How well you can smell could be a sign of overall brain health.
A growing body of research suggests that the two are strongly linked, though researchers are just starting to figure out how and why.
In a recent study, researchers found that a simple smell test may predict your chance of having dementia.
“Ability to smell is a window into parts of the brain related to core functions, like pleasure, emotion, and memory,” says Jayant Pinto, MD, author of the study and an otolaryngologist and head and neck surgeon at University of Chicago Medicine.
The smell test, he adds, allows doctors “to see, a little earlier, a sign that problems are happening.”
In the study, researchers visited the homes of more than 2,900 adults ages 57 to 85 to test how well they could recognize five different odors: peppermint, fish, orange, rose, and leather.
Five years later, researchers followed up with the older adults to find out if any of them had gotten a diagnosis of dementia since taking the smell test.
Those who couldn’t identify at least four of the five odors on the test were twice as likely as others to have dementia 5 years later.
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