Weird Facts With Your Sense of Smell

Your senses of sight, hearing, touch, smell, and taste are life, you could say. Smell is the most interesting of the senses and maybe the most misunderstood.

Importance of your olfactory memory

Of all your senses smell stays in your memory the longest. That is, there might be smells that have been with you since you were a toddler, or younger. As a newborn you learned the smell of your mother.

Why do smells stick around? It is essentially as a warning. Things you should stay away from have a bad smell -- unripe fruit, bad meat, human waste. Our distant ancestors could tell ripe from unripe from spoiled foods by smell -- something necessary to stay alive. What smells good to you? Maybe it's a roast in the oven, a nice glass of wine, or chocolate. We all have our weaknesses.  :)

Disappearing smells

Smells also disappear. Say you're washing windows with vinegar. It stinks, but after awhile you don't even notice. That's your brain telling you about the vinegar and now moving on in case there's something else you should know about. I've noticed this many times with wine. I'll smell strawberries and I'll keep smelling strawberries then they're gone in a couple minutes. That smell didn't disappear from the wine, your brain just turned it off.

You taste with your nose, not your mouth

Your taste buds are very basic and only good for the sensations of things like sweet, salty, and bitter. Aromas are picked up by sensors in the back of your nose and transferred to the brain for interpretation.

The overall flavors we get from food are really a combination of senses.

People with no sense of smell

A small percentage of people have no sense of smell. They can't tell if the milk is sour. It can be debilitating and even lead to things like depression.

A viral infection can also mess with your sense of smell, sometimes permanently.

Smelling as exercise 

People who have lost their sense of smell can get it back by smell training. This also can help old folks restore other mental skills. Smelling is brain exercise. So smelling a glass of wine is good for you!