The Loss Of The Sense Of Smell Is Called Anosmia

Held on the last Saturday in April, National Sense of Smell Day is an annual observation sponsored by the Sense of Smell Institute.

National Sense of Smell Day is focused on how the smell plays a significant role in daily life and how it interacts with other senses (particularly taste.)

• The Sense of Smell Institute is the research and education division of The Fragrance Foundation.
• Interesting things that this institute has managed to unveil is the fact that no two people smell odors in quite the same way.
• As the day progresses your sense of smell gets stronger, with the evening representing our strongest sense of smell.  During the day our sight is the most important sense in identifying dangers. At night, it could be a scent on the wind that saved our ancestors.
• Vitamin A is not, as purported, good for our eyesight by and large, but is actually vitally important for our sense of smell. A lack of it can actually cause Anosmia! (An odd little word that means ‘loss of a sense of smell’.)
• People can detect at least one trillion distinct scents.
• Scent cells are renewed every 30 to 60 days.
• Amazingly, our sense of smell is so developed it has been discovered that we can smell fear, disgust, happiness and even sexual arousal on other people.
• Women have a better sense of smell than men.
• Like fingerprints, every person has their own distinct odor.
• Dogs have nearly 44 times more scent cells than humans.
• When pregnant, a woman’s sense of smell becomes heightened and hypersensitive. It’s thought that this heightened sense of smell could be the reason behind the strange food cravings of pregnant women.
• It has been discovered that we remember smells for much longer than sights, sounds, tastes and feelings. Amazingly, people can remember smells with a 65% accuracy after one year, whilst visual recall is only 50/50 after a quarter of the time.
• Smell is the first sense to develop, with unborn babies enjoying fully-formed and functioning smell. This sense then continues to play a major role in our early development, with the smell of crayons routinely noted as one of our earliest memories from childhood.
• To reach the pinnacle of the perfume profession, perfumers must successfully identify at least 250 different scents as part of their induction test. This difficult initiation is why there are only 50 fully-fledged perfumers (also known as Noses) in the world.
• Like the five different tastes (sweet, sour, salty, bitter, umami), some scientists believe there are seven different main smells – musky, putrid, pungent, camphoraceous (similar to mothballs), ethereal, floral and minty. It is thought that all scents are a mixture of these seven basic ingredients.
• Your nose isn’t just for smelling. Air moves in through your nose to your lungs. Tiny hairs in your nose trap dust and pollen so it doesn’t go in your lungs.
• Your nose warms air before it heads to your lungs.
• The human brain can process roughly 10,000 different smells in an area the size of a postage stamp.
• Approximately 80 percent of what we taste is actually qualified by our sense of smell. This is why our taste is diminished during a cold or flu

Sources:

National Day Calendar

Days of the Year

Every Day Health

Parks Candles

Easy Science for Kids

Clean Link