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From Starbucks to spoiled milk to freshly baked snickerdoodles, most of us take our sense of smell -- and the world's good, bad and ugly odors -- for granted. For people born with isolated congenital anosmia (ICA), though, the world smells as bland as a soggy soda cracker.
"I don't know what it is to smell," says Martin Angel, a 48-year-old urban planner from Santa Ana, Calif. "People try to describe it to me and I'm like, 'That's like trying to describe the sun to a blind man.'"
While Angel says he doesn't miss his sense of smell because "when you've never had something, there's nothing to miss," a new study published in the Public Library of Science's journal PLoS ONE has found that ICA can impact people in a number of ways, causing everything from enhanced social insecurity to an increased risk of household accidents.
"The sense of smell is one of the oldest sensory systems and provides a lot of important information influencing human behavior," says lead researcher Ilona Croy of the Smell and Taste Clinic at the University of Dresden Medical School in Germany. "Olfactory cues can transport emotional information, are critical for detecting edible food and help to prevent microbial threats. We were curious how people who are not able to smell lead their lives."
To find out, Croy and her colleagues interviewed 32 people with ICA along with 36 age-matched "controls" (people who could smell just fine). Questions ranged from how often they scorched food to how often they showered to the number of sexual partners they'd had in their lifetime. After tallying the results, researchers found people with ICA had a slight increase in social insecurity (i.e., they worried more about social situations and their own body odor), an increased risk for depressive symptoms and an increased risk for household accidents, such as eating spoiled food or burning clothes while ironing.
Julie Solo, a 45-year-old international health worker from Durham, N.C., who was born without a sense of smell, says she read about the study's findings but doesn't believe she suffers from either depressive symptoms or an increase in social anxiety.
"The only down side is worrying about not smelling a fire," she says. "Although I did once have a boyfriend who told me my feet smelled. He was just joking around, though."
On the other hand, ICA sufferer Carol Tedesco, a 53-year-old historic shipwreck professional from Key West, Florida, says some of the findings definitely ring true for her.
"I live in the tropics and I'm very active and I usually shower three times a day," she says. "I'm always concerned I might not be fresh. Plus I'm more dedicated to emptying the cat box and keeping it clean. You don't want someone to walk into your house and have it not smell good and not know it."
While approximately one-fifth of the population have an impaired sense of smell, ICA affects only about 1 in 5,000 to 10,000 people, says Croy.
"In most ICA patients, there is no olfactory bulb, meaning they are missing the most significant part of the olfactory system in the brain," she says.
While people with ICA can still taste, Croy says they won't "perceive flavors as they are perceived via the sense of smell."
The inability to smell may also affect their sex life. The new study found people with ICA had about half the number of sexual partners as those with no smell impairment.
"This might be related to the enhanced social insecurity," says Croy. "However, it could also be that they are less responsive to odorous sexual stimuli."
While Croy's research points to the downfalls of ICA, those without a sense of smell quickly point to the upside of their condition.
"I can go into places that most people won't go into, like Porta-Potties," says Angel. "People will come out gagging, but I'm okay."
Solo, who does a lot of work in developing countries, says her inability to smell is actually a boon.
"A friend came to visit me once and we went to a slum in Nairobi where they were doing garbage cleanup," she says. "I guess the smell of a large garbage dump in a slum in Nairobi was pretty awful. My friend was dying, but I was just fine."
Tedesco, too, has found that her ICA has certain benefits.
"I can drive by where a skunk has been run over and not even notice," she says. "And my partner says I'm great to live with because I can't smell when he breaks wind. To me, it's just a sound."
Related:
Sniff test: Living without a sense of smell
Phantom smells may be a sign of trouble
Your cilantro love -- or hate -- may be genetic
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Leave a Comment:
Check: Were any of those anostic people overweight? My guess is that one way to deal with obesity is to check your sense of smell at the door; as food will lose much of its enchantment. When Pfizer came out with a zinc spray that unfortunately for them deleted permanently the sense of smell, my positive nature led me to think, 'what could be good about that? ' and I wonder if any of those people who lost it were obese and immediately began eating less. I bet it will be an item within six months, as I've been commenting with this thought for a few weeks and somebody always steals my brilliant ideas and makes a fortune with them. Just remember, you saw it here: "NONOSE" weight loss nasal spray!
