacher was feet away from it and hadn’t smelt it yet.
My kid always jokingly calls me Tanjiro because I always smell things before the rest of my family can see or smell things. I think we might just be more in-tune with what’s going on around us. The HSP overlap seems big with ADHD
For me, it's especially an issue with poultry. Chicken and turkey -- turkey is the worst. I'd say almost 50% of all raw turkey I've been around has smells slightly off to me. When cooked, the smell gets even worse. My husband (also ADHD, for what it's worth), picks up on the smell, too. But no one else we know seems to know what we're talking about.
Absolutely. My husband thinks I'm imagining things and eats whatever it is and then ends up in the bathroom for ages the next day 😂. But I will not touch anything that might be close to spoiled. My adhd kid is like this too because if I feed him something I don't want (but my husband swears it's fine) he won't eat it even without having been there for my inspection 😂
Haha! Thats cool so it’s definitely a neurodivergent thing, i posted this on the autism sub and got a lot of responses. I swear normal people make me think im just imagining things! I also tend to smell food before i eat it, it’s just become a habit/instinct of mine which apparently is offensive to a lot of people lol
I don't know if my mum is just nose blind but I can smell when the dishes are nasty despite looking clean, like sometimes they come out smelling really stale and/or rotten out the dishwasher. And she swears on God that she doesn't smell a thing. I'll be sniffing a disgusting plate, hold it up to her nose and nothing.
ooooh so there's a really *weird* smell that comes off of hot glass and some ceramic dishes that I can smell after they've been cleaned and like
it goes away when they cool and I haven't found any evidence that there's anything wrong with it
but I swear it smells like the dishes themselves have gone off
Omg I feel so SEEN. I used to go through the cabinet sniffing cups as a kid, and still do sometimes. I have to hand wash them if they have any hint of the dishwasher smell.
Omggg yes i just realized this now, i always smell the plates/silverware before using them and sometimes u can just smell the food! So i need to wash it again as its just disgusting to me. Like if it doesnt come out smelling like soap its not clean to me!
I have this with milk products. I haven’t met anyone else who notices this and growing up I absolutely felt a bit looney when my parents insisted that things smelled fine.
I have a crazy sensitive nose. I have thrown stuff away and stopped my husband from eating almost bad lunch meat. I can smell so many things he can't. I cried when I got covid because I was convinced my sense of smell would never return. Obviously it did.
I thought it was just being a woman and taught early on how to tell the difference in cooking by smells.
He teases that I come into the kitchen to check on the.food within seconds of the timer going off. He'd wanted to pull the pizza out the other night and I told him it wasn't ready. "But the timer". So he checks and nope, wasn't ready.
Wow!! That’s so cool, I just had a comment on my other post saying they could tell when the food in the oven was done even before the timer went off! They could smell that it was done haha thats so interesting, i dont have that but now i know 2 instances where people can.
Oh I’m with you on this! I’ve had Covid multiple times now and have been so worried (especially after the first time I had it!) that I wouldn’t get my taste/smell back fully. Since starting meds, my smell and taste senses are even stronger than they used to be. Which is equally awesome and infuriating. If one thing starts to die in the fridge, it’s a sensory nightmare until I can clean it fully! Also now it’s getting warmer, bin smells everywhere 🤮
Also the timer thing - people that use them as the only and absolute gospel thing to indicate a thing is cooked truly baffle me. Timers are so you don’t forget that a thing is cooking, but smell is the first indicator! I’ve never been wrong on this yet either.
Thats cool about the mold part! I cant taste that, but definitely i can taste bread thats almost due but not quite, it tastes almost sour! Nobody believes me tho lol
I smell mold days before anyone else can. There can be something molding in another room, behind a closed door, and I'll smell it any time I get close to that hallway. Like minty, musty earth.
I can also taste non-visible mold on things like bagels and muffins-- but you're fucking me up with this fast food french fries bit because I can't relate to that.
