I swear I wasn’t always like this but I’ve noticed that I’ve become very sensitive to perfumes and colognes…or anything that’s sprayed or aerosolized. I don’t feel like I was always this sensitive to these odors, but like, now I can be walking behind people who are more than 10 feet away from me and the wind will bring the smell of perfume and cologne which always reeks of acidic chemicals and hurts to inhale to the point where I have to keep like 20 feet distance from anyone who seems to be wearing it. Are more people just bathing in perfume or cologne these days or is this a hypersensitivity? Is it something other people experience? It just feels like it might not just be an autism thing because I swear I wasn’t always this sensitive to smells but i’ve been like this for a few years now…
Sensitivity of senses can also be a symptom of migraines. Sensitivity to light or sound are more common, but it can also be the case with smell.
https://www.migrainedisorders.org/osmophobia/
https://migraine.com/migraine-symptoms/sensitivity-to-smells
(Only skimmed through the links. They seem fine.)
I would assume there are many other possible physical reasons for a heightened sense of smell.
Unfortunately our bodies age and things can develop that you haven’t had before. It’s always good to question and even better to know what causes (unpleasant) things and maybe even find a cure or just means of improvement.
I don’t mean to say this is the case for you. Just some anecdotal very general thought/advice: On the other hand sometimes trying to find the exact cause can turn into a rabbit hole and at some point it might consume so much time/energy with little to no improvement, that it makes sense to accept it and make the best of it.
Hope you can find out what causes it for you and that aren’t bothered too much by it and can maybe even get some positives out of that dog type “super power” :-)