The nose: more than just a smell helper

It sits in the middle of the face and is still completely underestimated: the nose. In doing so, she does amazing things.

The ENT doctor Johannes Frasnelli from South Tyrol compares our nose with a Gothic cathedral. There are only two small entrances, but behind them there are rooms that, if one were to look around admiringly, would have a lot of splendor to offer. Huh, one thinks at first, our nose, looked at by many, because mostly not as elegantly sitting in the middle of the face as you dreamed, also a producer of annoying runny nose and stupid phlegm, should look like a cathedral? But you can quickly be taught better.

In his book “We smell better than we think”, the doctor, who is now doing research in a clinic in Canada, raves about the extent to which the sense of smell affects the performance of our brain, about the scents of his childhood: of blooming apricot trees, mosquito repellants and campfire, from the onion smell of the piano teacher. You get really high while reading because your own olfactory memories of yore (incense sticks, pool water, November smell) flicker and you think: Wow, what crazy pictures, instigated by the tiniest aroma particles that we pull into our noses!

The sense of smell is something like our original sense

Bettina Pause, Professor of Biological Psychology at the University of Düsseldorf, assumes that Homo sapiens ultimately only came about through his talent for sniffing: “Life began with smell.” Billions of years ago, single-celled cells formed receptors that reacted to chemical substances in their environment. To find out how they should move – towards a source of food, away from pollutants. “The first brains were noses,” says Pause, “and our brains developed from these noses.” And because there are “perhaps a trillion” of chemical molecules in our world, a highly developed mammal needs a “huge data center – a highly complex brain” to classify them.

So first came the perception of smells, which were later coupled with feelings: fear was added to the smell of burning, disgust to toxic or mold smells, and love to the fragrance of a suitable sexual partner. Only at the very end did the thinking and the ratio come in. Pause explains: “Without a nose we couldn’t feel anything, remember anything, not even speak. The nose is the better mind.”

In fact, the nose is constantly working at full speed to get us through life safely and safely. The gene family that controls the smell process therefore also occupies the largest part in the genome. It ensures that many millions of sensory cells, equipped with so-called olfactory receptors, which are located in the upper nasal passage, decode odor molecules. Humans have up to 1000 different receptors. For comparison: the sense of sight works with only four receptors and can recognize around five million colors. Our odor factory, on the other hand, does the miracle of identifying a trillion (!) Smells. Bettina Pause thinks it’s funny that “we think we’re animals of the eyes”. Incidentally, a smell only arises in the head when we put the appropriate molecules together: banana aroma alone has 300 molecules, coffee even 800, which we combine in fractions of a second. But: Everyone has their own series of receptors, none of us perceive smell in the same way.

The next highlight that takes place in our noses: the information about the recognized odor shoots up via bundles of nerve fibers into the so-called olfactory bulb, the olfactory bulb. From there they are sent to the limbic system. During this sober-sounding radio sequence, crazy things happen: We determine whether we find someone sympathetic or not, sniff whether there is illness in the air, “know” whether there is danger or whether we are allowed to feel good. Bettina Pause admits that smells have an incredible power: “They cannot be falsified, they shoot immediately into feelings and always demand an immediate reaction.”

The sense of smell is so elementary for us that we cannot hide it either

Even if we hold our noses, we smell retronasally, i.e. through the mouth. Everything that he reports to us must necessarily reach the cerebrum. It is crazy that we still regard this sense, which controls our actions more than we would like, as inferior. We don’t want to be nasal creatures, we prefer to put this seemingly lower instinct on the animals. Philosophers like Kant or Descartes vilified this talent in the worst possible way. Maybe because they suspected or didn’t want that in the end it was simply more powerful than reason and free will. It was not until the 1950s that the sociologist Herbert Marcuse suspected that the ruling classes were devaluing smells in order to spoil closeness and lust for the inferior masses and thus isolate people from one another. He demanded: Indulge your thirst for smell, that makes you less exploitable!

Nevertheless, we prefer to use foamed shower aromas than allow more original smells to get too close to us. A mistake! Because the more foreign molecules we collect, the more we stimulate the olfactory bulb. Research knows: those who smell more push their memory. Exposing yourself to adventurous smells can probably even prevent neurodegenerative diseases such as Parkinson’s or Alzheimer’s and alleviate depression. In the case of depressed people, it has been proven that those affected in a downward mood can smell less well and are cut off from their deeper feelings. Targeted olfactory training does not replace therapy, but it brings the olfactory cells into action, so positive feelings come back into play. But we can not only influence moods, but also relationships: People who smell better are more empathetic and have a larger circle of friends. “The nose is our tracker, our scout,” says Pause almost lyrically.

Another sensation is that all sensory cells that have to do with the smell can renew themselves. They are part of the nerve cells and set up a new framework every 30 to 60 days. For a long time, conventional medicine thought that dead neurons could not grow back. However, the olfactory sensory cells have to be extremely flexible: the world of smells changes constantly (in the Hamburg Kiez, for example, it smells completely different than in Rome or the Mississippi). Another reason for the cell change: our sense of smell is the only one that has direct contact with the environment, it is exposed to viruses and pollutants relatively unprotected. However, our nose is working hard against it. “She smuggles a liter of mucus through within a day to protect us from intruders, so that no harmful foreign bodies penetrate our lungs,” said Hamburg ENT doctor Christine Löber appreciatively. “It’s not a disgusting thing at all, it’s a great service to our health.”

The doctor can therefore gain a lot from a cold: “This is our body’s fight to get rid of viruses. We can help our nose by respecting the fact that it paralyzes us for a few days, inhales and keeps the nose moist.” In such cases, Löber recommends a decongestant nasal spray, simple nasal showers (no more than once or twice a day!) And, if it is too dry, a nose cream. “If we take good care of our nasal mucosa, it is an important preventive measure,” she emphasizes.

Corona viruses have caused a nasty attack on our olfactory system

Almost 70 to 80 percent of people suffering from Covid-19 experienced a temporary loss of smell or even parosmia: Odors are then registered as faulty, a flower, for example, suddenly smells like petrol. The Sars-CoV-2 viruses manage to implant their spike envelopes in the olfactory cells and destroy them. The psychologist Kathrin Ohla explains: “It’s as if the cables in a fuse box had burned through and then connected incorrectly.” Together with her colleagues, she has developed a smell test at riech-check.de that can show whether perception has improved again. During the regeneration of the cells, aromatherapy training can also help to get the senses going again. Even if there are Covid cases where he does not recover well.

Science writer James Nestor has two unusual pieces of advice in store in his great book “Breath”: chew more and always breathe through your nose. In years of research, he found out that our grain-heavy diet, in which people used their jaws less and less, caused the bone mass in the head area to shrink: mouth and nasal spaces have sunk in over the millennia. The consequences: nasal congestion, sinus quarrels, blocked breath. Nestor says: “The more you chew, the denser the bone, the more new bone mass is formed, the younger you look, and the easier it is to breathe.” The second modern nasal drama: We breathe too much through our mouths. The result: crooked teeth, tooth decay, snoring, sleep apnea, stress, anxiety disorders. Oxygen, nitrogen and the unfiltered intake of harmful air play a role here. On the other hand, those who breathe slowly (!) And regularly through their nose would have the chance of a healthier, freer and longer life. Nestor was so convinced of the “magic of nasal breathing” that he began to stick a small strip of adhesive bandage over his lips every night: “At last I could sleep well.”

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Brigitte

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