Olfactory Facts
What is anosmia?
A. Your memory is poor.
B. You can't sleep.
C. You can't smell.
D. Someone played "got your nose" with you when you were little and didn't give it back.
C. Anosmia is a loss of the sense of smell. It can be present at birth (rarely), or develop due to various injuries or illnesses. It can be temporary or permanent.
True or false: If you lose your sense of smell, you can't get it back.
Either might be right! The answer depends on what's causing the loss. In most cases,
treating the underlying condition improves your sense of smell. For example, if you have sinusitis, antibiotics can help clear up the infection. If certain medications affect your sense of smell, switching medications may help ease your anosmia symptoms. If something is blocking your nose, like a nasal polyp, or you have a deviated septum, you may need surgery.
True or false:
Our sense of smell is profoundly connected with our memory.
True! This could explain why studies have found that, when compared with memories triggered by other senses, odor-evoked memories tend to be more emotional and more likely to extend back earlier in one’s life.Our ancient ancestors relied on smell to build maps of their surroundings and remember where they’d been. “You can think of the original brain as being a sense of smell plus a sense of navigation plus a sense of memory,” Datta says. “That explains why all those structures are so intimately connected, and why odor memories are so evocative.”
Name ONE flavor component you can taste without a sense of smell. HINT: there are 5 of them.
These are the 5 basic flavors that can be detected using only the tastebuds on our tongue.
Sweetness
Saltiness
Bitterness
Sourness
Umami
What's umami? The “umami” taste, which can be compared to the taste of a meat broth, is usually caused by glutamic acid or aspartic acid. These two amino acids are part of many different proteins found in foods, and also in some plants. There is a lot of glutamic acid in things like ripe tomatoes, meat and cheese. Aspartic acid is found in asparagus, for example. Sometimes glutamate (the glutamic acid salt) is used as a flavor enhancer.
By the way: The sensation “spicy” is very often described as a taste. Strictly speaking, though, it is only a pain signal sent by nerves that pass on information about temperature and touch. Foods that are seasoned with chili powder activate “pain and heat” signals. This is caused by the substance capsaicin in chili peppers.
You've probably heard that dogs can sniff out many types of cancer in humans. But can humans detect diseases by smell?
Yes, people can smell diseases because many diseases change the chemical composition of body fluids, producing volatile organic compounds (VOCs) that create a characteristic odor. These VOCs are small molecules that can evaporate and diffuse into the air. For example, diabetes can make urine smell like rotten apples, typhoid can make body odor smell like baked bread, and yellow fever can make skin smell like a butcher's shop.
Some people have such a strong sense of smell that they can detect and diagnose diseases in themselves and others. For example, Joy Milne, an NHS nurse in Scotland, discovered she could smell Parkinson's disease in people long before medical diagnostics could. She helped researchers identify biomarkers of Parkinson's disease in sebum, an oily substance secreted by sebaceous glands.
Researchers are also developing an electronic "nose" to help doctors detect disease odors. In the lab, scientists can analyze odor compounds from the body and have even trained dogs to detect signs of certain cancers in breath samples
See “Chemicals on the Skin Could Enable Parkinson’s Detection”
Scent has a long history as a medical diagnostic tool. Before the advent of molecular evaluation or invasive techniques, ancient Chinese healers would diagnose tuberculosis via a tarlike scent it gives off. Hippocrates sniffed patients’ breath for a fishy odor as a way to diagnose liver failure. In the late 1700s, John Rollo, surgeon general of the British Royal Artillery, noted that diabetes sufferers exhibited “the odor of decaying apples” on their breath.
Today, however, physicians don’t sniff their patients—because doctors are no longer trained in this type of detection and because humans generally don't want to be smelled. Not many people want to hear "the doctor will sniff you now!"
True or false:
You can be left- or right-nosed just like you can be left- or right-handed.
Kind of true! Your body directs the air flowing at different rates to each nostril at different times. Right handed people appear to breathe more through their left nostril and vice-versa. Some scientists believe the alternating airflow allows each nostril to maintain optimal moisture levels so no one side gets dried out. It may also protect against respiratory infections or allergies.
Others believe it's tied to our olfaction or sense of smell. It's possible that the quicker and slower airflow in each nostril optimizes us to the vast range of smells. Some smells take longer to detect and transmit to the brain.
But there's no easy answer because our nasal cycle changes with our body's position and age. The cycle may also be related to heart rate, blood pressure, blood glucose levels, how much we blink, autism, fever, and much more.
Smell is responsible for about what portion of the flavors we experience when we taste food?
A. 25 percent
B. 40 percent
C. 80 Percent
C. 80 percent. Our mouth and nose are connected. We smell food two ways: before we consume it, through our nostrils, and while we are eating it, as chewing forces air through the nasal passages.
Which of these statements is true?
