A recent scientific study revealed symptoms related to the loss of the sense of smell, confirming that problems in the sense of smell are linked to a group of health problems.
The study, the details of which were published by the British newspaper The Guardian, showed that people born without a sense of smell breathe differently from those who do, pointing to ancient beliefs about this, because studies have linked its loss to depression. , a sense of personal isolation, and even more risk of… Early death.
Professor Noam Sobel, one of the authors of the study, said: “There is a perception that this awareness is not important at all, and yet if you lose it, a lot of bad things happen; “So it’s like a paradox.”
The research team said they studied 21 people with congenital anosmia, which means they were unable to smell from birth, and 31 people who reported a weak sense of smell in the nostrils and measured airflow.
The data revealed that participants with a functional sense of smell inhaled more odors when they sniffed compared to those with anosmia, which the team suggested may be a response to odors. in the environment.
The idea was supported by another experiment which showed that these extra inhalations did not occur among people with a functional sense of smell when they were in an odorless environment.
The researchers found that when participants with anosmia were awake, they had more pauses during breathing and lower peak flow during exhalation than those without the condition, as well as other differences in the their breathing patterns during sleep, which is the time the team observed when odors are still present.
The researchers fed the data into a machine learning algorithm, and found that it was able to predict whether or not a participant had loss of smell with an overall accuracy of 83%.
But the study has some problems, including its small size, its failure to take into account mouth breathing, and its inability to test for differences in breathing patterns. leading to health problems in people with anosmia.
In addition, the team only included people who were born without smell, although they are now doing research with people who lost it later in life.
Although the team emphasized that there are other reasons for the link between the loss of smell and health problems, they say that differences in breathing patterns could be a factor that could affect physical health. and mental, including changes in brain activity.
Sobel said the idea was ahead of its time. He said: “If you do not sigh, you will die; “So the idea that breathing patterns could be influential is not so far-fetched.”