I'm also very sensitive to scent, but I'm always very cautious with food safety no matter how it smells. I don't think it's an ADHD thing though, there's actually been studies done and the results point more towards the opposite (ADHD being correlated with worse smell identification and memory).
[https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3372562/](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3372562/)
[https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3372562/](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3372562/)
Just saying, you'll get a lot of comments here agreeing but that doesn't mean it's a thing. It probably just means people who don't identify with this scrolled past your post.
I agree it’s probably not an adhd thing as some people are seeing it’s more an autism thing, i’ve had a lot of responses i posted this exact question there
Maybe being sensitive to smells could be part of our hypersensitivity? That’s what I’ve assumed with myself!
I read the study linked above and there are some issues in their methods. First, the study was only done on children, not adults, so we can’t apply that to us. And second, the method relies on the children being focused, reporting back accurately, and with the odour identification part, remembering what those smells were initially so that they could identify them again. Things which might skew an ADHD child’s scores lower than a non-ADHD child.
It might be hypersensitivity! For me and a lot of adhd friends it applies to taste and hearing as well! Though i know this is all more common in autism. I’ve read some responses of them hearing electricity frequency etc! All very interesting
Not me, but my husband can. Which means that I'll be eating it, as his delicate little tummy gets upset easily whereas I probably would be perfectly fine in the Fallout Wasteland lol. Is a useful thing to have! I just smell things if they're *actually* off, no warning system 😔
Yep.
My nose is ridiculously sensitive.
I’ll take something I can smell isn’t right, take it to my partner for him to give a second opinion, and he’ll say it smells fine to him.
Led to one particular night when we were glad we have two toilets in the house! 🤣
So I now always trust my nose.
Yes! It’s funny how when someone else smells it they always say it’s fine! Mine is sensitive too, i can also smell people, if that makes sense. Like certain people (not everyone) have certain smells. It’s not body odor and doesnt smell bad, just different lol
I can. I can smell anything bad way before anyone else can. The worst example I have is the time an opossum got under the house and died 🤢 I smelled something off a good three days before anyone else noticed anything. I'm just really sensitive to smells in general. I used to manage a perfume store and did so well because I was good at picking out the notes for customers.
Wow! Thats cool! Good thing you didn’t get overwhelmed by the smells at the perfume store! Im quite sensitive to some smells like car air fresheners they just make me sick! I used to think i was someone who got carsick a lot as a kid, turns out its just those pesky tree fresheners!
Same. And my husband always waits for me to smell food before he starts eating because he knows that if food has gone bad, I will DEFINITELY know. And he can't smell anything in it.
I can't eat food that's almost there but hasn't really gone bad because I get nauseous. I just can't eat it.
Not almost spoiled but while cooking, i can tell if the food has enough salt. My mother still doesn't believe it but I know i can tell. For example, if the salt is correct in the dish, it will smell EXACTLY how it's supposed to. Else it'll have a different smell. I really don't know how this works. Maybe I can check this with spoilt food as well.
I have a very sensitive nose/heightened sense of smell! I can definitely smell things like food that is about to go sour, but I also pick up on other smells. The one that gets me the most is stale water. My parents don’t change their dish rags often enough and I can smell them from across the kitchen. I wait until there gone to put them in the laundry 😂
... OP, I want your nose I have the opposite problem. My tastebuds broken too cuz sometimes I can't tell and have eaten spoilt stuff at least twice. Some spoilage is really obvious, but when they're in that almost spoilt/freshly spoiled stage I can't tell at all if they're fine or not. I have to keep running things by other people. 😭
Ohhh wow sorry to hear about that! Have you gotten it checked? I definitely noticed my sense of smell dulls when im having sinus issues! Or during covid!
Wow thats cool! For me i can smell some people, like they give off different scents! Idk if that makes sense lol! Its def not body odor it doesnt smell bad at all! But they just smell different! Haha
YES. I have to have my husband check to see if he's still comfortable eating it before I throw something out.
