How important is the sense of smell in your life?

I have thought about this a lot because my Friend who was in the car accident with me a year ago lost her sense of smell in the accident. It’s very upsetting to me she lost it.

It’s important to me to know my house smells clean when others visit.

I like to prepare food my husband enjoys and not being able to taste it well would be very frustrating. I would become insecure about cooking for other people.

I would worry I would eat something that has gone bad. (this I have always known about regarding older people who have their sense of smell fade).

I would always use super strength deoderant and maybe even shower more than I do now.

Really important. Without it, you can’t taste.

I smoked for aout 15 years, and pretty well killed my sense of subtle smells. I really missed it, but fortunately it has come back pretty well. It makes food better and life more pleasant.

I would estimate it is one of the five major senses I depend on the most.

The smell of delicious food cooking, how much does that prepare you to eat? And without sense of smell, you’d only have the five basic tastes your taste buds provide, sweet, sour, salty, bitter and umami. Imagine how bland food would taste and how much sensual pleasure would be gone from sharing good food with great company.

The subtle body smell of the one you love, human but uniquely their human scent. I’d feel so robbed if I lost that. And the smell of sexual excitement when making love. That, more than anything else in the act, is what fires my passion.

People who don’t have the sense of smell must navigate the world in a crippled contition.

The sense of smell is very important. It constantly gives you information of your environment. Such as a natural gas leak, smoke, toxic chemicals, bad food, something rotting in the area, moldy smells and much more. Also I think that our noses are placed just above our mouths for a reason and that is to smell the food just before we eat it to make sure it is OK.

Very important. I am very aware of all the smells in my life. Some I do wish I could not smell. (Like my dogs breath some days.) I love the scent of dew in the morning grass, or the scent of snow before it lands. I love the scent of my husbands aftershave, or the scent of my shampoo. I love the scent of my food, with garlic, onions, peppers and other spices. I love the scent of flowers and the scent of a freshly cleaned home. Or the scent of wet trees after a heavy rain. But of all these scents the one I love best is the scent of a baby or even kitten or puppy. They all smell soft. That is as close as I can come to describing it. Oh, and really great men cologne.

I like smelling, but I also like to be able to turn it off! I have bad allergies (I’ve had since I was a child) and so I’ve learned how to breath out of my mouth with no problem. I can switch back and forth (mouth/nose) easily.

For me, it is the one sense that triggers memories more than others – whenever I smell strawberry, I am transported back to sixth grade when I had one of those huge Bonnie Bell strawberry lip glosses. I’m not sure if others experience that or if it’s just me, because I don’t use my sense of smell as much as others.

I’m probably more aware of my sense of smell because my husband has none. I love the smell of fresh baked bread, brewed coffee, flowers and the like. I will sometimes say ‘oh doesn’t that smell lovely (or whatever)” and am reminded he can’t smell a thing. It’s made me more aware of what a wonderful sense smell is. Plus it affects our enjoyment of food. It is also important for our safety. My husband was doing something with the barbecue and I was inside. I could smell gas and realised he was planning to light the barbecue and had to stop him. He couldn’t smell the gas but there was a leak somewhere.

Most people on this site know my wife is deaf, but I haven’t mentioned very often that she also has no sense of smell. This was a wonderful benefit when diaper duty came around.
As I have said before, since she is deaf and can’t smell, the only time she knows if I pass gas in bed is if she feels the vibration. Once I passed gas while we were sitting in the car. She had her hand on my leg, and asked if my cell phone was ringing.

As for me, I depend on my sense of smell very much. At work, I have to be aware of gas leaks (not mine). I enjoy the smells that remind me of growing up, and will often stop just to drink it in.

The sense of smell is our most ancient one that is so very closely linked to emotion. Smell was originally under the control of the part of the brain known as the limbic system whose modern role is the mediation of responses to emotion.