Although a person's sense of smell tends to fade as they age, a new study suggests that regular exercise can keep this important sense keen, LiveScience reports.
While vision and hearing may first come to mind as the most prominent senses in the body, smell is also a very useful sense, responsible for helping people identify toxic chemicals and fully enjoy the flavor of foods. Humans can also smell emotions such as fear and disgust through emotional chemical signals, according to previous research.
The latest study analyzed data from 1,600 participants between the ages of 53 to 97 who all had no problems with their sense of smell at the beginning of the research, and were followed and tested for 10 years on their ability to detect eight distinct odors, including chocolate and coffee, three tmes over the course of the study, while reporting on their exercise habits.
As the study went on, about 28 percent of participants began experiencing an impairment in their sense of smell. After adjusting for age and gender, the researchers discovered a link between exercise and the sharpness of this sense that tends to fade with age.
"Participants who reported exercising at least once a week long enough to work up a sweat had a decreased risk of olfactory impairment," the researchers wrote in the study published on Oct. 17 in the journal JAMA Otolaryngology-Head & Neck Surgery.
In addition, the more regularly people exercised, the less likely they were to develop olfactory impairment. While it's unclear exactly how this works, the researchers suspect that exercise may improve overall brain function in addition to general health.
Some of the risk factors for developing olfactory impairment or decline include smoking, a deviated spetum and nasal polyps, so it is possible that people who exercise are generally healthier to begin with and are less likely to develop such risks.