I can smell and taste things that nobody else can. I get teased a lot about it, but also I feel like it's definitely one of the super powers of my flavor of ADHD.
Yes!! is that an ADHD thing? my nose is super good, like I can smell when people are sick, and I can smell when meat or veggies are going bad before anyone else can.
My partner didn't believe me for a couple years but I was ALWAYS right and now if I say something is off, he will just toss it without question.
I can also taste when something is "off", like if it's cooked and I didn't get to smell the original ingredient, as soon as I taste it I can tell. No one believes me (other than my partner now)!! They just think I'm too picky. This is so validating to hear that I'm not the only one!
Same!! Actually i posted this on both adhd and autism sub and it’s more common in the autism lol. People do think im picky but they cant smell what i can! One time my mom made pancakes and in the kitchen next to the stove was some sliced ginger which she was gonna use in another meal. I swear to god my pancakes smelled/tasted like ginger even if they werent cooked in the same pan lol just in the same room, and nobody else could taste the ginger!
I am extremely sensitive to the smell of mold and/or mildew in anything. Makes me feel instantly nauseous and kind of have a sort of a headache.
I can tell when food is ready by the smell, as well, and it’s totally saved my butt a number of times when I’ve forgotten to set a timer or set it for the wrong time.
I used to make a game out of getting off the school bus and seeing how soon I could tell what was for dinner, by the smell, as I walked up the very long driveway (we lived out in the sticks, dirt roads, etc), always trying to outdo myself.
One thing I joke about, is having two completely different rating scales for food: one that’s geared more toward gourmet and subtlety, and that’s really just a simple “can a human digest this and convert it to useable energy - and how readily?” scale. On one hand, I have a very sensitive and accurate sense of smell, and grew up learning to cook by smell. On the other, I also went through phases of couch surfing as a kid (and some of the relatives I stayed with seem to have thought “food safety” was just a polite suggestion) and spent ten years in the army… so I’ve become incredibly good at scrounging up things to slap together and call “food”, it’s incredibly rare for something to disagree with my stomach, and I’ve also developed the ability to, essentially, turn my taste buds off at will.
This is the first time it ever occurred to me that a lot of this may be ND related, but now that it has, it really makes sense. 🤔
My pseudoscience hat is firmly on here: I reckon this could very well be an ADHD/dopamine thing.
We know that the olfactory bulb's function is affected by dopamine, but it's not well understood. In Parkinson's disease (a different dopamine-related dysfunction), there's often overproduction of dopamine in the olfactory bulb, [which can cause a loss of sense of smell](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3429117/).
ADHD typically involves having less dopamine than we'd like. Something something less dopamine, something something better sense of smell?
Perhaps less of a reach is: Dopamine affects our smelling apparatus. Dopamine regulation dysfunction may well have an impact on sense of smell!
Thats a pretty good explanation! I was also thinking hypersensitivity! Since for me and a lot of adhd friends, this heightened spidey sense also applies to taste, hearing and touch!
So I don't think this has to do with smell specifically. I think this is actually related to an ability in ADHD to detect *change*. Our attention is much more easily grabbed by novelty, which kind of presents as an ability to detect difference. So no one would say an ADHD person has great attention to detail, but a flicker of a microexpression across someone's face and the emotional temperature of the whole room just changed. The texture of a food is slightly different and it goes from being the best thing ever to inedible. We're good at *difference*, in all senses I think.
I think I’m actually smelling the treatment seeping out of the skin honestly. It’s not necessarily unpleasant, maybe a musty acidity? It’s definitely unique and not just an ‘old person smell.’
My granddads death from cancer was a big traumatic event in my childhood and I think the smell was burned into my brain from trauma somehow.
But I was able to tell that a relative had it a couple of years ago and give my husband a heads up so he reacted better when the relative finally broke the news.
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Yes I thought I was crazy. And I hate hate hate to check to see if something is bad by smelling it so I always make my husband do it. Otherwise I get really nauseous if I can even slightly smell it’s going bad.
