That’s Just Not Right

I joined a gym again.

I figured it was time to get the muscles all happy again, now that my leg has healed and I’m all better.

My new gym is next to a restaurant called Pollo Fuego. (Fire Chicken)

Pollo Fuego apparently likes to use a ton of onions in their food and it’s becoming clear that they start to cook them up around 10am. The air is redolent with the smell of those nasty bulbs. I now know that I MUST attend the gym and be finished, prior to 10 am. It’s a great motivator, actually. (if you are new here, I’m allergic to onions)

Today I got nice and sweaty and I felt really good, but I was redolent as well. And I smelled just like Pollo Fuego. Eww.. that’s not right. BO and the smell wafting from a restaurant shouldn’t smell similar. It confuses ones mind. What if I catch a whiff of myself and get hungry. Could this sweating thing become contradictory to my workout efforts? Will I have an allergic reaction to my own pits? I think it’s best not to dwell on this for too long. I did find this, however, so if you like to learn useless bits of info, take a look.

Researchers from a Swiss company called Firmenich asked 24 men and 25 women to go in a sauna or pedal on an exercise bike for 15 minutes, to collect armpit sweat. The  smells were then rated by “independent smell assessors.” (Wow, that must have been a fun job!) Of the two groups, the scientists agreed: Women had the more “unpleasant” smell.

The researchers also discovered why women’s sweat smelled like onions: The female sweat had ten times the level of an odorless sulfur-containing compound than men. It turns out that when this sulfur compound is mixed with bacteria under the arm, it creates a chemical called thiol—and this chemical is known for smelling like onions.

Men on the other hand, had increased levels of an odorless fatty acid, which gives off a cheesy smell once it mixes with the armpit bacteria. To find out why the bacteria influenced the odor of the sweat, the researchers performed sensory analysis on lab grown skin bacteria and found that men and women have a different bacterial make-up.