Restoring Scents
Faulty sniffers may get help
Imagine having to spend practically your whole life without ever smelling a thing. This is the story for many people including one woman named Betty (not her real name). Betty, however, was one of the lucky ones. At the age of fifty-one, Betty smelled an orange for the first time in her life. Because of her olfactory problem, Betty had never been able to receive the same sense of smell that many of us have today.
There are around 25 million people with an olfactory problem in this country today. Many of these people are deprived of good olfaction which can lead to dangerous situations. Without good olfaction, a person could be unable to identify gas leaks or spoiled food, which can both cause great harm.
Jason Feifer, an associate editor at Boston magazine, had a similar problem to Betty’s. However, it wasn’t until college, when his girlfriend constantly asked his opinion on foods, that he realized he had an olfaction problem. You may ask, how could you know that you can’t smell what you are eating? Well the truth is that Feifer’s taste buds and color helped him know what he was eating. However, if he was blindfolded, Fiefer could have never told the difference between mint and peanut butter-cup ice cream. When Fiefer saw what he was eating, his mind was able to “fill in some sensation that helps [him] differentiate between foods.” Luckily, Feifer was tested negative for a brain tumor- whose symptoms often include smell loss.
The Olfactory system is the only one of the human senses whose nerves from the brain makes contact with the outside world from inside the nose. An Olfaction problem can often occur during head trauma in which the nerves are severed or, respiratory infections and allergies. The most common causes of smell loss in middle age are chronic inflammation of the nose due to infections and obstructions by growths called polyps.
Most Olfactory cells in the nasal lining live for a while then die when the tumor necrosis factors (TNF’s) give their command. Growth factors then tell stem cells to wake up and divide to create new scent-sensing cells. In May, D.C. Henkin, at the Experimental Biology Meeting, found that the poorer an individuals sense of smell, the higher ratio of these death signaling agents to growth factors in the persons mucus. Henkin reported new data that treated patients with a drug that inhibits the breakdown of cyclic-AMP and cyclic-GMP, pivotal signal messenger compounds. Although 13 patients responded, Henkin warns that there can be a long time before patients see the difference.
Another treatment that has been looked into is Vitamin A therapy. Although it proved to be very successful in animals, many doctors warned that too much Vitamin A could be toxic, especially to a fetus. However, nothing has been found to work well to fix this problem. Scientists are now trying something along the lines of sniff training in Germany. People are tested by having to sniff all different kinds of things daily. Nancy E. Rawson of the Monell Center thinks that the treatment may help the brain pick up scent signals from what had been olfactory noise. While Rawson takes this approach, other scientists are trying to grow “nasal” epithelium stem cells in the lab. However, the stem cells do not grow well in the lab and hardly ever recognize the donor’s nasal tissue.
I think that this article opened my eyes to how much we take smell for granted. The most interesting thing that I thought was in this article was the story about Jason Fiefer. He knew the difference between foods when he saw them, but blindfolded, he could tell nothing. This shows how amazing the brain works that it is able to make up for the loss of one sense and use its other abilities to almost replace it.
Stephanie Kariuki
Imagine having to spend practically your whole life without ever smelling a thing. This is the story for many people including one woman named Betty (not her real name). Betty, however, was one of the lucky ones. At the age of fifty-one, Betty smelled an orange for the first time in her life. Because of her olfactory problem, Betty had never been able to receive the same sense of smell that many of us have today.
There are around 25 million people with an olfactory problem in this country today. Many of these people are deprived of good olfaction which can lead to dangerous situations. Without good olfaction, a person could be unable to identify gas leaks or spoiled food, which can both cause great harm.
Jason Feifer, an associate editor at Boston magazine, had a similar problem to Betty’s. However, it wasn’t until college, when his girlfriend constantly asked his opinion on foods, that he realized he had an olfaction problem. You may ask, how could you know that you can’t smell what you are eating? Well the truth is that Feifer’s taste buds and color helped him know what he was eating. However, if he was blindfolded, Fiefer could have never told the difference between mint and peanut butter-cup ice cream. When Fiefer saw what he was eating, his mind was able to “fill in some sensation that helps [him] differentiate between foods.” Luckily, Feifer was tested negative for a brain tumor- whose symptoms often include smell loss.
The Olfactory system is the only one of the human senses whose nerves from the brain makes contact with the outside world from inside the nose. An Olfaction problem can often occur during head trauma in which the nerves are severed or, respiratory infections and allergies. The most common causes of smell loss in middle age are chronic inflammation of the nose due to infections and obstructions by growths called polyps.
Most Olfactory cells in the nasal lining live for a while then die when the tumor necrosis factors (TNF’s) give their command. Growth factors then tell stem cells to wake up and divide to create new scent-sensing cells. In May, D.C. Henkin, at the Experimental Biology Meeting, found that the poorer an individuals sense of smell, the higher ratio of these death signaling agents to growth factors in the persons mucus. Henkin reported new data that treated patients with a drug that inhibits the breakdown of cyclic-AMP and cyclic-GMP, pivotal signal messenger compounds. Although 13 patients responded, Henkin warns that there can be a long time before patients see the difference.
Another treatment that has been looked into is Vitamin A therapy. Although it proved to be very successful in animals, many doctors warned that too much Vitamin A could be toxic, especially to a fetus. However, nothing has been found to work well to fix this problem. Scientists are now trying something along the lines of sniff training in Germany. People are tested by having to sniff all different kinds of things daily. Nancy E. Rawson of the Monell Center thinks that the treatment may help the brain pick up scent signals from what had been olfactory noise. While Rawson takes this approach, other scientists are trying to grow “nasal” epithelium stem cells in the lab. However, the stem cells do not grow well in the lab and hardly ever recognize the donor’s nasal tissue.
I think that this article opened my eyes to how much we take smell for granted. The most interesting thing that I thought was in this article was the story about Jason Fiefer. He knew the difference between foods when he saw them, but blindfolded, he could tell nothing. This shows how amazing the brain works that it is able to make up for the loss of one sense and use its other abilities to almost replace it.
Stephanie Kariuki
posted by Stephanie K @ 8:41 PM
2 Comments:
I agree with Stephanie that we often take our sense of smell for granted. Without this often overlooked sense, we would be in danger of spoiled foods and harmful substances. I have heard that the sense of smell and sense of taste are very closely linked. I find it interesting that when the olfactory nerve is prohibited and the sense of smell hindered, the brain can use the sense of sight to provide sensations to identify different foods. If the person has lacked a sense of smell for his or her entire life, would the loss of a sense of taste be more dramatic? If one is never able to identify foods by a sense of smell or taste, and no memory of the taste is stored in the brain, then how would the brain be able to use the sense of sight to provide sensations? I also found the sniff training interesting because it emphasizes how well the brain can retain input from the outside world, even to the point of repairing olfactory problems.
I didn't realize that 25 million people have a problem with their Olfactory system, leading to a loss of the sense of smell. We really do take our sense of smell for granted. Not only are you susceptible to harmful substances, such as spoiled food, you cannot experience the different smells that one might on a walk though a park or at a sporting event. This article was very intriguing and had a lot of interesting treatments that scientists have come up with. I think that people would be surprised how different their lives would be without the sense of smell.
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