When Smell Disappears
What anosmia reveals about the connection between scent, mental wellbeing and the way we experience the world
We rarely think about our sense of smell.
Unlike sight or hearing, olfaction tends to operate quietly in the background. It accompanies us through spaces, meals, encounters and memories without constantly demanding our attention.
Until it disappears.
Anosmia - the complete loss of the sense of smell - offers an unexpected way of understanding just how important olfaction may be to our physical, emotional and social lives.
Research conducted over the past decades suggests that losing the ability to smell can affect much more than our perception of fragrance or food. It has been associated with changes in quality of life, social functioning and mental wellbeing, while olfactory decline is increasingly studied as a potential indicator of broader changes in health.
When losing a sense affects how we feel
One of the most significant longitudinal studies on the subject followed 2,125 older adults over eight years as part of the Health, Aging and Body Composition Study.
Researchers at Johns Hopkins Medicine found an association between a reduced sense of smell and an increased risk of developing depressive symptoms later in life.
Importantly, the researchers did not conclude that losing the sense of smell causes depression. Instead, olfactory impairment may be one indicator of changes occurring across several interconnected dimensions of health and wellbeing.
The findings become particularly interesting when considered alongside earlier research into the everyday experience of anosmia.
A study published in Rehabilitation Psychology compared 90 people with anosmia with 89 people with a normal sense of smell. Those with anosmia reported significantly different scores across several dimensions of the SF-36 quality-of-life assessment, including social functioning, vitality, mental health and general health. They also recorded higher depression scores on the Beck Depression Inventory-II.
The absence of smell, in other words, can extend beyond the sensory experience itself.
It can change the way we interact with everyday life.
Smell, memory and connection
This relationship makes intuitive sense when we consider everything smell quietly contributes to our days.
The aroma of food is part of the pleasure of eating. The smell of a familiar person can become associated with intimacy and recognition. Homes, hotels, cities and natural environments all possess olfactory identities that become part of how we remember them.
Smell provides information, but it also gives experiences an emotional texture.
Removing it can therefore mean losing an invisible layer of everyday life.
The 2009 study on quality of life and anosmia highlighted precisely this point: the researchers suggested that olfactory dysfunction should be approached not only as the loss of sensory information and enjoyment, but also in relation to emotional wellbeing, social interaction and energy.
The connection may go deeper than perception
Recent research has introduced another fascinating possibility.
In 2024, researchers from the Weizmann Institute of Science published a study in Nature Communications investigating the breathing patterns of people with congenital anosmia - people who had been without a sense of smell since birth.
Using a wearable device that recorded nasal airflow over 24 hours, the researchers discovered that participants with anosmia showed significantly different nasal breathing patterns, both while awake and during sleep.
One of the most interesting differences involved the tiny additional inhalation peaks that occur throughout normal breathing.
When we move through an environment, we do not simply breathe. We also make subtle exploratory inhalations — essentially small, often unconscious sniffs — that allow us to continuously sample olfactory information around us.
These respiratory peaks were significantly reduced in participants with anosmia. The overall differences were substantial enough that researchers were able to classify whether participants had anosmia from their breathing patterns alone with 83% accuracy.
The study does not establish that these breathing differences cause emotional or health problems. Its authors instead propose a compelling hypothesis: some outcomes associated with anosmia could potentially be related not only to the absence of odor perception itself, but also to the altered patterns of nasal respiration that accompany it.
It suggests something unexpected:
our relationship with scent may involve not only what we consciously smell, but also the way our body continuously interacts with the surrounding environment.
An invisible indicator of health
Olfactory impairment is also receiving increasing attention within neurological research.
A poor sense of smell has repeatedly been observed as an early sign associated with neurodegenerative diseases including Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s disease, and olfactory decline has also been associated with mortality risk in older populations.
This does not mean that losing one's sense of smell indicates that a neurodegenerative disease is present. Nor does it mean that olfactory loss itself necessarily causes these conditions.
Instead, it reinforces a broader shift in how science considers olfaction.
Smell is no longer easily dismissed as a secondary sense.
It is increasingly being investigated as one element within the complex relationship between the brain, body, environment and emotional experience.
Understanding presence through absence
There is something paradoxical about anosmia.
It makes the importance of smell visible precisely by removing it.
When olfaction functions normally, we rarely notice how many moments it accompanies. A room feels familiar. Food feels comforting. Someone's presence becomes recognisable. A place suddenly brings back a memory we had forgotten.
We simply experience these things.
When smell disappears, some of those connections can become quieter.
And perhaps this is what research into anosmia ultimately helps us understand: olfaction is not only about identifying scents. It participates in the way we perceive, remember and connect with the world around us.
FROM RESEARCH TO OLFACTORY EXPERIENCE
At Esprit de Vie, this understanding is central to the way we approach olfactory design.
If the absence of smell can reveal how deeply olfaction is woven into perception, memory and wellbeing, its presence deserves to be considered with the same attention.
Our work explores scent as part of a wider multisensory environment — not as a decorative layer added to a space, but as one of the elements capable of shaping how that space is perceived, experienced and remembered.
Because the environments we inhabit are never experienced through one sense alone.
Light, sound, texture, temperature and scent continuously interact to create our perception of a place. Designing for wellbeing therefore also means considering what cannot always be seen.
Sometimes, the most invisible elements of an environment are among the ones we feel most deeply.
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Sources
Johns Hopkins Medicine
HealthDay, As Seniors' Sense of Smell Declines, Their Risk for Depression Rises (2023)
https://www.powershealth.org/about-us/newsroom/health-library/2023/07/03/as-seniors-sense-of-smell-declines-their-risk-for-depression-risesHealthDay
Extended version of the Health ABC study
https://consumer.healthday.com/depression-2661925865.htmlNBC News
Loss of smell may cause changes in breathing patterns (Nature Communications / Weizmann Institute)
https://www.nbcnews.com/health/health-news/loss-smell-changes-breathing-patterns-depression-research-rcna176503Utrecht University Research Portal
Sense of smell disorder and health-related quality of life (Rehabilitation Psychology, 2009)
https://research-portal.uu.nl/en/publications/sense-of-smell-disorder-and-health-related-quality-of-life/
