Smell

You Don’t Just Smell Through Your Nose

By Debra Kelly on Wednesday, January 7, 2015

“And ever since then, when the clock strikes two, / She walks unbidden from room to room, / And the air is filled that she passes through / With a subtle, sad perfume.” —Bret Harte, “Newport Legend”

In A Nutshell

We tend to think that we smell with our nose, but we’ve recently found that nearly every single organ in our bodies is capable of smell. More precisely, our organs have been found to contain olfactory receptors that are keyed to react in certain ways to certain scents. When receptors in the skin are exposed to the smell of sandalwood, healing and regeneration increases. When prostate cells smell rose scents, the formation of cancer cells stops. The potential is pretty staggering, considering the same receptors even exist in our kidneys, our muscles, and a lot of other places.