Cause And Effect Essay On Smell

Can you imagine what it would be like to not be able to smell anything? Research shows that many people take their sense of smell for granted and would likely not consider losing it as a catastrophic thing. However, if you stop and think about how much of your daily life involves smell, it actually could be a terrible loss. Smell effects our emotions, our moods, enhances (or sometimes detracts from) our atmosphere, and most importantly, our sense of smell has a great deal to do with our sense of taste. For a small percentage of the population (about 1 in 20 Americans) which have some type of loss of smell, and about 1 in 100 that have a condition known as anosmia, they are living in an odorless world. Anosmia is defined as the total inability to smell, most often resulting from sinus illness or head trauma (Wolfe, J. M. 2006). This disorder is to smell what blindness is to vision or deafness is to hearing. A person who suffers from anosmia is completely cut off from smell. This type of …show more content…
They experience physical symptoms, safety hazards, psychological effects, behavioral and social problems, lack of taste ability, and memory issues. I have no doubt that a person who experiences all these things would have their life turned upside down and would likely not have the same quality of life that “normal” smelling people have. Many of us think it would be awful to go blind or deaf, but don’t realize how much we would lose if we lost our smell. Comforting and joyful scents that remind us of people, places and things we love would be sorely missed and not being able to enjoy our favorite decadent dessert or to live in fear of not being able to escape a gas leak because you couldn’t smell it would make life difficult and less enjoyable. I know that I will inhale my favorite scents with vigor after doing this research as I know I would really miss