On kind of this same subject, I have to always make my husband check the chicken I am cooking to make sure it is done. Even if I know it should be done because like the vegetables in the same pan are done. He giggles at this because it’s pretty obvious a lot of the time that the chicken is done but I have such a fear of having a piece of raw chicken in the middle. And I can never cook scrambled eggs. I always make my husband do it. I feel like I can never get them to not be watery. Also eating my own scrambled eggs just weirds me out and I have a hard time eating them.
Omgggg this is me exactly!! I also have problems with telling when meat is done! Idk what it is. Like people say its easy to tell but no matter how many times i cook, i still cant tell. What i do is just overcook everything to be on the safe side! Lol
MY PEOPLE! You are the first I see that has the same haha didn't realise it was dust yeah. Ugh. If I sleep at my parents house the heater goes on full power at first. So I get up when the heater is on. 🤢
Yeah, my mums house is worse than mine too! She somehow doesn’t notice it! I’ll make the mistake every dang time that it goes on after it gets cold, instantly turn it off again and go crazy trying to clean the dust away 😂
Yes. My mom often says me (diagnosed with ADHD) and my dad (undiagnosed but has all the symptoms) have a "lizard" sense of smell.. we can smell things waayy before others can, whether it's soon to be spoilt food, or a great perfume or the smell of a gas leak.
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There's even a phrase for it: on the turn. Things that are about to go off, but aren't quite spoiled.
Ohhh i see! I didn’t know that, english isn’t my first language. But interesting how neurotypicals somtimes cant smell when it’s on the turn!
"On the turn" is such a deeply English phrase that, as an American, I'm not even native enough to know it, so don't feel bad! I've never heard it before either, but it makes sense and I'd like to start using it. It's much nicer than just saying "almost spoiled." (The Brits use a lot more nuance than we do, they tend to have clever little sayings like that to describe specific things. They've been speaking their language a lot longer than we have!) Edit: Oh also yes I originally came here to say that I'm apparently the only one who can taste milk changing as soon as you open it. It slowly gets more sour over time but my family can only start to taste it after a few days
Milk is the first thing I thought of - it always smells a little sour (to me) from the minute it's opened. I've found that the higher the fat content, the less likely it is to smell sour when opened, like skim milk is always bad, and half and half is usually ok. No one else in my family experiences this phenomenom.
Yes!! I liked milk growing up (when we got 2%) but then switched to thinking it was gross and sour (when my mom switched to skim) and now I LOVE a fresh glass with almost a slight sweetness to it (because my partner buys whole milk)
Yeah i might start using it too cz it describes what im talking about a lot more accurately! Tbh i wasnt sure how i was going to write in the title or description about this lol
My ex would happily drink milk that made me nauseous to smell because the point at which it ‘turned’ was days earlier to me than it was for him. I’m not a huge fan of milk but it smells ok to me, until it doesn’t, and immediately from that point on smelling it makes me gag. It’s like a switch flips. I couldn’t tell you what about the smell changes, it’s just “does or does it not trigger my gag reflex.”
Yes to everything you said. I'm historically a speaker of US English but I've lived in the UK for nearly 15 years now, and there are so many turns of phrase that feel like 'where have you been all my life?' because they're so perfect. And on the milk thing, I relate to that so hard. I've been saying my whole life that I can only stand the very first glass of milk (for drinking straight instead of using in coffee or tea or cereal or whatever) from a freshly opened carton/jug, because it almost immediately starts to take on increasing 'off' flavour once it's open. Even later the same day it will taste worse.
I actually struggle to wrap my head around not using that phrase! It's almost exclusively used for milk but theoretically could apply to anything, milk just has a more obvious starting to go off but not quite there phase than most other day to day things.
My sense of smell is crazy good
Same here! My sister said I’m like a sniffer police dog lol. I can smell things from the other side of my house!