A. Loss of Smell might affect your enjoyment of food, but won't affect your health.
B. Loss of smell is worth taking seriously. Left untreated, it could affect your health.
B. It's worth taking seriously! Since smell is involved in both our appreciation of life, and our enjoyment of food, there are health risks, such as depression and nutritional concerns that may stem from loss of smell.
If you experience any persistent change in your sense of smell, visit your doctor for an evaluation. Many problems with smell can be treated. Some rare forms of smell disorders may result from tumors in the brain, neurodegenerative disease, or infection. These conditions should be diagnosed expediently for proper management and treatment.
Which of the following nosy facts are true?
You can sneeze at a rate of up to 100 mph
Your nose continues growing in size all your life.
Women tend to have better sense of smell than men.
Our noses can reveal if we're lying or telling the truth.
They're all true! Our sneezes shoot out air and particles at racecar speed.
Our nose does grow longer as we age. It’s mostly gravity that causes the tip of to dip, but the collagen and elastin start to break down over time, causing the structure to slip.
When you tell a lie, the temperature of your nose tells the truth. Using new applications of thermography, a technique implemented during World War II to detect enemies at night, experimental psychology researchers from the University of Grenada determined in 2012 that the temperature around a person’s nose and inner eyes increases when they lie. The researchers dubbed this the “Pinocchio effect.”
Which of these conditions or illnesses are associated with loss of smell?
COVID-19
A. Alzheimers disease
B. Parkinsons disease
C. Some forms of cancer
D. Other respiratory illnesses
E. All of the above
All of the above! Scientists are now exploring whether measurements of sense of smell can be used as early detection for some types of neurodegenerative conditions, such as alzheimers.
Name one way to improve the flavor of food when you have a smell impairment.
Add different appealing textures
Temperature
Spiciness
Appearance: make sure the food looks appealing
A pleasant atmosphere
Eating can be more enjoyable when the other aspects of flavor, such as texture, temperature, and spiciness are emphasized. Texture can be enhanced by adding crunchy foods (nuts, croutons, water chestnuts) to your meals. Combining cold and hot temperatures in the same dish (sour cream on a baked potato), as well as trying hot and spicy foods may help to make food less bland. Keep in mind that a pleasant atmosphere and attractively prepared meals can also help to make food more enjoyable.
Which of these things is a job for your nose?
A. Help shape the sound of your voice.
B. Help you choose a mate.
C. Humidify the air we breathe
D. Regulate the temperature of the air we breathe
E. Clean the air we breathe
Your voice is produced in the larynx but that sound is really a buzzing sound. The richness of the sound is determined by how the sound is processed above the larynx, which occurs in your nose and throat.
Your nose plays a critical role when paired with your olfactory system in your perception of a potential mate.
That characteristic smell of a person’s cologne or the scent of their shampoo or soap is important to sexual attraction. The smell of human perspiration also has a direct effect on sexual receptors in the brain. And loss of smell correlates with decreased sexual drive.
the passing of the air through your nose allows the air to become more like your body temperature, which is better tolerated by your tissues.
“That runny nose you get in cold weather is the best example of this effect, as your nose warms and humidifies the air. It comes from the condensation of the moisture in your nose when the cold air goes in.
The air we breathe has all kinds of stuff in it – from oxygen and nitrogen to dust, pollution, allergens, smoke, bacteria, viruses, small bugs and countless other things. Your nose helps clean it.
On the surface of the nasal tissues in your turbinates, there are cells with tiny hair-like appendages called cilia that trap the bad debris in the air so it doesn’t get into your lungs. Instead, the debris sits in the mucous and is eventually pushed into your throat and swallowed.
This is important because our stomachs tolerate handling bad debris much better than our lungs do.
True or false:
You can smell something that isn't there.
True! In many instances where smell loss occurs, remaining smells are distorted. The distortions are either experienced as odors smelling dramatically different from what was remembered (parosmia) or smelling an odor that isn't present at all (phantosmia).
Perhaps if they were pleasant, these distortions of smell might not be as distressful. However, in almost all instances, the experienced smells are unpleasant, with "smoke," "swamp-like," "musty," "garbage," or "chemical-like" among some very common descriptions. The odor is usually hard for people to describe, since it is not like anything they have experienced before.
What's one thing you should do to protect your safety if your sense of smell is diminished?
Be sure you have smoke detectors and that they're working.
Consider a gas detector if you have natural gas in your home.
Ask someone else to smell food if you have any reason to suspect it may be spoiled.
Pay special attention to "use by" dates on perishable foods.
Which is the primary passageway for breathing?
A. The nose
B. The mouth
Your nose. Even during exercise where mouth breathing becomes more dominant, some air also still passes through your nose.
Although your mouth is a bigger tube, people feel more uncomfortable if their noses are plugged or congested. That’s how important your nose really is.
Nasal breathing is also most critical in newborns who breathe through their noses almost all the time. It’s a unique feature related to the configuration of their throats that allows them to breathe and suckle at the same time, without choking.
We lose this ability as we grow. As adults we have to briefly stop breathing to swallow.