Rachel Herz
speaker
31 appearances
1 recordings
1 series
first heard Dec 2024
last heard Dec 2024
Rachel Herz’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.
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My name is Rachel Herz. I'm a neuroscientist, and I've been studying the psychological science of smell for over 30 years.
The fabric of our existence, literally the threads that weave together how we feel within the world, both with other people, with our past experiences, and fundamentally with ourselves, is deeply, deeply connected to our sense of smell. And when that becomes broken, those relationships, those outer relationships and our inner relationships with ourself start to really stumble and fumble and fall.
We really do not still fully have a grasp or grip on how it is that we perceive smells. So it really still is this enigma.
Part one, to smell is to feel.
And so a lot of people who were working in the molecular biology and biochemistry and other systems went to study smell. And this led to basically an explosion of research looking at the molecular basis of how the sense of smell works.
What smells are is that they're chemicals that float through the air.
Air is like a blank canvas, and the scents that we can perceive are like the paints on it that are the world that we exist in.
So our ability to detect smells is actually far greater than our ability to detect any other sensory experience.
We're breathing. We're inhaling through our nostrils, taking a deep inhalation in every breath. A couple of seconds.
Air that we can't smell coming into our nostrils and traveling up our nostrils. Right into our nasal passages, which are actually quite complex. There are sort of, there are these, all these little curvy structures and kind of curves and bends inside the nose, which are actually there to create as much turbulence to bring up the air carrying these odor molecules.
And eventually, they're stopped, landing on this patch of mucous membrane, which is basically at the level of our eyebrows. And on this patch of mucous membrane, this is where all the receptors that are capable for detecting You know, smells exist.
And this is where we go, ah, it's a lemon.
The same part of the brain that's giving us the experience of emotion is also giving us the experience of scent. And so instantly that we are consciously registering a scent, we are also to some degree experiencing an emotion. I mean, to smell is to feel is what you just said. It's the exact same system. It's exactly that. It's perfectly said. To smell is to feel. I love that.
At this point in time, the most supported way to, you know, engage or reactivate your sense of smell after smell loss, and especially if it's from illness like COVID, is with smell training.
All you need are four distinctive scents. So for instance, maybe peanut butter, shampoo, maybe suntan lotion, and coffee. That's just for random example.
Several times a day, so at least three times a day, sit down, unscrew the jar, sniff at what is in the jar. And even if you can't smell anything, think about, okay, lemon. I know this lemon, lemon, maybe I'm even salivating just thinking about it. I put lemon on fish or whatever.
So you have a little thought connection as well as the scent itself, you know, thinking about what it is, even if you can't smell anything.
And then you try to do it at least two more times a day and try to keep on going at it for at least 12 weeks.
So our sense of smell is constantly regenerating, which is one of the great things about unhealthy sense of smell. And what we're hoping to do with smell loss is like start up that process again. And if there hasn't been any damage to the pathway between the nose to the brain, then this is something that you can help do by just actively sniffing.
So like sort of turning on the genes that will then turn on the receptors to re-engage and regrow.
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