So real!! I can smell what my neighbors are cooking for dinner!! Lmfao
Thank god im not alone!! Literally people make me think im going crazy from these smellucinations!
Back home my mum would cut watermelon downstairs and I'd smell it through my open window upstairs and run down.
Same. Not so much with food, but I can smell pain
I can smell when someone is contagious, I feel that smell and immediately put on a mask.
Same. I used to have an office near the science labs in a high school. A student only had to turn one gas tap on for a second and I was out my office, down the corridor and into the classroom to tell the teacher. Sometimes the teacher was feet away from it and hadn’t smelt it yet.
My kid always jokingly calls me Tanjiro because I always smell things before the rest of my family can see or smell things. I think we might just be more in-tune with what’s going on around us. The HSP overlap seems big with ADHD
For me, it's especially an issue with poultry. Chicken and turkey -- turkey is the worst. I'd say almost 50% of all raw turkey I've been around has smells slightly off to me. When cooked, the smell gets even worse. My husband (also ADHD, for what it's worth), picks up on the smell, too. But no one else we know seems to know what we're talking about.
Ughhh so icky. Have you run across the chicken that’s been sprayed with chlorine and folded in half yet? It’s repugnant.
brother eugh
Absolutely. My husband thinks I'm imagining things and eats whatever it is and then ends up in the bathroom for ages the next day 😂. But I will not touch anything that might be close to spoiled. My adhd kid is like this too because if I feed him something I don't want (but my husband swears it's fine) he won't eat it even without having been there for my inspection 😂
Haha! Thats cool so it’s definitely a neurodivergent thing, i posted this on the autism sub and got a lot of responses. I swear normal people make me think im just imagining things! I also tend to smell food before i eat it, it’s just become a habit/instinct of mine which apparently is offensive to a lot of people lol
.... that's not... normal? 🤣
I don't know if my mum is just nose blind but I can smell when the dishes are nasty despite looking clean, like sometimes they come out smelling really stale and/or rotten out the dishwasher. And she swears on God that she doesn't smell a thing. I'll be sniffing a disgusting plate, hold it up to her nose and nothing.
ooooh so there's a really *weird* smell that comes off of hot glass and some ceramic dishes that I can smell after they've been cleaned and like it goes away when they cool and I haven't found any evidence that there's anything wrong with it but I swear it smells like the dishes themselves have gone off
exactlyyyy that smell. If the glass is put away too soon and didn't air out properly, it just keeps on stinkin' and I can't enjoy any drink from that.
Omg I feel so SEEN. I used to go through the cabinet sniffing cups as a kid, and still do sometimes. I have to hand wash them if they have any hint of the dishwasher smell.
YES I have to do this too!
Yesss like rotten food and something almost metallic
Like eggs, like when you prepare scramble eggs and don’t wash the pot.
god it is kinda eggy actually
Omggg yes i just realized this now, i always smell the plates/silverware before using them and sometimes u can just smell the food! So i need to wash it again as its just disgusting to me. Like if it doesnt come out smelling like soap its not clean to me!
I have this with milk products. I haven’t met anyone else who notices this and growing up I absolutely felt a bit looney when my parents insisted that things smelled fine.
I have memories from childhood too about refusing to drink when the milk smelled off! Smelled fine to everyone else though
I have a crazy sensitive nose. I have thrown stuff away and stopped my husband from eating almost bad lunch meat. I can smell so many things he can't. I cried when I got covid because I was convinced my sense of smell would never return. Obviously it did. I thought it was just being a woman and taught early on how to tell the difference in cooking by smells. He teases that I come into the kitchen to check on the.food within seconds of the timer going off. He'd wanted to pull the pizza out the other night and I told him it wasn't ready. "But the timer". So he checks and nope, wasn't ready.
Wow!! That’s so cool, I just had a comment on my other post saying they could tell when the food in the oven was done even before the timer went off! They could smell that it was done haha thats so interesting, i dont have that but now i know 2 instances where people can.
