Knowing how the sense of smell works is a recent scientific achievement | Globo Reporter

“Many people are not aware of their sense of smell. The importance of smell in people’s daily lives, the importance of smell to their quality of life, and its importance to their health. This means that the sense of smell may have been neglected for a long time,” explains Bettina Malnick, a biochemist at Southern Ocean University. Quiet.

Only in 2004, two American scientists – Richard Axel and Linda Buck – Bettina’s advisor won the Nobel Prize in Medicine after discovering the work of olfactory receptors.

Inside the nose, at the top of the nasal cavity, are the olfactory neurons. These neurons are activated by smells, generating electrical signals, which are transmitted to the brain above – a part called the olfactory bulb.

We already know that these olfactory receptors – of which humans have about 400 different receptors – are not identical between two people. There are differences between these receptors. Depending on these differences, the way each of us perceives smells is different,” says Bettina.

And therefore, To this day, aromatherapy is only accepted as a complementary treatment to traditional medicine. Science still has no way to prove the effects of scents on our health..

“We understand very little about this in general, at present. Technically, this is very difficult to measure. We still need technologies developed to do this,” Bettina says.

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Aromatherapist André Ferraz a Costa also does not deny the difficulties of science to prove the efficacy of treatments with essential oils, but his argument in defense of aromatherapy is strong: the substances in essential oils are the same as those used in traditional medicines. He decided to pursue a profession after seeing the effects of smells on him and his wife.