
Ask HN: How to help people that shut themselves in? - Irene
We are about to start a study to identify what causes flares and remission in a chronic condition. The problem is that about half of people with this condition can&#x27;t differentiate between good and bad days in terms of symptoms. A trusted buddy (in real world) could to do it for them, but they often shut themselves in, and all of their interactions are online not in the physical world.<p>The condition is idiopathic malodor - when body loses ability to &quot;deodorize&quot; digested food in the blood and malodor episodically emits from all the skin pores at seemingly unpredictable times.<p>My questionnaire asks questions like how many people interacted with them in the last 24 hrs, how many of these interactions were positive, if they felt well-rested, depressed, miserable, had any physical symptoms (based on quality of life questionnaires).<p>Any other suggestions on how to differentiate their flareups from remissions?
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ApolloRising
This seems like a long shot suggestion but could you train a service dogs to
detect the changes in the odor and to signal to the person for recording?
Since the odor is very detectable even by humans then the dogs should have
zero problems detecting it far sooner.

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Irene
It should be possible, but might take a lot of effort. Smell-detecting dogs
are trained from birth to 18 months and it takes another 6 months to
specialize them on specific scent like diabetes. Small rodents could be
trained too. In Harry Potter, Ron carried one in his breast pocket.

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ggm
Can you pick a cohort who circumstantially have to socially interact outside
the home? Then you can monitor interaction effect neutral to their tendency to
self isolate.

Can you pick a cohort with a trusted buddy and double test their state?

Could you measure this indirectly by some other thing, like rate of use of
masking scents or cleaning product?

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Irene
Thank you, these are great suggestions.

