Your sense of smell is the most powerful—and under-utilized—of your five senses.
Last week, I had the opportunity to share with fellow practitioners how smell is a powerful tool that should be utilized in clinical practice— especially for accessing and healing areas of the brain.
Essential oils offer both a concentrated dose of medicinal plants AND an accessible remedy for the olfactory pathway, which goes directly to the brain!
It’s really hard to get the right remedy into the right area of the brain. The brain has a protective shield known as the blood-brain barrier (BBB) that prevents everything but super small, fat-soluble molecules—like essential oils—from entering.
Most people don’t realize that nose cells are brain cells. The nose is the most direct pathway to the brain, which is why anesthesia is delivered to the brain via the nasal passageways and why cocaine is snorted through the nose. It is the fastest and most efficient delivery mechanism.
If you are not taking advantage of your sense of smell—and olfactory pathway—to support your health, you are missing one of the most effective pathways to health.
Smell is the Most Powerful Sense
Your brain relies on your five sensory organs to collect information about your surroundings to assess safety:
- Ears (hearing)
- Skin (touch)
- Eyes (sight)
- Tongue (taste)
- Nose (smell)
Of the five senses, smell (or olfaction) is the only sensory organ directly connected to the amygdala in the brain. It is literally the direct pathway to managing emotions and feeling calm, focused, and clear. In fact, research estimates that your sense of smell is ten thousand times more acute than your other senses.
Anatomically, your olfactory system is positioned right next to the limbic system in your brain, appearing to have essentially evolved to hardwire information to these memory and emotion centers to help:
- Manage emotions, including anger and fear
- Balance mood
- Alleviate stress
Nose Cells are Brain Cells
Smells enter your body through the nose. Airborne particles captured while you breathe travel through your nose to your olfactory bulb— a large nerve that extends from the top of your nose and plugs directly into your brain.
Odor molecules trigger a nervous system response through your olfactory bulb.
When a smell is detected, your olfactory neurons in the upper part of the nose generate an impulse passed to other brain areas closely connected along the olfactory nerve, collectively known as the limbic system.
In other words, your sense of smell offers a direct route to the limbic system, including the amygdala and the hippocampus, the regions related to emotion and memory. Smell and memory are believed to be so closely linked because of the brain’s anatomy—your olfactory bulb connects to your limbic system, which regulates emotions and memory. Your brain stores the impression of a scent, which can be recalled later to support health and safety.
Higher concentrations of odor molecules—such as those found in essential oil blends—stimulate the brain more deeply through the olfactory bulb.
READ THIS NEXT: How Smell Signals Safety
Benefits of Smell
Your sense of smell is critical to your safety and survival. Smell has beneficial impacts on the following:
Safety: Smell alerts you to dangers (like predators and fire), helps track food and water, and even aids in locating certain plants for medicine. Smell also enables you to identify if food is spoiled, which is crucial for avoiding illness.
Emotions: Smell is also highly emotive as it is closely connected to the amygdala—the part of the brain involved in behavioral and emotional responses. This is one reason why certain smells spark strong emotions and emotional recall. Different scents can change your mood, transport you back to a distant memory, and may even help you bond with loved ones.
Memories: Smell and emotion are stored as one memory. This may help explain why smells can trigger memories of events or places. Smell is directly linked to the limbic system in the brain, which processes emotions and memories, making scents powerful triggers for recalling past experiences. It’s interesting to note that smell is the only fully developed sense a fetus has in the womb, and it’s the one that is the most developed in a child through the age of around 10 when sight takes over.
Connection: Smell can help determine your attraction to other people. Research has shown that body odor (pheromones) produced by the genes that make up your immune system—may subconsciously influence how you choose and bond with your partners. Kissing is thought to have developed from sniffing; that first kiss is essentially a primal behavior during which you smell and taste your partner to decide if they are a match.
Taste: Smell is essential for your perception of taste. When you chew, molecules in the food release aromas that travel from your mouth and throat to the back of your nasal epithelium, where smell helps your brain experience flavor. Without smell, we can detect only five basic tastes: sweet, salty, bitter, sour, and savory. However, our brains incorporate information from both taste and smell receptors to create the perception of many different flavors. You can test that theory by pinching your nose when eating something like vanilla or chocolate ice cream. Instead of tasting the flavor, all you can taste is sweet.
Essential Oils for Smell
Your sense of smell may weaken or change with age or illness, but fortunately, your nose is like a muscle in the body that can be strengthened to retrain your sense of smell. That’s right.
You can rewire the nerve fibers in your nose to enhance your sense of smell, known as smell retraining.
You can use different essential oil blends for smell detection exercises. Hold the oil a few inches from your nose and inhale deeply. Varying the oils and using different scents can help strengthen smell detection.
I briefly lost my sense of smell after a viral exposure and discovered two things:
- Essential oils WORK even if you cannot smell them.
- Strong smells work best for smell retraining. I recommend the following:
- Parasympathetic® – The strong smell of clove and lime can be very stimulatory and help you relax while also supporting smell retraining
- Adrenal® – Formulated with strong notes of rosemary and thyme, Adrenal® helps support smell retraining and your stress response.
- Focus™ – Formulated with strong notes of Rosemary and Peppermint, Focus™ assists with memory retention and mental alertness. It enhances alertness and clear thought, awakens the brain, and sharpens mental processes.
- Circulation™ – Formulated with Cypress, Peppermint, Ginger Root, Black Pepper, and Nutmeg, Circulation™ – helps support healthy circulation and delivers oxygen and nutrient-rich blood to the body and the brain.
- Peppermint – high in the constituent menthol—may help you retrain your brain and restore your sense of smell
How to Stimulate Your Sense of Smell
Hold the essential oil bottle about 12 inches from the nostril and try to detect the smell. If you can’t, move it an inch closer. Continue until you detect the odor. When you can, try to name the scent. Next, place a little essential oil on the collar of your shirt under the nostril that you are stimulating. Vary the smell each day as much as possible
Repeat this 2-3 times daily with the goal of correctly identifying the smells.
READ THIS NEXT: Restoring Sense of Smell With Essential Oils
Featured Oils:
- Parasympathetic® available here
- Adrenal® available here
- Focus™ available here
- Circulation™ available here
- Peppermint™ available here