Tag: smell training

We smell before we see. But only when you have lost your sense of smell do you really appreciate it. In the Covid 19 pandemic in particular, it has gained in importance, because loss of smell is one of the symptoms of the disease that persists for a long time after infection. But not only when dealing with Corona, special smell training can help to train and significantly improve the sense of smell. If I would ask you which smells you have consciously perceived since this morning, you will at most remember extreme smelling experiences. What you have seen, on the other hand, runs as an almost complete film in front of your inner eye. There is no kind of olfactory film. We smell all the time, but if we don’t focus on it, smelling is mostly subconscious. Only when the sense of smell is disturbed or lost do we recognize its importance in everyday life. With a severe cold, sinusitis or after a Covid disease, for example. Scientists suspect the reason not only in the olfactory cells of the nasal mucous membrane attacked by the virus, but in the brain itself: Animal experiments have shown that viruses penetrate into the brain via the olfactory cells and the nerves that transmit it, where they disrupt the neurological processing of the olfactory impulses. But even under normal circumstances, the ability to smell decreases from around the age of 60. In the over 80 year olds, every second person has completely lost their ability to smell. Statistically, five percent of people cannot smell anything at all and 15 percent only to a limited extent. The scent of roses or a stinky fish? How do we know if the smell we smell is caused by a smelly fish or a fragrant rose? Professor Thomas Hummel, who heads the “Interdisciplinary Center for Smelling and Tasting” at the Dresden University Hospital, explains it this way: “The molecules floating through the air reach the nose and there the olfactory epithelium. Some of them have to be transported through the olfactory mucus with the help of special transport proteins. Then they dock on a receptor molecule, which triggers a signal in one of the olfactory nerves. This reaches the olfactory bulb, which sits in the front of the skull between the eyes. There the information is processed and forwarded to the central nervous system. The signal is linked, with memories, for example, with what has been learned, compared with other sensory impressions, and this ultimately results in the sensation ‘rose’.”… weiterlesen