I’ve been suffering from a particularly strong case of what we know to be PATM accompanied by an odor intermittently for the last 20 years.
This is my first post here after reading the forum for years. Sorry if it’s a bit lengthy but I’ve been waiting 20 years to talk about PATM.
I decided to finally reach out to the community and share my experience with this debilitating handicap.
Despite my efforts it doesn’t seem to be getting any better. Reaching out on here will help me process and accept what is happening with help from you. Myself and many others like me just try and deal with this in silence in hopes to find a cure one day with any further embarrassment of everyone else knowing.
1. Background
2. Symptoms/observation & remedies
3. Conclusion
1. Background
I first noticed a problem around puberty. It seems like it happened over night at around 13. I went from smelling fine and had a normal happy life to seeing people make comments behind my back or just open windows when I was around. It was confusing to say the least. Everyone would cough and sneeze and scratch their nose and eyes when I was around. At the same time I developed pretty severe acne and was taken to a doctor who administered the drug Acutane.
I believe this had a very adverse effect on my kidneys and intestines as I developed Crohn’s disease later on in my teenage years.
For years I thought I just smelled terribly from anxiety sweating and puberty. I withdrew from group activities became very antisocial and spent a lot of time alone. I only began socializing again when I started drinking in my teenage years. This seemed to alleviate the social anxiety I had around other people.
It wasn’t until years later that searched the internet and found other people with similar problems with people coughing and sneezing around them. This atleast confirmed I wasn’t crazy.
2. Symptoms/observations & remedies
These are the main symptoms I’ve come to deal with and how I’ve tried to combat them.
A: symptom
B: (solution)
A. Coughing, itching, sneezing, clearing throat around or in the same room as me.
B. I’d say around 80 percent of people have reactions to me specifically older people. The only solution I have for this is to not be in the same room or vicinity as others. My PATM effects people even outside!
A.Musty odor from skin even after showering.
B.Using certain soaps with fragrance seems to really effect the PATM in a negative way. I either use Dr. Bronners scentless soap or just rinse with warm water.
A.Terrible body odor.
B. Watching what I eat. I try to stick to a vegan gluten free diet. Alcohol,fish,meat,dairy and sugar usually give people around me terrible reactions. I do take supplements and I’ve come to find out Jarrows L glutamine supplement does have a positive outcome. I would also recommend buying a bottle of RESTORE to help with leaky gut. If you’d like a more detailed list of supplements I can reply with it if interested.
I’ve tried many different deodorants and no deodorant for body odor. My body chemistry always changed the smell of a lot of them in a negative way when I was nervous. The best one I’ve ever found to work for ME is Schmidt’s natural deodorant with Charcoal and Magnesium. I hardly ever smell of body odor when wearing it.
A.Picking up smells in my clothes from the environment I’m in.
B. This is the weirdest thing of all and I don’t hear anyone talk about it. It might be unique to my case. My
clothes absorb smells from the environment I’m in. For example house smells food smells. Especially cooking/food smells. If I go to a restaurant that serves breakfast with no proper ventilation I find to be the worst and I come out smelling of grease. This might have something to do with having oily skin and particles in the air sticking to me, but I’m still not 100 percent sure what is happening. There is little to no information I can find about this on the internet.
A. Crippling social anxiety.
B. Knowing you can’t have a conversation with someone and concentrate because they are always having an asthmatic reaction when you do so makes it really hard to interact with people. My body temp sky rockets and my palms turn clammy and cold. My only solution for this so far would be to drink and forget to care what is happening. I do not take any kind of psychotropic drugs. CBD oil has helped with anxiety!
I work in the service industry so I meet 2-8 new people everyday. I have a very large sample of people’s reactions to me.
A.Bad breath/ white tongue.
B. I have some problems with bad breath also. It’s especially bad after eating or drinking alcohol. People offer me gum and cover their nose when I speak. I still have my wisdom teeth and it’s hard for me to get to the back and clean them. I will have a consult to have them removed soon and see if that is a solution. The white tongue has been an issue for years. I do smoke marijuana so that might be what it’s from as well as candida. I use a tongue scraper, brush, water floss pick, and get regular cleanings. Which helps a lot.
3. Conclusion
Reaching out here will hopefully help me cope mentally. I’ve thought of and contemplated suicide when I was younger.
The PATM seems to be getting worse the older I get. I do not have health insurance and have no access to a doctor at this point. Not sure if that would even help since a majority of people are unaware of this illness.
My best guess is that I have an enzyme deficiency coupled with diseased intestines from unhealthy American diet for many years. Hopefully this post helps me and others.
Please reply with any questions and I will do my best to answer. Thank you for reading and I’m looking forward to conversations with you all. Thank You.
