Tony Huge

Smellmaxxing and 2-Nonenal: The Science of Old People Smell: Tony Huge’s Video Guide

Table of Contents

Tony Huge has spent years reversing his biological age, and then a girlfriend told him he smelled old. This video is what he found: a molecule called 2-nonenal that shows up on skin after about 40, a discovery paper written by the company that had already patented the fix, an independent study that flips the story, and a grade for every claimed remedy. He calls it smellmaxxing, and most of the industry advice fails his ladder.

Video: Smellmaxxing: The Science of Old People Smell (2-Nonenal Explained). Published August 5, 2026. Watch on YouTube.

What the video covers

One molecule, and you cannot smell it on yourself

Tony’s framing is that aging odor is real, it comes down to one compound, and it deserves more attention than the biohacking community gives it. The discovery paper described the smell as greasy and grassy; later descriptions added musty and cardboard. It is the same molecule that makes stale beer taste like wet cardboard, though it takes about 30,000 times less of it to notice in a glass than on skin.

The detail that matters most is that you cannot check yourself. Every study Tony cites washed subjects with odorless soap and then stopped them washing for days just to get a signal. Your nose is not an instrument for this. You will have to ask someone close to you, which is how Tony found out.

The discovery study and who paid for it

Tony cites the 2001 paper by Haze and colleagues in the Journal of Investigative Dermatology: 22 people aged 26 to 75, cotton shirts worn on bare skin for three consecutive nights, then the air above a cut section of the back sampled for 18 hours. Under 40, zero of nine had 2-nonenal. Over 40, nine of 13 did, which is 69%, and four had none at all. The older group averaged 2.6 parts per million in skin oil, plus or minus 3.5, so there is no typical value. The authors put the detection threshold at three to four parts per million, so their average sits under their own threshold, and their word for it is “may.” Measured continuously at the nape, Tony notes, it is a gradient, not a switch.

All seven authors were company employees, four at Shiseido and three at a fragrance house. A masking-fragrance patent naming 2-nonenal as the culprit was filed in March 1998; the paper announcing the discovery came out in April 2001, with three of the authors on the patent. That is 37 months between owning the fix and publishing the problem. Patenting before publishing is not fraud, Tony says, but it is a reason to read every number in this field with discretion.

The study nobody sponsored says the opposite

Tony cites Mitro and colleagues, PLOS ONE 2012, from the Monell Chemical Senses Center: 41 donors in three age bands, 20 to 30, 45 to 55, and 75 to 95, pads worn in shirts for five nights, then rated blind by 41 people aged 20 to 30. Public research funding, no competing interests declared.

“The molecule tracks age, and the disgust is attached to the label.”

Tony Huge, 11:15

Body odor from the 75 to 95 group was rated less intense and less unpleasant than both younger bands. The worst-rated odor in the whole study came from middle-aged men, at minus 2.95 on a scale of minus five to plus five; men aged 75 to 95 scored plus 0.10, the only male group on the pleasant side of neutral. Among women the effect reverses. Nobody measured a molecule, and the authors say the same odor would probably have scored worse had the raters known its source. Tony’s takeaway is that smelling old is not the same as smelling bad.

Where the mechanism story breaks

Three things break in the popular version. The substrate: the story says skin oil is loaded with omega-7 fat that oxygen snaps into 2-nonenal, but the most abundant fat in human sebum is sapienate, an omega-10. The supply: sebum output does not rise with age, staying flat in men until 80 and falling in women after menopause, so the raw material shrinks while this molecule increases. The measurement: a 2024 study of 60 people did not get 2-nonenal onto the analyzable list, and Tony’s explanation is that they sampled the forearm, a low-oil site, rather than the nape.

Grading the fixes

The smellmax ladder runs A for a human trial on this molecule, B for a small or single human study, C for a test tube, D for a mechanism, E for someone selling it, and a question mark for unmeasured. Persimmon soap gets a question mark: zero records on PubMed. The famous 100% deodorization figure comes from a 2001 patent application, not a journal, and the claim that the tannin keeps working after you rinse has no source. Eggplant extract and enzyme odor detergent get a C each, and the one study on the detergent went the other way. Green tea, mushrooms, and sulfur vegetables get question marks. Vitamin C gets an E, because the trial cited for it measured 4-hydroxy-2-nonenal in urine, a damage marker inside cells and a different molecule.

