What Diseases Cause Body Odor?
QUESTION: What diseases do body odors reflect? ANSWER: Even your “closest friends” may not tell you that you smell bad, but they may try to avoid being close to you. Unpleasant body odors (bromhidrosis) can be due to poor personal hygiene, but foul breath is often a signal of an underlying health problem. Such breath often originates in the mouth as the result of infected teeth or gums, a coated tongue or dry mouth. These conditions usually can be corrected. Odor also can be a sign that there’s trouble in the respiratory tract (nose, throat, windpipe, lungs). Chronic bronchitis and sinusitis can produce malodorous breath, as can a lung abscess or infection. A less common culprit is the stomach. Foods such as raw onions, curry (or cumin), and garlic cause bad breath, not from the stomach, but from the lungs. After these foods are eaten, their enzymes are absorbed into the bloodstream and pass into the lungs from which they are expelled in the breath. Other possible sources of an unpleas
