Why a bad sense of smell could signal poor health

Likewise with age, hearing and vision can slowly deteriorate - study warns our ability to smell can too, Mustafa Qadri writes

Those with worse overall physical health had a worse sense of smell, study finds (Getty Images/iStockphoto)

Your sense of smell helps you appreciate the little things in life, like the aroma of your favourite foods or the fragrance of flowers.

It can also act as a warning system, alerting you to danger signals such as a gas leak, spoiled food, or a fire.

A loss in your sense of smell can harm your quality of life and can also be a sign of more serious health problems, a new study has warned.

Researchers at Johns Hopkins University in the US compared the olfactory abilities - relating to the sense of smell - of over 1,000 elderly people with a questionnaire and assessment of their health that produced a score for frailty.

The study found that those who were most vulnerable had worse standards of overall physical health and also had the worst sense of smell.

This led scientists to believe that a loss in smell could be a useful indicator of overall health in older people and the team has called for it to be included in future health check-ups.

Dr Nicholas Rowan, associate professor of head and neck surgery from John Hopkins University, and study author said this simple test could be used as a valuable tool to assess how fragile an elderly person could be.

He said: “We already do tests to assess how well we can see or hear, and it’s just as easy to conduct a simple smell test that takes only minutes, which could potentially be used as a valuable tool to assess the risk of frailty or unhealthy ageing.”

“For example, if someone flunks a smell test then maybe this patient needs to improve their nutrition or undergo a more detailed neurological or medical workup.”

Dr Nicholas Rowan (Johns Hopkins Medicine)

The study, published in the Journal of Gerontology, tested participants’ capabilities to detect an odour’s presence and name a scent.

These measures are called olfactory sensitivity and olfactory identification, respectively.

Dr Rowan stated that like vision and hearing, we can lose our sense of smell with age.

He added: “We found that both impaired olfactory identification and sensitivity functions are associated with frailty, which is interesting because it shows that it’s not just your ageing brain at work here, but it may also be something peripheral, like something at the level of your nose that is able to predict our impending frailty and death.”