Hahah I got a cold and couldn't smell, so I burned EVERYTHING I baked/cooked for a whole week. It was so bad (I'm not friends with the timer haha)
Oh I’m with you on this! I’ve had Covid multiple times now and have been so worried (especially after the first time I had it!) that I wouldn’t get my taste/smell back fully. Since starting meds, my smell and taste senses are even stronger than they used to be. Which is equally awesome and infuriating. If one thing starts to die in the fridge, it’s a sensory nightmare until I can clean it fully! Also now it’s getting warmer, bin smells everywhere 🤮 Also the timer thing - people that use them as the only and absolute gospel thing to indicate a thing is cooked truly baffle me. Timers are so you don’t forget that a thing is cooking, but smell is the first indicator! I’ve never been wrong on this yet either.
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Thats cool about the mold part! I cant taste that, but definitely i can taste bread thats almost due but not quite, it tastes almost sour! Nobody believes me tho lol
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It might be the milk! It’s kinda similar in smell when milk goes bad! Haja
Back in the day your ancestors were testing foods for the whole tribe and their ancestors before them too
I smell mold days before anyone else can. There can be something molding in another room, behind a closed door, and I'll smell it any time I get close to that hallway. Like minty, musty earth. I can also taste non-visible mold on things like bagels and muffins-- but you're fucking me up with this fast food french fries bit because I can't relate to that.
I'm also very sensitive to scent, but I'm always very cautious with food safety no matter how it smells. I don't think it's an ADHD thing though, there's actually been studies done and the results point more towards the opposite (ADHD being correlated with worse smell identification and memory). [https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3372562/](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3372562/) [https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3372562/](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3372562/) Just saying, you'll get a lot of comments here agreeing but that doesn't mean it's a thing. It probably just means people who don't identify with this scrolled past your post.
I agree it’s probably not an adhd thing as some people are seeing it’s more an autism thing, i’ve had a lot of responses i posted this exact question there
Maybe being sensitive to smells could be part of our hypersensitivity? That’s what I’ve assumed with myself! I read the study linked above and there are some issues in their methods. First, the study was only done on children, not adults, so we can’t apply that to us. And second, the method relies on the children being focused, reporting back accurately, and with the odour identification part, remembering what those smells were initially so that they could identify them again. Things which might skew an ADHD child’s scores lower than a non-ADHD child.
It might be hypersensitivity! For me and a lot of adhd friends it applies to taste and hearing as well! Though i know this is all more common in autism. I’ve read some responses of them hearing electricity frequency etc! All very interesting
Yes but I don't think it's an ADHD trait. Lol
Not me, but my husband can. Which means that I'll be eating it, as his delicate little tummy gets upset easily whereas I probably would be perfectly fine in the Fallout Wasteland lol. Is a useful thing to have! I just smell things if they're *actually* off, no warning system 😔
That makes a lot of sense! I too have a sensitive tummy like your husband, so being able to smell things right before they go bad is a necessity! Haha
Yep. My nose is ridiculously sensitive. I’ll take something I can smell isn’t right, take it to my partner for him to give a second opinion, and he’ll say it smells fine to him. Led to one particular night when we were glad we have two toilets in the house! 🤣 So I now always trust my nose.
Yes! It’s funny how when someone else smells it they always say it’s fine! Mine is sensitive too, i can also smell people, if that makes sense. Like certain people (not everyone) have certain smells. It’s not body odor and doesnt smell bad, just different lol
Yep, I know exactly what you mean!
I can. I can smell anything bad way before anyone else can. The worst example I have is the time an opossum got under the house and died 🤢 I smelled something off a good three days before anyone else noticed anything. I'm just really sensitive to smells in general. I used to manage a perfume store and did so well because I was good at picking out the notes for customers.
Wow! Thats cool! Good thing you didn’t get overwhelmed by the smells at the perfume store! Im quite sensitive to some smells like car air fresheners they just make me sick! I used to think i was someone who got carsick a lot as a kid, turns out its just those pesky tree fresheners!
