Your nose knows…

Rabbits can smell danger before they can see it. Squirrels can find the acorns they buried months before. Bloodhounds can trace a lost child across miles of rugged terrain. This amazing sense of smell originates in two small patches of several million odor-detecting cells nestled high in the nasal passage. A rabbit has over 100 million of these cells, and a dog has over 220 million. By comparison, a human has only about five or six million. Yet even though the human sense of smell may not be as heightened as many other creatures, we can still detect thousands of different scents.

Our sense of smell is linked directly to our sense of taste. Our taste buds can detect salty, sweet, sour, and bitter, but it is our sense of smell that tells us the difference between barbeque sauce and ketchup. (Consider how our ability to taste foods seems hindered when we have a cold.)

Interestingly enough, not all smells are actually smells. Some smells not only stimulate our nose but our somatosensory system, nerve endings in our noses that are sensitive to temperature and pain. Even if you have no sense of smell at all (if you are “anosmic”), you would still be able to detect substances like menthol or phenytheyl alcohol, and some of those smells that disgust us actually cause pain, too—all the more reason to avoid them.

Training your Sense of Smell

Unlike many of our other senses, some studies suggest that our sense of smell does not decline with age. A recent study at the University of Pennsylvania proposes that sense of smell is, in fact, a trained sense that is heightened through practice. Such studies suggest that people who use scent more often will be more able to enjoy its finer qualities—almost like a professional wine taster. Contrary to popular belief, people who lack the sense of vision do not necessarily have a heightened sense of smell. In fact, in the university’s study, the group that tested highest was those who worked for the Philadelphia Water Department’s quality evaluation panel, people who have become expertly sensitive to variations in odor due to their line of work.

Emotions and Memories

The human sense of smell is also linked closely to emotion and memory, and it is believed to be related to our mental and physical health. Breathing in the scent of the perfume your mother wore can make you feel like a child again. The olfactory system is connected directly to our limbic system, the part of our brain associated with emotion. Scents stimulate our limbic systems before the brain recognizes the fragrance. In other words, by the time we realize the smell of a fresh-baked apple pie, we are already experiencing the pleasant emotions it evokes.

Just as a pleasant smell can give us strong emotional reactions, such as relaxation, comfort, even attraction, an unpleasant odor instantly decreases the attractiveness of something, or someone. We associate something that smells bad as being something harmful and to be avoided, so the repellent quality of a scent is a signal to us to “back off.” Skunks are a prime example.

Popular Scents

To combat these malodors, there are many fragrances that we generally describe as popular, such as vanilla, which is consistently ranked as pleasant by a wide selection of the population across the globe. Actual medical experiments have shown that the smell of vanilla has proven effects on mood and stress. In a study performed by Tubingen University in Germany, subjects were so relaxed by the scent of vanilla that it reduced the startle-reflex reaction time, in both humans and animals.

Inspired by recent research, the current trend in fragranced products is not only to gently scent your home but also to aid your mind, body, and soul. Many companies are marketing their products’ benefits as aroma therapeutic mood enhancers. Studies corroborate this marketing strategy. Many of the chemicals used in fragrances, the various popular scents such as orange, lavender, and chamomile, are shown to have pharmacological and stress reduction properties. Some fragranced products can reduce performance-related stress as measured by lowered blood pressure.

Other aromas can stimulate us and improve our productivity. One Japanese company used the scent of citrus to stimulate their employees in the morning, florals in the afternoon to boost their concentration, and cedar in the evening to keep people alert and reduce fatigue.

The Future

As we are becoming more and more aware of the power of our noses, technology is advancing in the fragrance industry. Companies are developing new high-tech ways to extract scents which are too difficult to extract by traditional means. They are artificially replicating previously elusive aromas such as leather, race car, and newspaper, so that we can enjoy those scents even when there isn’t a cowboy or a race track or a New York Times handy.

As we learn more about our sense of smell and about the science of aromas, we will continue to discover new benefits of scents and new ways to perfume our lives.

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