Proton Soup said:
the things that smell bad wouldn't give you a disease. gag reflex, maybe. and you've even got taste receptors in your throat, fwiw.
also, diseases tend to have incubation periods, so you shouldn't expect a sudden onset.
re: bolded: I'd add that the ones which are completely asymptomatic in that period are not uncommon, although a sense of malaise (feeling generally sick) often precedes frank symptoms. The ones that fulminate on the other hand, tend to just explode and kill you, so we can rule that out.
Here's my theory: It's psychosomatic. Now, don't jump up and say it's been 3 years and I'm calling you crazy. You clearly have a strong reaction to these... fumes... which you also describe as "embarrassing". If you smell something which disgusts you emotionally, you WILL have a physical reaction, although usually it's limited to change in pupilary dilation, and other markers.
What else happens when we're confronted with something that makes us feel disgusted in our minds?... usually we have a physical reaction that's fairly brief. One of them is gagging or even throwing up, but what if you don't just throw up on the spot? What if instead, you're a little more upset by this than most, or perhaps you have acid reflux already in a small way. I'm guessing that the "sickness", is the result of increased acid production, which can feel exactly like a stomach ailment, and even impart a sore throat and sinuses if you sleep on it.
I could be completely off, but let me say this: bad odors do not, because they are bad odors, make you ill. True, hydrogen sulfide smells terrible (at first), and its deadly, but so is CO2 and we breath it all of the time. The notion that ill vapors caused illness died along with the dark ages.