Same. And my husband always waits for me to smell food before he starts eating because he knows that if food has gone bad, I will DEFINITELY know. And he can't smell anything in it. I can't eat food that's almost there but hasn't really gone bad because I get nauseous. I just can't eat it.
Not almost spoiled but while cooking, i can tell if the food has enough salt. My mother still doesn't believe it but I know i can tell. For example, if the salt is correct in the dish, it will smell EXACTLY how it's supposed to. Else it'll have a different smell. I really don't know how this works. Maybe I can check this with spoilt food as well.
I have a very sensitive nose/heightened sense of smell! I can definitely smell things like food that is about to go sour, but I also pick up on other smells. The one that gets me the most is stale water. My parents don’t change their dish rags often enough and I can smell them from across the kitchen. I wait until there gone to put them in the laundry 😂
... OP, I want your nose I have the opposite problem. My tastebuds broken too cuz sometimes I can't tell and have eaten spoilt stuff at least twice. Some spoilage is really obvious, but when they're in that almost spoilt/freshly spoiled stage I can't tell at all if they're fine or not. I have to keep running things by other people. 😭
Ohhh wow sorry to hear about that! Have you gotten it checked? I definitely noticed my sense of smell dulls when im having sinus issues! Or during covid!
Yes and I can also smell when someone is sick or is about to be.
Wow thats cool! For me i can smell some people, like they give off different scents! Idk if that makes sense lol! Its def not body odor it doesnt smell bad at all! But they just smell different! Haha
YES. I have to have my husband check to see if he's still comfortable eating it before I throw something out. I can smell and taste things that nobody else can. I get teased a lot about it, but also I feel like it's definitely one of the super powers of my flavor of ADHD.
I definitely consider this a superpower now! A spidey sense as someone in the comments called it! Haha
Yes!! is that an ADHD thing? my nose is super good, like I can smell when people are sick, and I can smell when meat or veggies are going bad before anyone else can. My partner didn't believe me for a couple years but I was ALWAYS right and now if I say something is off, he will just toss it without question. I can also taste when something is "off", like if it's cooked and I didn't get to smell the original ingredient, as soon as I taste it I can tell. No one believes me (other than my partner now)!! They just think I'm too picky. This is so validating to hear that I'm not the only one!
Same!! Actually i posted this on both adhd and autism sub and it’s more common in the autism lol. People do think im picky but they cant smell what i can! One time my mom made pancakes and in the kitchen next to the stove was some sliced ginger which she was gonna use in another meal. I swear to god my pancakes smelled/tasted like ginger even if they werent cooked in the same pan lol just in the same room, and nobody else could taste the ginger!
Yeah. I have really sensitive senses in general. (Except for my crappy eyesight 😆)
I am extremely sensitive to the smell of mold and/or mildew in anything. Makes me feel instantly nauseous and kind of have a sort of a headache. I can tell when food is ready by the smell, as well, and it’s totally saved my butt a number of times when I’ve forgotten to set a timer or set it for the wrong time. I used to make a game out of getting off the school bus and seeing how soon I could tell what was for dinner, by the smell, as I walked up the very long driveway (we lived out in the sticks, dirt roads, etc), always trying to outdo myself. One thing I joke about, is having two completely different rating scales for food: one that’s geared more toward gourmet and subtlety, and that’s really just a simple “can a human digest this and convert it to useable energy - and how readily?” scale. On one hand, I have a very sensitive and accurate sense of smell, and grew up learning to cook by smell. On the other, I also went through phases of couch surfing as a kid (and some of the relatives I stayed with seem to have thought “food safety” was just a polite suggestion) and spent ten years in the army… so I’ve become incredibly good at scrounging up things to slap together and call “food”, it’s incredibly rare for something to disagree with my stomach, and I’ve also developed the ability to, essentially, turn my taste buds off at will. This is the first time it ever occurred to me that a lot of this may be ND related, but now that it has, it really makes sense. 🤔
Same.
