Dr. Michael Leon, PhD, Professor Emeritus of Neurobiology and Behaviour at the Charlie Dunlop School of Biological Sciences, shares a surprising link between smell and your well-being.
It is a human tendency to take things for granted, especially your sense of smell. But who would have thought that sniffing flowers, enjoying food or catching a whiff of something pleasant can actually tell you something more important about your health?
In a video post shared on 17 October by Dr. Sanjay Bhojraj, board-certified interventional cardiologist on Instagram, Dr. Michael Leon, PhD, Professor Emeritus of Neurobiology and Behaviour at the Charlie Dunlop School of Biological Sciences, shares a surprising link between smell and your well-being.
Sense Of Smell Can Predict How Long You Will Live
The Neurobiology shares, “By the time you reach middle age, your all-cause mortality, which means whether you live or whether you die can be accurately predicted by your ability to smell things.”
Explaning how your olfactory system (a sensory system for the sense of smell) has a direct link to the brain’s memory and emotional centres, he continued, “It has a great deal of impact when you lose it. And also when you amplify it. When you smell a pleasant odour, it activates the cerebellum and increases sniffing. For example, when you smell a rose, you naturally take a deep sniff.”
Bad Or Disgusting Odour Can Affect Your Memory, Emotions And Brain
Dr. Leon notes that subtle response not only affects your breathing but also your memory, emotions and brain. He concluded, “When you encounter a bad or disgusting odour, your body reflexively stops all respiration. You instinctively avoid breathing it in. The olfactory system is just much more powerful than most people realise.”
Backing the expert findings, a 2014 study by the National Institute of Health (NIH) titled “Olfactory Dysfunction Predicts 5-Year Mortality in Older Adults” reveals that how well you smell can actually predict how likely you may live. The NIH study states, “Olfactory function is thus one of the strongest predictors of 5-year mortality and may serve as a bellwether for slowed cellular regeneration or as a marker of cumulative toxic environmental exposures. This finding provides clues for pinpointing an underlying mechanism related to a fundamental component of the aging process.”
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