Losing Your Sense of Smell May Be a Death Omen
If food no longer smells as good as it once did or perfume doesn’t smell quite as strong, you might only have five years left to live, according to a new study, published in the journal PLOS ONE. Researchers from the University of Chicago found that people who lost their sense of smell were six times more likely to die over the next five years – though much more research is needed to confirm the finding.
The researchers put more than 3,000 men and women between the ages of 57 and 85 through a smell test, where they were asked to identify various scents. Most got four out of five correct, which indicated a normal sense of smell, whereas 3.5 percent got none or one right. Five years later, 430 of the participants have died, and those who failed the test were six times more likely to die.
Losing your sense of smell wasn’t the cause of death – most died from cancer or heart disease. But experts say the loss of smell could be an omen. “We think that loss of sense of smell is like the canary in the coal mine,” study researcher Jayant Pinto, a sinus and nasal disease specialist at the University of Chicago said, according to the Daily Mail. “It doesn’t directly cause death, but it’s a harbinger, an early warning that something has gone badly wrong.”
No comments:
Post a Comment