Olfaction
“Smell is a potent wizard that transports you across thousands of miles and all the years you have lived. The odors of fruits waft me to my southern home, to my childhood frolics in the peach orchard. Other odors, instantaneous and fleeting, cause my heart to dilate joyously or contract with remembered grief. Even as I think of smells, my nose is full of scents that start awake sweet memories of summers gone and ripening fields far away.” The human sense of smell has a powerful effect on our basic emotions, as eloquently described by Helen Keller [1]
- Keller H. The World I Live in. Cosimo Inc.; New York, NY, USA: 2009. p. 66. [Google Scholar]
Generally speaking, humans feel good when all of our senses are in balance. Sensory experiences in the first years of a child’s life are critical, they help them build a bundle of emotions and sensations that give them the tools to grow and develop in harmony.
The olfactory sense is the first sense to be developed in utero (in the fetus), and it matures by week 25. The fetus swims in a bath of amniotic liquid and swallows 4-5 quarts of flavored water a day. Newborns have a sharp sense of smell, they can smell odors that we are no longer able to smell. Newborns smell their mother first, and they associate her odor with security. Newborns “see” with their noses and they react to odors through motor, respiratory, and cardiac rhythms.
Very young children instinctively use their nose and smell everything they come across. Children between ages 1 ½ and 2 ½ smell and anything they can get their hands on, making them perfect candidates for olfactory training carried out in a manner that is entertaining to the children.
You can develop your olfactory perceptions by smelling food and eating food cooked with aromatic plants such as herbs, spices, vegetables, etc. When you associate a scent to a taste and to the visual picture of the food, you record it in your memory. Over time, you can build a library of the smells and tastes of various ingredients. you can also build your library by visualizing smells and being inspired by them. Your olfactory sense can diminish if it’s not used much, indeed most of humanity has lost the olfactory sense.
Cooking is like composing a perfume or piece of music, you can make a single note or a chord.
Develop your skills of observation, verbalization capacity, and the capacity to name scents, ability to communicate feelings and emotions caused by smells.
Smell has always been an important sense in our survival, our ancestors used their sense of smell to recognize dangerous situations and communicate with others. Although most of humanity ignores the sense of smell and misses out on so many wondrous aromas the world has to offer, we still use it for basic survival when we recognize the smell of gas leaks, smoke, and spoiled food.
olfactory sense reduction diminishes one’s ability to appreciate foods, perfumes, fresh flowers, and many other pleasures that the world has to offer. This can lead to stress, irritability, and an indefinable lack of security.
The progression of olfactory training by age should be entertaining for young children, educational for primary schools, and scientific for secondary schools.
Anosmia is a total failure of olfaction
Hyposmia is a reduction of olfaction
Dysosmia is a distortion of normal olfaction
Presbyosmia refers to the symptoms of aging and olfactory loss (diminution of mucus secretion, epithelium thickness, and atrophy of olfactory bulb
The human nose has 400 different types of olfactory receptors. Each receptor is paired with a matching olfactory gene in that person’s DNA. Humans have about 900 genes that can code olfactory receptors, making it possible to detect up to 10,000 different odors. Compare this to the tongue, which has 5 receptors (sweet, salty, sour, bitter, umami), and the eyes, which have three types of receptors (blue, green, red).