What will happen if you can never smell anything ever again?

— An Educational Article by Conscious Living Aromas (CLA)

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How many of us have paused in our ever so mundane lives to SMELL something unless it has been evidently pleasant like melting butter on a toast early in the morning or quite an unpleasant smell like rotten food because we forgot to refrigerate it the previous night?

Well, most of us don’t. Unlike our sense of sight, sound, taste, or touch our sense of smell is a self-effacing, unsung humble hero/heroine/any gender-neutral term you can think of, working in the background 24*7. Well almost (More about this in our subsequent articles). Yet despite all this hard work is never acknowledged or recognized until such day WE LOSE IT.

What happens then? A crippling breakdown of senses if I may call it so. You stop smelling then you stop tasting food the way you should and fast forward you are even unable to feel sexually satisfied with your partner.

OK. That’s freaky, I agree. But how does it all happen?

One by one we unfold the mysteries of the Olfactory system. Our olfactory system is the first sense to develop. In fact, we have a fully functioning sense of smell by the time we are twelve weeks in the womb. This is in stark contrast to our visual system, which takes several years after we are born to become fully mature. The fact that we have a completely functioning sense of smell when we are just twelve weeks post-conception means that we can begin to learn about odors well before we are born, and we do. The amniotic fluid contains aroma molecules based on what the mother ingests in the body. Needless to say, breast milk also develops a certain smell based on the mother’s diet. So the child’s eventual aversion or attraction to smells such as cigarette smoke, alcohol, or garlic is based on this early exposure. I am imagining many pregnant women raising their eyebrows at this point. :P

The devastating loss of sense of smell (smell blindness) is called Anosmia. Which may be a temporary loss of smell caused due to flu/nasal blockages or as a symptom of Covid-19. Whereas an acute trauma such as a head injury may cause permanent Anosmia. Depending upon the severity of Anosmia and the duration, patients often report a loss of interest in normally pleasurable pursuits, loss of appetite, difficulty sleeping, loss of motivation, inability to concentrate, feelings of sadness, and thoughts of suicide that can turn into action if not treated (Based on a study of 750 patients from the University of Pennsylvania Smell and Taste Center). Studies of people afflicted with Anosmia also indicate that the development of depression is progressive. According to a patient’s clinical statement— Without the sense of smell, the temptations of food, the sweaty funk of sex, the essence of a walk on the beach, the feeling of nostalgia — the texture of life itself — were robbed.

The areas of the brain that processes smell and emotion are intertwined. Smell and emotion are located in the same network of neural structures, called the limbic system. The limbic system is made up of the hippocampus, amygdala, the septal area, and several regions of the cerebral cortex. The key limbic structure to interact with our olfactory center is the amygdala. Without an amygdala we cannot experience or process emotional experiences, we cannot express our own emotions, and we cannot learn and remember emotional events. No other sensory system has this kind of direct access to the part of the brain that controls our emotions. Different scents activate different arrays of olfactory receptors producing very specific firing patterns of neurons in the olfactory bulb. The specific pattern of electrical activity in the olfactory bulb then determines the particular scent we perceive but the specific set of neurons (for example 1, 28, 30) that are fired for a scent for person A is not the same as person B ( for eg 65, 88, 113). Ever wondered how you loved a perfume fragrance while your bestie hated it? Mystery solved! We all smell the same thing differently. Hence, scents have the power to take you down the memory lanes and remind you of people and places long lost. I hope this read has given you a new sense of appreciation for our sense of smell.

We also highly recommend you watch this TED talk video to understand the olfactory system better.