I have a friend, let's call him Jesus, who after ten years fell from a wall and hit him hard on the head that led him to the hospital, where he took some stitches and examined him carefully to rule out major injuries.Apparently it was fine, and it would be several years before he realized that he did not perceive odors, that in the coup he had lost one of the apparently innocuous senses with which we connected to the world: the sense of smell; loss that the medicine calls anosmia.
Thirty years later, after overcoming a bad cold, Jesus discovered that his ability to smell the world had returned, and since then no He has stopped celebrating it in various ways, for example, doing cooking courses and experiencing new dishes with smells and flavors whenever he can and his financial resources allow it.
This is not the case with Boak Duncan, native of Leeds (United Kingdom), that after suffering a serious head injury, also due to a fall as a seven-year-old boy, he lost his sense of smell forever.Second Duncan living without smelling is like seeing " life through a mirror ”.
Cu I'm having anosmia, and maybe you've been through it because of a very bad cold, the food tastes like nothing, because 80% of what we taste comes from smell .Now imagine a world in the that you cannot feel good or bad smells: you could eat a food that is in decomposition, or not smell the danger of a fire approaching where you are, or the smell of perfume or colony of the loved one.
Causes and effects of anosmia
In the cases we have mentioned, you already know that anosmia can be the result of an injury or manifest as a symptom of a cold, or sinusitis, as a side effect with the use of some medications, or it can also be a symptom of some neurological disease.
In addition to the loss of smell, anosmia can cause the affected person to distance himself from his social environment and eventually fall into depressive states.We must not forget that smells can rejoice or sadden us, and are strongly associated with memory.
Although it can be treated with surgery-especially when it is the result of a chronic infection or of a malformation in the nostrils-and with other treatments, when it is the result of a head injury or a neurological disease, anosmia tends to last a lifetime.
Duncan and the fifth sense
Boak Duncan is not alone in the United Kingdom, where it is estimated that there are three million people with anosmia , and is determined to transmit his taste for cooking, so he has created a group called Fifth Sense , with the purpose of getting excited about food, and the pleasure of living, those affected by this disease, laudable initiative that we celebrate from Science Daily Online.
If you liked this topic, read the article about the petricor, to which the wet earth smells, a smell that for many people is the most pleasant in the world.
Images: Brian Auer , Sira Hanchana , Scott Richards , Jano De Cesare
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