Smell Therapy
Regain your sense of smell faster with Smell Therapy
Our sense of smell is very important. It can alert us to dangers, such as smoke for fires, rotten eggs for gas leaks, and food that has gone bad so that we don’t ingest it. It can also bring us back to happy memories, shop grease brings me back to my childhood giving my mom a hug after she came home from work, and fresh-cut grass reminds me of lawnmower rides with my dad. One sniff of an aroma can trigger any memory from the past, good or bad, and allow us to remember that time.
You can lose or compromise your sense of smell (anosmia) as a temporary or permanent condition. This can be caused by irritation of the music membranes of your nose due to a cold, sinus infection, influenza, hay fever, nasal polyps, tumours, or nasal deformity. Some health conditions can also affect the olfactory system such as Alzheimer's, diabetes, multiple sclerosis, Parkinson's, brain injury, and zinc deficiency to name a few. It can take up to 6 weeks for the sense of smell to return naturally in many cases as the olfactory system recovers.
It is important to know why you lost your sense of smell. You want to make sure there aren’t any serious underlying issues happening. We always recommend checking with your healthcare team if you have medical concerns.
Let’s look at how our smelling capabilities work.
We smell (sniff) involuntary or by choice.
Odour molecules dissolve into the olfaction mucosa after it enters the nasal cavity.
Receptor cells are activated by the odour molecules binding with the olfactory receptor neurons.
An action occurs in the olfactory bulb, which presents a physical response in the body by sending messages to the brain about the sent. These physical responses can be memories, such as what was described above.
To help regain the sense of smell that has been lost due to a cold, infection or similar ailment, you can do smell therapy. Just like you would do therapy on a knee that has been injured to help it gain its strength, doing smell exercises can help you regain your sense of smell.
Smell Exercise to regain your sense of smell.
You will need:
4 glass containers. If you cannot use glass, use PET containers that won't break down with the use of essential oils. Personal inhalers are not the best option here as both nostrils need to be inhaling the aroma at the same time.
4 cotton pads
1 essential oil from each of the following categories:
Floral (jasmine, lavender, geranium…)
Citrus (lime, lemon, bergamot, sweet orange…)
Spicy (cinnamon, clove…)
Medicinal (rosemary, eucalyptus, tea tree…)
Labels for lid and container for each
How to:
Place a cotton pad at the bottom of each jar.
With your 4 essential oils selected, add 10 drops of essential oil to each container. (Only 1 scent per container)
Label your lids and jars with the essential oil used.
Take one jar at a time to your nose and take one slow breath in.
Followed by 5 short and quick sniffs and one long breath in again.
As you inhale, picture the oil and scent. With your mind, you need to picture the plant, remember the aroma, and how the scent makes you feel. If you’ve ever tasted the plant, how it tastes. You need to remember everything you can about it.
Repeat for each of the scents.
Repeat this process 5 times a day. Starting with as soon as you wake up in the morning, finishing with right before you go to bed at night.
You can watch the live video I did demonstrating this technique here:
How I retrained my olfactory senses to regain my smell in less than a week
I kept a documented record of how each scent came back to me over the week after I loss my sense of smell and started smell therapy.
I was able to start getting my sense of smell back within 48 hours of noticing it was gone.
After 24 hours, I could slightly smell 3 of the 4 jars, not being able to smell the rosemary oil.
After 48 hours, I could smell all of the scents, rosemary the most at a 6/10 scale, and the other 3 scents at a 5/10 scale.
After 74 hours, I could smell all the oil containers between 6-8/10 scale, rosemary being the strongest aroma and sweet orange the least. I could also smell my husband cooking bacon and my DIY menthol balm for respiratory support.
Between days 4 and 6 I regain the rest of my sense of smell, including being able to smell the skunk that sprayed on our road.
We hope if you’ve lost your sense of smell, you regain it quickly and can start to enjoy all the amazing aromas that aromatherapy can provide!!
Nikki Fraser, CAHP
Essentria Aromatherapy School
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