There has been the opposite argument too - that when the sense of smell decreases with age, for example, people start eating more in an attempt to reach the same level of smell from foods as they used to have. And this leads to gaining weight. So, the loss of the sense of smell does not necessarily translates into a loss of appetite, just the opposite - people may strive more to get the same stimulation as before. There have already been studies connecting certain smells to weight loss, or claiming that people eat less if food smells more, etc. See books by Alan Hirsch (Smell and Taste Foundation) and a product of theirs, Sensa, for weight loss.
It is my experience and understanding that many people satisfy their appetite partially in the process of cooking. The aromas they inhale through that process quash part of their desire to eat and they eat less. It works for me.
I can smell anything and everything, and my middle child, a daughter, has inherited this. To us, smells are muzak, always present. I had a career in air pollution control until I left to raise kids, it was my dream job. It was part of the job to recognize different odors and to categorize them as nuisance or not. Odor is important for safety reasons, too, there are certain smells that mean danger.
I went to a conference on odors several years ago. A presenter tried to come up with a method to measure odor strength, he came up with units called "decismells", a word play on "decibels" for sound measurement. There really is no good way to determine which odors are unpleasant to everyone, it's too subjective.
OMG!! Thank God for our senses!! If we didn't have a sense of smell we probably died eating raw meat or something, haha
I have a less sensitive sense of smell due to having working in the boating industry and with explosives...
My Thai wife is very sensitive to smells and is also a great cook...
She takes numerous showers, as most Thai's, to keep cool, not necessarily to keep extra clean. She consistently wants me to join her... Ha! Ha!
She says most Ferangs, smell bad. Due to their diets containing wheat & tomatoes, where theirs is usually based on rice and fish...
All the ladies, smell great to me and I can also eat the spicy foods will few negative effects... Ha! Ha!
I, too, have no sense of smell, but also have no sense of taste. While the sense of smell might be that double-edge sword (you can change the cat litter with no problem but you don't know when you over-do it with aftershave), not having a sense of taste also has its advantages and disadvantages. To me, textures are what I "notice" the most, and I can "sense" some very spicy or sour foods, although I can't actually "taste" them (I guess I get some sort of a physical reaction in my mouth or throat, which is better than no reaction at all). This lends itself to me eating odd combinations of foods at the same time, at least according to my wife, because the various textures are what I enjoy; she says the combination of flavors would make most people throw up in their mouths. On the positive side, she said I could be a great participant on one of the reality shows where you have to eat disgusting foods for prizes...assuming the textures are palatable.
I can really identify with this article. I have always had a very limited sense of smell. Perfume can only be smelled from the opened container. If blindfolded, I would be unable to find the perfume counter in Macys or the food court in the mall. Skunk (smells) pleasant to me or nothing at all. Although I can taste many foods, most food is all about texture. I cannot detect smoke from a fire or an open grill, never mind detecting burned food on top of the stove or in the oven. When I cook, I stay in the kitchen or right at the grill.
My Mom told me how when she was growing up there was a guy with no sense of smell. He worked by cleaning out outhouses.
Loss of the sense of smell is part of Alzheimer's. In fact, smelling a wedge of lemon is a home test anyone can do.
I can identify, I am 63 years old and have no sense of smell. My daughter tried to relate smell to me using colors. it is hard to imagine something you have never experienced.
As a young boy, when people said they smelled something, I was intrigued, as I could sense nothing. As I grew up I thought perhaps that smell was a learned sense, and that somehow, I never learned the sense of smell. My next guess about this mystery called smell, was that it was a hoax. Then, when I was in high school, I was in a social situatiuon where it became evident to me that smell was indeed a sense.
Over the years I have been in a number of household cleaning situations where my wife or daughters have walked into a bathroom I was cleaning, and rushed me outside. I am more careful these days.
I don't have much of an apetite, and I attribute this to the fact that I have few queues remninding me that I should eat.