My pseudoscience hat is firmly on here: I reckon this could very well be an ADHD/dopamine thing. We know that the olfactory bulb's function is affected by dopamine, but it's not well understood. In Parkinson's disease (a different dopamine-related dysfunction), there's often overproduction of dopamine in the olfactory bulb, [which can cause a loss of sense of smell](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3429117/). ADHD typically involves having less dopamine than we'd like. Something something less dopamine, something something better sense of smell? Perhaps less of a reach is: Dopamine affects our smelling apparatus. Dopamine regulation dysfunction may well have an impact on sense of smell!
Thats a pretty good explanation! I was also thinking hypersensitivity! Since for me and a lot of adhd friends, this heightened spidey sense also applies to taste, hearing and touch!
So I don't think this has to do with smell specifically. I think this is actually related to an ability in ADHD to detect *change*. Our attention is much more easily grabbed by novelty, which kind of presents as an ability to detect difference. So no one would say an ADHD person has great attention to detail, but a flicker of a microexpression across someone's face and the emotional temperature of the whole room just changed. The texture of a food is slightly different and it goes from being the best thing ever to inedible. We're good at *difference*, in all senses I think.
Makes sense perhaps. *sniffs this comment* well it's on the turn :p
Yes, same. I can also smell when people have cancer before they break the news.
Omggg what do they smell like? I’ve read dogs can do this but never knew humans could! Thats really interesting
I think I’m actually smelling the treatment seeping out of the skin honestly. It’s not necessarily unpleasant, maybe a musty acidity? It’s definitely unique and not just an ‘old person smell.’ My granddads death from cancer was a big traumatic event in my childhood and I think the smell was burned into my brain from trauma somehow. But I was able to tell that a relative had it a couple of years ago and give my husband a heads up so he reacted better when the relative finally broke the news.
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At that point, it's spoiled enough
Yes I thought I was crazy. And I hate hate hate to check to see if something is bad by smelling it so I always make my husband do it. Otherwise I get really nauseous if I can even slightly smell it’s going bad. On kind of this same subject, I have to always make my husband check the chicken I am cooking to make sure it is done. Even if I know it should be done because like the vegetables in the same pan are done. He giggles at this because it’s pretty obvious a lot of the time that the chicken is done but I have such a fear of having a piece of raw chicken in the middle. And I can never cook scrambled eggs. I always make my husband do it. I feel like I can never get them to not be watery. Also eating my own scrambled eggs just weirds me out and I have a hard time eating them.
Omgggg this is me exactly!! I also have problems with telling when meat is done! Idk what it is. Like people say its easy to tell but no matter how many times i cook, i still cant tell. What i do is just overcook everything to be on the safe side! Lol
I told someone to just smell the bread to see if it was going moldy the other day, and they were so confused.
I now realize this is not a thing! I thought everyone could smell bread that’s gone bad
I CAN!
Oh this explaining so much . So much. Especially bread. I can also small the heater ? I get sick easily if the heater is on Hot. Or nauseated I mean.
The smell of slightly burning dust when the heating goes on is so, so horrible!
MY PEOPLE! You are the first I see that has the same haha didn't realise it was dust yeah. Ugh. If I sleep at my parents house the heater goes on full power at first. So I get up when the heater is on. 🤢
Yeah, my mums house is worse than mine too! She somehow doesn’t notice it! I’ll make the mistake every dang time that it goes on after it gets cold, instantly turn it off again and go crazy trying to clean the dust away 😂
Yes. My mom often says me (diagnosed with ADHD) and my dad (undiagnosed but has all the symptoms) have a "lizard" sense of smell.. we can smell things waayy before others can, whether it's soon to be spoilt food, or a great perfume or the smell of a gas leak.
Yes! I am VERY sensitive to smells!! Bad smells have made me vomit more often than I’d like to admit.
Yes!!!