What smells? Anosmia & Olfactory Training

What smells?

For a number of our clients, nothing has for weeks or months now due to recent illness.

As we are seeing more clients dealing with diminished or absent sense of smell post-Covid, we wanted to pass along some ideas that have been around (even before 2020 came along) for addressing anosmia, the absence of the sense of smell. One of them that is becoming more widely known is olfactory training which involves taking time twice daily to deeply inhale a variety of highly concentrated aromas for 20 seconds at a time in a focused way, engaging your memory of these fragrances. Essential oils lend themselves especially well to this practice because they are so highly concentrated. For many years experts have specifically recommended pure eucalyptus, lemon, clove and rose essential oils for this purpose. We would add peppermint oil to the list as well due to its strength, familiarity, chemical profile and the positive feedback we have received from clients.

Nancy Rawson, Cellular Biologist and director of the Monell Institute at the University of Philadelphia, in an interview with AbScent (https://abscent.org/) says,

“...Smell training is not a far-fetched notion. It is based on years of learning how the olfactory and nervous systems work, and specifically, how nerve cells — and especially olfactory nerve cells — are generated or maintained. Our understanding of smell training is also based on our understanding of how the brain makes new connections and reinforces existing connections. We know that using a neural pathway reinforces and strengthens that pathway. And so, not only is smell training helping the olfactory receptor cells, but it also is helping to create pathways in the brain that will be better able to receive, interpret and remember the information that it is getting.”

For more information see this article on olfactory training.

CranioSacral Therapy & Lymphatic Face Massage

Other options we are hearing feedback on temporarily restoring/improving clients' ability to smell is facial focused CranioSacral Therapy and lymphatic face massage/drainage. While we have not seen many studies specifically on these two yet, they both make sense physiologically (https://elifesciences.org/articles/44278) and are working for some of our clients.

Video Resource

Here is a video on how to perform self lymphatic drainage, it is certainly worth a try!

P.S. We can help you with the essential oils too!