Tony bought a bar of persimmon soap anyway, for about a dollar fifty. He needs to wash with something regardless, so it may as well be the one with a possibility attached, and he will trust his own test over the absence of a study, on the principle that everything ever proven true was unstudied first.

The three with human numbers

The washing trial: a 2012 study in an odor engineering journal not indexed in PubMed, all five authors employed by the soap maker, 20 men aged 43 to 75, 28 days of washing the whole body daily with a lathered towel. 2-nonenal off the shirt fell significantly by day 14 and again by day 28, and judges’ scores fell too. No control group, no effect sizes, no p values. The soap carried four plant extracts including persimmon, plus an antibacterial, charcoal, and mud, and nothing isolates any of them. Tony’s read is that the intervention with 20 men and 28 days behind it is washing daily with a lathered cloth, and the geography that matters is the nape, the front of the neck, behind the ears, and the forehead, which a 2021 study also flagged.

The fabric data: one wash at 30 degrees removed 94.2% of 2-nonenal from cotton and 59% from polyester, with the smell coming off the fabric down 97.8% against 44.7%. The molecule is oily and will not go into water. Cotton wets through, so wash water lifts the oil out; polyester repels water and holds the oil against the detergent, leaving 41% in the shirt after a normal wash, and it accumulates across repeated wear-and-wash cycles. It was a laboratory rig, nobody wore anything, and the one dataset built on worn fabric ran the opposite direction, so it grades a C.

The blackcurrant study: 14 adults, average age 55, 6 g a day of blackcurrant powder for seven days. Neck emission went from 4.66 to 2.38 nanograms per square centimeter per hour, p equals 0.030, with eight of 14 dropping more than 30%. No placebo, the control week always ran first, diet uncontrolled, and 77 compounds screened without correction, so the p value does not survive. The powder was donated by its manufacturer. It grades a B. In the same paper, a fatty meal raised the reading 43% and a three-hour stressful meeting raised it too, each in three people, and 90 minutes of sunlight raised skin-surface peroxide, the initiator the reaction needs, 60-fold.

Cheat Sheet Pivot

What survived Tony’s ladder and what he reported doing, not instructions.

  • Daily whole-body washing with a lathered cloth is the only intervention with 20 men and 28 days behind it, and Tony focuses it on the nape, neck, behind the ears, and forehead.
  • Cotton against the skin instead of polyester, on the strength of fabric retention data that came from a test tube rather than a person.
  • Blackcurrant, which he says he would eat anyway for its other benefits.
  • Reducing overall oxidation, by keeping sun off the neck and back or by raising antioxidant intake.
  • Persimmon soap as a cheap self-experiment with no human data, which he says plainly.

The antioxidant compounds Tony returns to across his anti-aging work are collected in the Miracle Molecules Cheat Sheet. For the skin side of his age-reversal protocol, read Anti-Aging Skin Stack for Men Over 35, and for the evidence behind one antioxidant he uses, see NAC: Strong Evidence in Some Places, Thin in Others.

Where the evidence stops

Almost everything here is industry funded, uncontrolled, or both, and Tony says so at every rung. Nobody has measured skin 2-nonenal before and after a normal shower, how fast it comes back, how other fabrics interact with it, or which antioxidants, supplements, or dietary changes move it. The two studies with the most authority disagree about whether the smell is even unpleasant, and the one with no sponsor found that the oldest people smelled best.

What survives is modest: wash the right places daily, wear cotton, eat blackcurrant, reduce oxidation. Tony treats his own persimmon soap test as one data point, not a finding.

Keep going

For the rest of the appearance-optimization field graded the same way, read Looksmaxxing Ranked by Evidence: What Actually Works. Companion articles for new videos reach the tonyhuge.is email list first, and the anti-aging archive is on tonyhuge.is.

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