We are always very attentive to the smells that surround us. And we react when a smell arrives in our nostrils that sends us into alarm. If we smell gas or burning, we have learned to act quickly.
There are, however, cases in which hearing certain smells is a slightly different alarm bell. Beware of these smells, if you smell them you could be in danger.
Phantosmia, the phantom smells
Well yes, the smells we are talking about today are smells that, in reality, do not exist. These are precisely called phantom odors.
Sometimes they can be very unpleasant and in this case one suffers from subjective cacosmia.
There are several causes that lead us to smell these odors and some of them are serious. In fact, the perception of phantom odors has nothing to do with any external stimulus.
There is no real smell that gets to our nose. It is our brain and our nerve endings that make us smell these smells.
Phantosmia is also relatively common. According to a study published in the journal JAMA as many as 6% of Americans claimed to smell a phantom odor. Among these, the most affected women between 40 and 60 years. What are the causes of phantosmia?
Beware of these smells, if you smell them you could be in danger
Phantosmia often has a psychic origin and is linked to the brain. In fact, patients can suffer from it epileptics after a crisis.
Another category that complains of this symptom is that of those who have been bitten by ticks and have developed encephalitis.
Odors that don’t exist can also appear during hallucinatory crises or in Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s patients, as emerged from a 2009 study by Hirsch.
There are cases in which, however, one should not worry. These symptoms are, for example, quite common in pregnant women.
Brain cancer stands out among the causes of phantosmia. By affecting the areas of the olfactory perception of the temporal lobe, this disease makes us feel odors that are not there.
When you smell phantom odors for a long time it is therefore good to go to the doctor immediately. He will undergo the necessary tests to rule out a cause related to inflammation or infection and will help you discover the origins of this disorder.
