someone smelling sickly-sweet

[comeondover]

I saw a dear friend yesterday for the first time in a couple of months. She had a funny smell about her, which has never been the case before. Similar to the sickly-sweet smell I associate with care homes. My friend is in her early 70s, quite active. I've read on here about something called nonenal but I don't know if this is it because descriptions of nonenal don't say it's sickly-sweet. I've also read that certain body smells denote health problems. So I'd like to understand a bit more before I find a way to bring it up. Also, if it's nonenal, then persimmon soap is supposed to help - has anyone tried this and does it work?

The smell of pear drops is linked to diabetes.

My son smelt like this, like pear drops. He was in DKA & hours off dying. Its linked to type one diabetes.

Any chance she’s on a keto diet, that causes a sickly sweet smell.

Some people experience the smell of ketones as sickly-sweet. Others talk of pear drops or nail polish. Elevated ketones can mean diabetes OR a very low-carb diet (my brother smells slightly rotten when he does Atkins).

Urine leaks can also smell like this, if it's on the skin rather than the clothes.
Quite a few perfumes are what I'd call sickly-sweet!

It seems a little harsh to tell your friend she smells horrible. At least wait to see whether it's the same in a few weeks' time.

Thanks all for your input. It's not pear drops and she's not doing keto, but I could suggest she does a ketone test in case she's developing blood sugar problems. I don't think it's urine either as I noticed it from her upper body as we hugged, as well as more generally as we sat side by side. @GarlicMile I'm not meaning to be harsh at all, but I'd want to know if it were me, and if there's an easy fix like persimmon soap, so much the better. And if it's the beginning of a health issue, then all the more reason to pay attention to it.

If my diabetic blood sugars are out I notice a sweet smell, on me it's more like warm biscuits (like just out the oven). People always say the diabetic smell is like pear drops, but not to me it isn't.

Is she overweight? Sometimes fungal/candidal skin infections in the skin creases and under the breasts can smell sickly sweet. It's more common in people with higher BMIs and in hot weather like we're having at the moment.

I was going to say diabetes and uncontrolled blood sugars but see you have said it's not that. I have noticed that my DGM who uses pads for incontinence smells a bit sickly sweet sometimes and then I realised it's the pads (a bit like the scented sanitary towels), could it be that.

Thanks again, everyone. I want to eliminate the blood sugar thing from my enquiries. She did have some high blood sugar blood tests some time ago but it seemed to resolve. I've sent her some sticks to pee on that I had left over from when I had a UTI.