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Sense of smell 'may predict lifespan'
- uptown 12y agoInteresting possible correlation. I have a horrible sense of smell. I always have. I can certainly smell some things - and particularly strong scents like coffee, fish, or oranges definitely register, but I'm able to also completely block out offensive odors in a way that I've found others cannot. I've always felt that if I had to suffer from a deficiency in a sense, smell is the one to choose.
- 2muchcoffeeman 12y agoThe assessment involved identifying distinct odours encased on the tips of felt-tip pens. They don't discuss range, just accurate identification. I think I have lost some range over the years, but not accuracy. Up close I can identify smells fine. But sometimes I'll make a cup off coffee, someone will remark how good it smells, and I can't smell it at all until I'm 30cm from the cup.
- megablast 12y agoI think they are talking about a radical change in your sense of smell being a predictor, rather than your overall sense of smell.
- cdjk 12y agoInteresting - I don't have a sense of smell (and never have). I don't think I'm at risk of dying from that, however, barring an undetected gas leak. Loss of sense of smell is fairly serious, though, so this isn't too surprising.
- riffraff 12y agoyou don't have a sense of smell? How is this called? Do you actually never smell anything or is it just very very weak? Does it also mean that when eating you basically couldn't tell between smoked herrings and cheese other than by level of saltiness/texture? I hope I am not unpolite in asking and please forgive my curiosity, I've never heard of "congenital olfactive loss" and my mind was just blown.
- cokernel 12y ago> you don't have a sense of smell? How is this called? Anosmia. http://www.chiark.greenend.org.uk/~sgtatham/smell.html http://www.chiark.greenend.org.uk/~sgtatham/smell.html
- cdjk 12y agoIt's not impolite to ask - I don't mind answering questions about it. "Congenital Anosmia" is the correct term. It's fairly serious when someone loses their sense of smell, and can cause weight loss and depression. It can also be a symptom of some fairly serious conditions (e.g. Parkinson's). For food - I prefer strong flavors (smoked salmon, capers, onions). Subtle flavors like spices are lost on me - basil, spinach, and mint all taste the same. Cheeses can be strong - I think I could tell the difference between blue cheese and provolone, but I haven't done an experiment. I'll have to try that sometime. It is possible I have a very week sense of smell. I can kind of smell coffee, and there are a few times I've smelled an orange, but that hasn't been reproducible. My dog got sprayed by a skunk one time, and I couldn't smell that, so I think it's accurate to say I don't have a sense of smell. I can "smell" things like vinegar and bleach, but I think that's the trigeminal nerve. I can't tell the difference between white vinegar and balsamic vinegar, however. My mom can't smell either - nor could her dad.
- barclay 12y agoSuper interesting. I've also got no sense of smell, though my ENT thinks it was due to an accident I had as a baby (fell face first onto broken glass), that severed the nerve. I can smell absolutely nothing (not gas, not coffee, nada)... but, on the other hand, have a really strong sense of taste. Maybe this is what's leaning the doctor to that.
- beachstartup 12y agothanks for sharing, that's super interesting. just one question since you mentioned salmon and cheeses: do you get the bacon flavor/smell ??? that's a favorite aroma for a lot of people.
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- jrapdx3 12y agoWell, me too. Never have been able to detect odors anywhere near to normal degree. So I'd fail the test for "peppermint, fish, orange, rose and leather" miserably. FWIW humans rely much less on sense of smell than many other creatures. Interestingly, animals with poorer odor detection tend to have better vision. Raptors have excellent vision and aren't reliant on smell to detect prey. Human vision is also well-developed, the only trichromats among the great apes. Goes to show, "tests" don't always apply in each and every instance.
- deeviant 12y agoThe research looks at loss of smell, not never having a (good) sense of smell as an indicator.
- exratione 12y agoAging is a global phenomenon of damage accumulation throughout the body: more damage means faster aging. People who show more damage in any one measure tend to show more damage in all the others too, as it all stems from a few root causes. This bears up in epidemiological studies, but there is a fair amount of individual variation. Almost every decline in aging that can be measured can be correlated with near future mortality. Grip strength and walking speed are the common ones presently used, and finding others should be in no way surprising.
- toasted 12y agoAgreed. Also, these types of studies always claim to have corrected for differences in confounding variables, but there are always more confounding variables than have been corrected for, and all they end up doing is a statistical comparison of data with a fewer but still significant number confounding variables, and if the sample size is big enough they will find a significant P value and try to imply some sort of causation/significant correlation.
- Mz 12y agoAs someone with a history of chronic sinus problems (which were really just the tip of the iceberg -- an indicator of much more serious problems, actually), I can well imagine ...a connection here between deteriorating sense of smell and underlying serious health problems. As my health improves, so does my sense of smell. I don't feel like I am saying this very well. Let's try this: If someone goes blind or has other significant visual impairments, we typically take that seriously as a big deal and then may look for underlying causes, but the loss of sense of smell tends to not be treated quite the same way.
- mrfusion 12y agoSo maybe dumb question but did they take into account the age of the participants? That is the older people in the study would tend to has less sense of smell and die sooner.
- Mz 12y agoYup: And despite taking issues such as age, nutrition, smoking habits, poverty and overall health into account, researchers found those with the poorest sense of smell were still at greatest risk.
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- tokenadult 12y agoI like how the article succinctly discussed different possible causal mechanisms for losing a sense of smell that an individual formerly had as a marker for declining health and impending death. This is especially interesting in view of the reduction of sense of smell over millions of years in the ancestral line of human beings. Before animals in the clade Primates developed trichromatic color vision, they distinguished fruits ripe enough to eat from fruits that were not mostly by smell. But after color vision improved, there was no longer selection pressure to maintain the sense of smell genes that gave the same information about food plants, and so random mutations gradually knocked out those genes. Comparative DNA analysis shows that human beings have descendant genes that were once used for accurate sense of many smells that human beings can no longer distinguish, but that sensory capacity was lost by genetic drift until lack of accurate sense of smell for many substances became fixed in the human population. A fascinating book that tells this story in more detail is The Making of the Fittest: DNA and the Ultimate Forensic Record of Evolution by Sean Carroll,[1] a very readable and enjoyable book about molecular biology studies and the evidence they provide for biological evolution. [1] http://www.amazon.com/Making-Fittest-Ultimate-Forensic-Evolution-ebook/dp/B001MZ0FHU/ http://www.amazon.com/Making-Fittest-Ultimate-Forensic-Evolu...
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- MaysonL 12y agoInteresting that "orange" is one of the smells tested: there are at least 3 smells to an orange – the oil in the peel, the juice, and the rind or pith (the white stuff). Not to speak of the varieties of fish (or do they mean rotting fish??).