Unless you’re anosmic, which does have its downsides.
As regular readers of your Back Page scribbler’s weekly musings might be aware, your ageing scribe suffers from anosmia.
A byproduct of a successful operation to remove nasal polyps, the resulting loss of a sense of smell has always seemed a small price to pay for the restoration of the ability to breathe through one’s nostrils.
While hardly a paid-up member of the Stoics Society, your correspondent likes to think he has borne the affliction with quiet forbearance, considering it more of a novelty indisposition than a life-changing disability.
Until now, that is!
According to research released this week, we have discovered that people with anosmia not only “breathe differently” to other folks, our lack of a sense of smell is “associated with diverse deleterious outcomes, culminating in reduced life expectancy”.
Publishing in the journal Nature Communications, boffins from Israel’s Weizmann Institute of Science, say their study also shows how anosmia could be associated with depression, personal isolation and emotional blunting.
How so?
It’s all to do with a practice the researchers label “exploratory sniffing”.
As part of the study, a group of more than 50 people – 21 with a sense of smell and 31 without – had their breathing patterns monitored and assessed over 24 hours using a wearable device that measured nasal airflow.
While all participants breathed at the same overall rate, participants with a sense of smell had added small inhalation peaks within every breath, totalling about 240 more inhalation peaks per hour.
These additional inhalation peaks did not occur when participants were placed in an odourless room, suggesting that this difference was related to their sense of smell and may reflect “exploratory sniffing”. Participants with anosmia did not conduct this exploratory sniffing and had shifts in their overall respiratory pattern, both when awake and asleep, the researchers said.
The authors suggest this change in breathing pattern in anosmic individuals might result in altered brain activity, which could be linked to some mental and physical health conditions observed in those without a sense of smell, particularly depression and anxiety.
To be fair, a propensity towards anxiety and depression has not been observed in all anosmiacs and these observable breathing variations are an association only, not a causation.
Having said that, your correspondent is also a suggestible individual. So even if he wasn’t feeling a trifle fraught and down in the dumps beforehand, he is certainly is now he’s read this research!
Spray fragrant lemon-scented story tips in the direction of penny@medicalrepublic.com.au.
