Human beings can recognize thousands of different smells. Actually, our sense of smell is very essential, because it helps to enjoy our life. Most importantly, without it we would not be able to get pleasure from our favorite food and flowers or other enjoyable smells from the environment. Recent studies from the University of Chicago suggested that measuring the sense of smell helps doctors to predict the health condition of a patient in five years. So the main focus of my blog is to discuss how the sense of smell "may predict lifespan" and explain some causes for that.
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| Image 1 |
Research
Recently, researchers from the University of Chicago made a smell test among 3,000 adults aged between 57-85. The purpose of the test was to determine the ability of participants to specific odors. During this test, there were 5 samples of smells including peppermint, rose, orange, leather and fish.
Despite taking several factors such as nutrition, lifestyle, bad habits, poverty into consideration, scientists claimed that adults, who have a poor sense of smell or losing the sense of smell, are most likely to be in a big danger and, even, pass away within 5 years.
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| Image 2. Adults who did well the test are most likely to life longer |
In fact, smell loss is tightly connected with smell disorders in human olfactory system (Image 3). There are several types of smell disorders:
Hyposmia - inability to detect specific smell.
Anosmia - inability to detect any smell.
Dysosmia - an alternation in the perception of smell.
Phantosmia - ability to perceive an odor that does not exist.
Presbyosmia - smell loss due to the process of aging.
For older people, the sense of smell, known as olfactory function, plays a key role in health. According to the above mentioned studies, there are some possible assumptions regarding main causes of death. Particularly, human olfactory ends are linked to parts of central nervous system which is responsible for smelling. Therefore, loss of smell can be a signal in decreasing body's inactivity.
Moreover, cellular degeneration of older people is weak due to aging process. As a result of this, organism starts to degrade and refuse normal activity of olfactory system.
In addition, loss of smell can cause symptoms of neurogenerative diseases such as Alzheimer's and Parkinson's diseases which are lead to an early death.
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| Image 3. Human Olfactory system: 1. Olfactory bulb 2. Mitral cells 3. Bone 4. Nasal Epithelium 5. Glomerulus 6. Olfactory receptor cells |
Lead scientist of the research, Jayant Pinto, mentioned that these findings could be a non-expensive clinical test for most patients. In fact, this easy medical test could be one of the helpful methods identifying the presence of health disorders in human. However, despite some mentioned scientific assumptions, such as how the loss of smell affects the lifespan, still remains unclear. Therefore, this study needs more research to clarify the reasons for that. It is believed that such finding will be used in medicine in order to achieve precise scientific results, of course, if scientists improve this study in the near future.
"NHS Choices", last modified October 2, 2014, http://www.nhs.uk/news/2014/10October/Pages/Does-losing-your-sense-of-smell-predict-death-risk.aspx
NIH Senior Health, last modified October 2, 2014, http://nihseniorhealth.gov/problemswithsmell/aboutproblemswithsmell/01.html
http://i.dailymail.co.uk/i/pix/2014/10/01/1412182041220_wps_11_image001_png.jpg
http://i.huffpost.com/gen/2126324/thumbs/o-SMELLING-AND-DEATH-facebook.jpg
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZAUcpmrGN7Y
http://www.techtimes.com/articles/16954/20141001/how-good-is-your-nose-apparently-it-can-predict-your-life-span.htm
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