Anosmia Awareness Day: The Importance of Smell in Our Lives

Want to understand the meaning of Anosmia Awareness Day, celebrated on February 27? Come with us! Anosmia is the technical term for the total loss of smell. The condition can be temporary or permanent and has several origins: it can be congenital or a symptom of chronic diseases, like rhinosinusitis, and viral or bacterial infections. In fact, you probably know someone who lost their sense of smell after testing positive for Covid-19.

As it turns out, this sense is essential in our daily lives. Beyond pleasant odors evoking positive emotions, the ability to smell can protect us from several risks, such as a gas leak.

Smell also impacts taste; after all, flavor is the result of information transmitted by both the taste buds and the olfactory receptors. Thus, half the flavor we experience comes from smell.

Understanding the importance of olfaction is fundamental to building a more inclusive society. Many people who suffer from anosmia report feeling socially isolated and frustrated. After all, they cannot share in many everyday pleasures, like tasting food. Loss of smell is a serious matter, so at the slightest symptom, consult your ENT (Ear, Nose, and Throat doctor).

Smell is Emotion

You know when you smell warm, fresh bread and immediately remember your grandmother’s house? Or the scent of a fragrance that reminds you of a special, beloved person? It is no exaggeration to say that smell is synonymous with emotion.

According to a study by researcher Martin Lindstrom, 75% of our daily emotions are related to the scents we smell. And there’s more: we manage to store 35% of the odors we smell throughout our lives, while we only remember 5% of what we see.

Discover the Olfaction Research Center by Grupo Boticário

Anosmia Awareness Day takes place on February 27, but our concern for and dedication to the sense of smell is constant. To democratize knowledge about this valuable sense, Grupo Boticário created the Olfactory Research Center.

Among its core pillars are fostering studies to understand the sensations caused by smells and researching the performance and efficacy of new fragrances.

Another focus of the Olfactory Research Center is sensory diversity. We know that the olfactory experience is individual and can vary according to ethnicity, generation, and culture. Understanding this is fundamental to providing more representative aromas, especially for minoritized groups.