Our sense of smell is the topic of this week’s blog. This was prompted by an addition to my home. A friend gave me a diffuser that permeates my apartment with the fragrance of a sea breeze with lemon and lavender.  Every few days I invert the reeds in the oil to renew the scent.

The Importance of Smelling

Dogs have keener noses than we have. This enables them to detect scents that are very old as well as those that are under water! However, we can still be thankful that our noses can sense almost 20,000 different smells, each with about ten levels of intensity. They warn us about dangers — something burning on the stove, a gas leak, or a skunk nearby. A foul smell also informs us when food, like milk, is spoiled.

Losing your sense of smell due to a cold or Covid, is a serious deprivation. It hurts the quality of your life. You are cut off from a bevy of pleasures, including a savory meal because smell and taste are entwined.

How We Detect Smells

The mechanism for smelling is another ingenious product of the Creator. Our olfactory system consists of thousands of sensory cells in our nasal cavity that detect odors and produce an electrical signal that travels to the olfactory bulb that relays it to our brain through special nerves. Odor molecules also may enter along a path connecting the roof of our throat to the nose. A stuffed nose blocks this path. The part of the brain that interprets these odors is linked to a part that processes emotions and memories.

Good Smells

Odors can release feel-good hormones like dopamine. They also evoke happy memories. The pungent odor of a permanent emanating from our Village salon takes me back home to my mother who gave Toni permanents to neighbors and us daughters. So does the smell of freshly baked bread that reminds me of her mouthwatering loaves and rolls.

Just thinking of an odor, we can imagine it. Because of our noses, we can enjoy these pleasant smells:

Food: an orange, bacon sizzling in a pan, fresh bread, apple cider, pizza, coffee and toast

In nature: Pine trees, a bonfire, a newly mowed lawn, flowers like lilacs and lilies. By the way, flowers have scents to attract bees and butterflies so they are pollinated in addition to making our world more pleasant.

New things: a new bar of soap, new books, new car

Other: perfume, incense, scented candles, talcum powder, hand lotion, shampoo

I especially like certain fragrances. One is occurring now because we are in the season of autumn, dead leaves fill the air with a musky aroma. Then there is the earthy scent of rain on dry soil that has its own name: petrichor.  

When I have trouble sleeping, I spray lavender oil on my pillow. This scent’s calming power promotes sleep. As a child, I liked the smell of our garage.

Impaired Smelling

Loss of smell is called anosmia. Another affliction is parosmia in which the perception of odors is distorted, for example, a pleasant odor may smell foul. Then too there is the problem of phantosmia, sensing an odor that isn’t there.

Doctors test people’s sense of smell by using a booklet with beads filled with odors. Patients scratch each page and identify the odor. If you lose your sense of smell, it’s possible to restore it by retraining  your brain and sniffing strong scents like peanut butter and peppermint and recalling what they smelled like.

A Poem

One of the poems In my book of prayers and fingerplays for little children titled Heartbeat of Faith, is this one:

My Nose

With my nose I smell things like these:

Bacon, popcorn, and Christmas trees,

Babies, roses, and apple pie.

And this is probably the reason why

My nose has a real important place—

Right in the middle of my face.              

For Fun

I couldn’t resist posting this:

What are your favorite fragrances?

What smell triggers a memory for you?

Yes, we are wonderfully made. Here is a moving version of Psalm 139 which celebrates this fact: