Women have superior sense of smell

[Guest guest]

I wish we couldn't smell men's socks!

 

Women have superior sense of smell

 

http://www.abqtrib.com/shns/story.cfm?pk=NOSE-03-25-04 & cat=AS

By LISA RYCKMAN

Scripps Howard News Service

March 25, 2004

 

- It is a cruel quirk of nature that any scent worth inhaling - cinnamon

buns, flowers, chocolate, money - can be detected by even the most

Neanderthal nose. But only the most sensitive schnoz picks up every truly

obnoxious odor - the dead mouse moldering behind the fridge, the unwashed

armpit two blocks away, the dirty diaper about to happen.

 

Happily, anyone's nose can be a powerful ally in the struggle to lose

weight, find a date, please a mate and make the family dinner hour a

pleasant experience, according to neurologist-psychiatrist Alan Hirsch's

research on the effect of odors on behavior.

 

Hirsch has an easy explanation for my turbo-nose; they study such things at

his Smell & Taste Treatment and Research Foundation in Chicago. It's all

about gender: Women have a much better sense of smell than men, he says,

which is why some men smell like they sweat cologne.

 

When it comes to the sense of smell, Hirsch says, women are better than men,

young people are better than old people, people who work indoors are better

than people who work outdoors.

 

Hirsch's patients gained weight after they lost their sense of smell, which

inspired him to investigate whether the same sense could be used to shed

pounds.

 

An early experiment involved giving Hershey bars to medical students and

asking them to take a whiff 10 times a day. The medical students sniffed the

candy bars and immediately ate them, which Hirsch says just goes to show

that you can't trust medical students.

 

To factor out the Pavlovian response that has people gobbling down anything

that smells good, Hirsch put the odors into tubes and gave two different

ones to 3,193 test subjects every month for six months. The odors were

everything from green apple to taco, Girl Scout Thin Mint cookies to

parsley.

 

The subjects were allowed to continue their normal diets and to sniff

whenever they felt hungry. The findings: The more people liked the

particular scent, the more they sniffed - up to 288 times a day - and the

more weight they lost.

 

Over six months, the average weight loss was 30 pounds, Hirsch says.

 

" We hypothesized that the smell made them feel full, " he says. " Or maybe it

reminded them not to eat. Or they grabbed the tube instead of a doughnut. Or

maybe they were sniffing too much to eat. "

 

Humans can pick out some smells that have been dispersed in ratios of one

part to several billion parts of air, but we're mere amateurs compared with

our furry friends. People have about 5 million olfactory receptors - cells

high up in our nasal passages - while a rabbit has 100 million and a dog has

220 million.

 

And what most people think is taste actually is smell. Taste buds can only

detect sweet, sour, bitter and salt; the nose does all the rest. Which

brings us to Hirsch's next study.

 

Smell worked, so throwing taste into the mix might work even better. Hirsch

asked 108 people to sprinkle two different flavor enhancers on all their

food - one for sweet stuff, one for everything else. Tastes included Cheddar

cheese/cocoa, onion/spearmint, horseradish/banana, ranch/ strawberry,

taco/raspberry, and Parmesan cheese/malt.

 

The results: an average of 34 pounds lost in six months. In fact, some

people lost as much as 30 pounds in one month.

 

" The flavor may fool the brain into believing they've eaten more than they

have, " says Hirsch, who's now expanding the study. " Or maybe that's

completely off. Maybe it's reducing their desire for food because everything

starts to taste the same. That first bite of cheesecake tastes great, but by

the 100th piece, you can't even look at it. "

 

The smell of at least one food can make dinnertime more fun. Hirsch looked

at 100 families with and without garlic bread on the table and found the

fragrant loaf prompted 8 percent more positive and 22 percent fewer negative

interactions, primarily from the father-figure.

 

" Maybe he was too busy stuffing his face with garlic bread, " Hirsch says.

His recipe for a happy evening meal: " Either serve garlic bread or get rid

of the dominant male. "

 

The power of smell extends into the bedroom, too. Because 25 percent of his

patients who lost their sense of smell also developed sexual dysfunction,

Hirsch looked at the effect of odors on genital blood flow.

 

Women who want to attract men should skip the floral perfume, Hirsch's

studies show. A combination of pumpkin pie and lavender turned on men more

than all the perfumes put together.

 

Actually, any odor seems to excite men to some extent.

 

Women were a different story. A guy who wants to attract the opposite sex

should keep a box of Good & Plenty candy and a cucumber in his pocket,

because that combination of scents aroused women the most.

 

Among the top turn-offs?

 

Men's cologne.

 

 

Reach Lisa Ryckman at ryckmanl(at)RockyMountainNews.com