The ability to distinguish between odours declines steadily with age, and age-related smell loss can have a substantial impact on lifestyle and wellbeing for the elderly.<\/p>\n
\u201cSmells impact how foods taste. Many people with smell deficits lose the joy of eating. They make poor food choices, get less nutrition. They can\u2019t tell when foods have spoiled or detect odours that signal danger, like a gas leak or smoke. They may not notice lapses in personal hygiene,\u201d said Jayant M. Pinto, MD, an associate professor of surgery at the University of Chicago who specializes in the genetics and treatment of olfactory and sinus disease.<\/p>\n
\u201cOf all human senses,\u201d he said, \u201csmell is the most undervalued and underappreciated\u2014until it\u2019s gone.\u201d<\/p>\n
And for older adults, being unable to identify scents is also a strong predictor of death within five years, according to a study. Thirty-nine percent of study subjects who failed a simple smelling test died during that period, compared to 19 percent of those with moderate smell loss and just 10 percent of those with a healthy sense of smell.<\/p>\n
The hazards of smell loss were \u201cstrikingly robust,\u201d the researchers note, above and beyond most chronic diseases. Olfactory dysfunction was better at predicting mortality than a diagnosis of heart failure, cancer or lung disease. Only severe liver damage was a more powerful predictor of death. For those already at high risk, lacking a sense of smell more than doubled the probability of death.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe think loss of the sense of smell is like the canary in the coal mine,\u201d said Pinto, the study\u2019s lead author. \u201cIt doesn\u2019t directly cause death, but it\u2019s a harbinger, an early warning that something has gone badly wrong, that damage has been done. Our findings could provide a useful clinical test, a quick and inexpensive way to identify patients most at risk.\u201d<\/p>\n
The study was part of the National Social Life, Health and Aging Project (NSHAP), the first in-home study of social relationships and health in a large, nationally representative sample of men and women ages 57 to 85.\nUniversity of Chicago Medicine and Biological Sciences<\/link>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The ability to distinguish between odours declines steadily with age, and age-related smell loss can have a substantial impact on lifestyle and wellbeing for the elderly. \u201cSmells impact how foods taste. Many people with smell deficits lose the joy of eating. They make poor food choices, get less nutrition. They can\u2019t tell when foods have […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[35],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/clinlabint.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1540"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/clinlabint.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/clinlabint.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/clinlabint.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/clinlabint.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1540"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/clinlabint.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1540\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/clinlabint.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1540"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/clinlabint.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1540"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/clinlabint.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1540"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}