Blog #8
The importance of losing your sense of smell
One of the first senses to be impacted by dementia, can be your sense of smell.
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One of the first senses to be impacted
One of the first senses to be impacted by dementia, can be your sense of smell. It can go quietly, largely unnoticed, until one day that person may not smell smoke from the tea-towel they left on the hob. For safety reasons, this is important for those living on their own once diagnosed but I would like to explain the importance of this to the rest of us and take you back a bit before that point to consider how important losing our sense of smell can be.
One of the first senses to be impacted by dementia, can be your sense of smell. It can go quietly, largely unnoticed, until one day that person may not smell smoke from the tea-towel they left on the hob. For safety reasons, this is important for those living on their own once diagnosed but I would like to explain the importance of this to the rest of us and take you back a bit before that point to consider how important losing our sense of smell can be.
The importance of self-care
As a family carer now for my husband, I am a fervent believer in the importance of self-care and regularly make use of Aromatherapy in various ways to help keep me relaxed and as stress-free as possible (as much as any of us can be in the modern world in which we live). I often have Aromatherapy Massages and use steam diffusers at home, dispensing an array of calming, soothing, scents such as lavender, frankincense and sandalwood. As I type this, I have a focussed mixture puffing away from the diffuser on my desk, consisting of a blend of rosemary with a touch of peppermint, as it helps me think and concentrate.
Engaging your sense of smell has an effect on your brain
So during a recent Aromatherapy massage with Claire, a local Aromatherapy Massage Therapist in Wantage, I was discussing the benefits of different scents whilst doing different types of activities. Claire kindly shared with me an article by Hana Tisserand of the Tisserand Institute, that discussed the effect of essential oils on the brains of perfumers. There has been some research (Delon-Martin et al 2013) that showed that “engaging your sense of smell on a regular basis does have a profound impact on our brains, and structural differences were observed between the brains of trained professionals (perfumers) and untrained people to the point of certain regions having a significantly larger volume. We’re finding more and more evidence telling us that regular exposure to scent has a significant impact on our brain health in general, and specifically on our cognitive function. This is important given that cognitive decline is one of the biggest emerging public health challenges”.
Keep your brain healthy
So going back to what I said at the start of this Blog, one of the first senses to be impacted by dementia is our sense of smell. This article got me thinking – what if we kept our sense of smell limbered-up by using essential oil aromas on a regular basis throughout our lives, in exactly the same way that we keep our bodies and muscles healthy with regular exercise, and do Brain Training regularly to keep our brains healthy too? Using diffusers to perfume the air around us, getting our brains used to flexing with different scents, that may help this extremely important sense to remain healthy and energetic for longer, thereby warding off the very early stages of dementia?
Aromatherapy
As far as I am concerned, it is a great way to relax or energise ourselves, and I for one will continue to use Aromatherapy to help my surroundings stimulate, soothe or relax me for the foreseeable future! I will also be inviting an Aromatherapy Massage Therapist to come and talk to us about Aromatherapy in self-care, at Hungerford Dementia Café in 2026.