The study authors fitted participants with wearable devices that tracked air flow in and out of their noses over 24 hours of normal activity. They followed 31 people with self-reported normal olfaction and 21 participants born without a sense of smell (known as “congenital anosmics”). They found that both smellers and non-smellers had similar breathing rates, but that, while awake, smellers’ respiratory patterns included an average of 240 additional inhalation peaks per hour, compared with non-smellers.
— Read more in People who can’t smell breathe differently at Popular Science.
Eek! The article includes a startling comment correlating loss of ability to smell and higher mortality rate in older adults. (I say “older” but it is just barely older than I am now, and I am not old [cough].)
All the more reason for us to keep sniffing!
That’s been known for some time. Bear in mind the causation might go the other way…
Thanks, Robin! I think I am going to maintain my personal embrace of perfume sniffing as therapeutic! I had a very long travel day yesterday that fortunately was made more bearable by the excellent perfume shop in the Zurich airport —where the SA was happy to let me test away. They had possibly the whole Amouage line, Vilhelm — which I’d never before encountered in person — and six or seven other lines, some familiar to me and some not. On paper I liked Dear Polly and Poets of Berlin, but did not work my way through the whole line.
Oh fun!! And yes, it’s therapeutic in other ways for sure. And might help your brain, who knows?