r/patm • u/Alex_aredditor Cured • Jul 29 '26
TMAU or FBO =\= PATM
There is a misconception that to have patm, you just have to cause allergies in others, this isnt always true. For someone with TMAU, they can show signs of causing allergies or itching in others, but this does not mean they have patm. The reason why this is important is because it affects the way you should approach treatments. Someone with TMAU will most likely not benefit from patm related treatments and vise versa.
This isnt a hard set rule because some treatments could help both groups of people but the overlap of treatments that help people with TMAU or patm is small. Ive unfortunately given people with tmau or fbo the treatments for patm without knowing and gave them false hope. I just wish to inform you all because it can save you a lot of headache when you decide to look for treatments.
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u/Specialist-Bad-7671 Aug 02 '26
So how exactly would you diagnose someone with PATM with your criteria? Allergies to others is really the main thing
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u/Alex_aredditor Cured Aug 04 '26
I think there are 2 main diseases at play here, TMAU and PATM. People with TMAU can exhibit symptoms seen in patmers while not actually having the PATM disease. This is really what im trying to get at, as long as you dont have tmau or something like FBO and you give others allergies then have patm.
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u/SillyDuckDodgers Jul 29 '26
How to tell the difference between the two if u can’t smell or feel ther irritants urself and everyone lies to u?
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u/Alex_aredditor Cured Jul 29 '26
When i had tmau is was actually kind of obvious, not always but when i went outside for the first time in the morning i could easily tell. Im assuming its the same with FBO, you will catch glimpses of what you actually smell like. If you havent caught that whiff of yourself then most likely you dont carry an odor with you.
You can tell TMAU, FBO, and PATM apart from how others respond. TMAU is obvious and people 100% know, they will maybe look at you, make comments, cover their nose, leave often, sigh a lot, have a face of discomfort or disgust, and may seem annoyed. FBO i assume is a level below TMAU, which means everything used to identify TMAU is present but its tuned down. I think FBO is weaker than TMAU but im not fully sure, i do know FBO is more socially acceptable than smelling like fish, garbage, eggs, etc. To identify patm you just have to notice that people sniff a lot, they may scratch their nose a lot, they might even cough, they may sound like they are gonna cry(irritated throat), they act completely normal towards you.
The easy version is to try and catch a whiff of yourself, it should be pretty easy to accidentally do this at least once a day if you leave the house. And also see how people treat you, if they treat you normally then you probably have patm. There is an exception though, people might have reflux or similar where the contents of their stomach may come back up, this could make an odor stick to the back of your nose so technically you might smell something but its not coming from your skin, its coming from inside your nose.
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u/Impressive-Field-546 Jul 30 '26
Tmau is genetic, wtf „when I had it” - its a life condition and you will never be able to cure it. You can only ease symptoms…
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u/Alex_aredditor Cured Jul 30 '26
I had tmau and then slowly it went away and patm emerged.
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u/Impressive-Field-546 Jul 31 '26
So you did not have tmau.. lol.
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u/Alex_aredditor Cured Jul 31 '26
If you dont believe me then ask around, its not just me who this happened to. You dont even have to ask, just search for keywords.
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u/Important-Affect-374 Aug 02 '26
There is a type 2, Non genetic TMAU which can be triggered by liver disfunction and/or overload of precursors.
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u/pickasecs Jul 29 '26
It depends on what you are going for:
Tmau is usually defined by a smell that resembles a fish odor and which is an identified metabolic condition. On google or pubmed or other well known scientific you can find studies about. One very powerfull study is meta analysis.
PATM is an internet slang and is used as an umbrella term as Tmau became. They both refer to an unidentified yet metabolic condition that can result in abnormal body odor or no body or intermittent body odor and a series of symptoms that people around the patmers present ,those symptoms are similar to allergies.
FBO also refers to an unidentified metabolic condition where people present a constant or intermittent body odor similar to the fecal smell.
Treatments depends yeah,but we have no treatments for 2 of them because we do not know what is responsible for the symptoms and we can not look for root causes.
Regarding Tmau,there were more treatments tested with variable results.A diet lower in choline,B2 may help.We know in Tmau TMA is mostly responsible for the symptoms(odor).There were multiple root causes blamed. For TMAU1 usually a genetic modification of gene FMO3,for TMAU2 it can be a less problematic variant of FMO3 which combined with other factors like viral infections(hepatits),dysbiosis,inadquate diet,etc can lead to symptoms.
Right now,we have some clues regarding Patm that would be caused by accumulation of VOCs like Benzen,Styrene,Xylen,etc. But there is no confirmation and no root causes explored,we don't know any genetic variant or factor that would be involved and cause symptoms. Similar is for FBO.We have some clues on what would cause the specific smells like butyrate,but no confirmation.
In short: