Can Smelling Essential Oils Protect Your Brain as You Age?
If you’ve felt your sense of smell is slipping as you age, know someone struggling with dementia or Parkinson’s, or just want to boost your brain health with a simple daily practice, this episode is for you.
Welcome to Aging In Full Bloom with Lisa Stockdale! In this episode, I sit down with my special guest, Jonathan Askholm, to explore the fascinating and often overlooked world of olfactory training—the art and science of strengthening your sense of smell.
Together, we dive into how our nose isn’t just about pleasant aromas or powerful memories; it’s deeply connected to brain health, cognition, mood, and our overall well-being.
Jonathan Askholm shares his personal journey—from corporate wellness into a passionate advocate for olfactory training—sparked by his own family’s experience and compelling scientific studies.
Through our conversation, I discovered some surprising truths, like how the olfactory system is the only sense capable of regenerating neurons throughout life, and why smell training is now being recommended to improve memory, mood, and even help those recovering from illnesses like COVID-19.
If you’ve felt your sense of smell is slipping as you age, know someone struggling with dementia or Parkinson’s, or just want to boost your brain health with a simple daily practice, this episode is for you.
Let's learn why smell just might be our most underrated sense—and how it could become your secret weapon for healthy aging.
Read more about it!
https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC9891899/
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/olfactory-training-during-sleep-could-help-your-memory/
https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/how-my-brain-works/202410/can-smell-training-improve-memory
3 Key Takeaways:
- You can actually “train” your sense of smell. Regular, intentional exposure to specific scents can help sharpen your sense of smell and even regrow some neural pathways.
- Olfactory training boosts more than just your nose. Studies show it can improve memory, mood, and overall cognitive function, especially in older adults.
- It’s simple and affordable. All you need are concentrated scents like lemon, clove, rose, and eucalyptus—just a few minutes, twice a day, can make a difference.
Email me, Lisa Stockdale, anytime at aginginfullbloom@gmail.com
Aging in Full Bloom with Lisa Stockdale is sponsored by HomeCaire. We believe every patient should get the personalized care they need, in the way they want it. Every caregiver should feel supported, valued, and motivated. We see each person as their own entity, with unique needs, desires, and skills. Our goal is to best support our family as they reach new milestones.
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Copyright 2026 Lisa Stockdale
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Transcript
Listeners, welcome to aging in full Bloom with Lisa Stockdo.
Speaker A:I'm your host, Lisa.
Speaker A:And today, our topic, I think it's going to be truly interesting.
Speaker A:It's called empowering your health through your sense of smell.
Speaker A:And we have a special guest, Jonathan Askholm, to help us understand all of this.
Speaker A:And if you have had Covid, we want to encourage you to listen.
Speaker A:Hi, Jonathan.
Speaker B:Hi, Lisa.
Speaker B:Thanks so much for having me on.
Speaker A:Of course.
Speaker A:How are you today?
Speaker B:I'm doing great.
Speaker A:Wonderful.
Speaker B:Excited to talk about what has become one of my favorite topics.
Speaker A:Yeah, yeah.
Speaker A:So tell me before we talk about the topic, how is it that you are an expert on this topic?
Speaker B:Right.
Speaker B:Well, I wasn't until too long ago.
Speaker B:I did study psychology many years ago, and so I did have experience reading that, even interpreting statistical data.
Speaker B:But I was running sort of a corporate wellness company doing workshops in, you know, for wellness in the workplace.
Speaker B:And my co founder with this company that I've started runs a scent creation business where people make customized scented candles and things like that.
Speaker B:And people love doing it.
Speaker B:And we both love the brain and how things work.
Speaker B:And she started reading about, well, she wanted to know how does our sense of smell work anyway?
Speaker B:Because, you know, we only know sort of maybe evoke memories and things like that.
Speaker B: neuropsychology journal from: Speaker B:It's a systematic review, which means it's taking all of the sort of a bunch of studies and saying, well, what's going on here?
Speaker B:And it was titled, does olfactory training improve brain function and cognition?
Speaker B:You go, okay, olfactory training, what's that?
Speaker B:And improve brain function and cognition.
Speaker B:That sounds interesting.
Speaker B:And we both read this study.
Speaker B:It is absolutely compelling.
Speaker B:And I sort of started going down a rabbit hole of sorts.
Speaker B:I started reading more and more of these studies on olfactory training.
Speaker B:And the more I got into it, the more I started wondering, well, who's talking about this?
Speaker B:Like, I've never heard of this before?
Speaker B:But it sounds like something more or less anyone over 55 should be considering for their brain and memory health.
Speaker B:And one thing led to another.
Speaker B:I mean, I have a sort of a personal history with this.
Speaker B:I did lose my father to dementia about eight years ago.
Speaker B:And when that happens, you sort of look back and you look for the signs.
Speaker B:And what I realized was, well before any of the indications that, like, something was wrong, he was losing his sense of smell in his 50s.
Speaker B:And I thought, oh, that's interesting.
Speaker B:And as I read More and more.
Speaker B:And I live in Canada, I should say, and I couldn't.
Speaker B:I wasn't finding any public health information about this, about olfactory training.
Speaker B:And so I actually put together a presentation.
Speaker B:I have a background doing teaching and workshops and stuff like that.
Speaker B:And I love sharing information.
Speaker B:And so I started doing presentations, like free presentations for aging populations on olfactory training and how our sense of smell connects with the brain.
Speaker B:And one thing is led to another.
Speaker B:And now, what can I say, I'm obsessed with the topic, and I love sharing it.
Speaker A:Okay, so olfactory training, you're suggesting that you can train your sense of smell?
Speaker B:You can absolutely train your sense of smell.
Speaker B:And so there are some remarkable and unique properties about our sense of smell.
Speaker B:One is, yes, anyone can train their sense of smell.
Speaker B:So, like a person who is a wine sommelier, that's essentially what the job entails is training your nose.
Speaker B:And some people will be better than it, at it, than others.
Speaker B:But any of your listeners could, if they're so inclined, order a sommelier training kit off the Internet and start to teach their nose how to better differentiate smells.
Speaker B:But olfactory training, in its sort of first instance, is meant for recuperating a lost or damaged sense of smell.
Speaker B:And so one of the unique properties of our sense of smell is that the cell receptors, all of our cells, senses work through different through cell receptors.
Speaker B:The cell receptors for our sense of smell are neurogenerative, which means they renew.
Speaker B:They renew about every four weeks.
Speaker B:And this happens throughout the lifespan.
Speaker B:That is completely unique.
Speaker B:None of our other senses have this property.
Speaker B:And what that means is that doing something like olfactory training, you quite literally regrow neurons in your, like your all of the olfactory system to recuperate a lost sense of smell.
Speaker B:And so that was what olfactory training was originally like.
Speaker B:If you had lost it from COVID or a sinus infection or a workplace accident or any of those reasons, if you were to be prescribed something, it would be to do olfactory training.
Speaker B:Now, the second fascinating thing about our sense of smell is that it wires into our brain and in a unique way as well, from all of our other senses.
Speaker B:And so, if you'll pardon a bit of brain talk, all of our other senses, when we get, you know, input from our environment, that signal is sent to a brain area called the thalamus, which is like a central hub.
Speaker B:From the thalamus, that signal is then relayed, you know, somewhere like your hippocampus, where you process memories, for instance.
Speaker B:So if you hear a piece of music it reminds you of a concert you went to.
Speaker B:That signal goes into your ear, goes to your thalamus, and then goes to your hippocampus for processing.
Speaker B:What's also unique about our sense of smell is the signal as it comes into our nose is processed by the olfactory bulb and you know, some other areas, we don't need to learn all of them today, but the signal goes directly to the limbic system.
Speaker B:This is the part of our brain that is very primal.
Speaker B:It includes the amygdala and the hippocampus.
Speaker B:And so what's doubly remarkable about olfactory training is not only can you train, regain sense of smell, you can strengthen your existing one.
Speaker B:Anyone who does this will strengthen their sense of smell.
Speaker B:But you're also kind of flexing, if you will, you're exercising when you do olfactory training.
Speaker B:This neural network to these key areas of your brain that process emotion and memory.
Speaker B:And so what they're finding is not only will your smell improve, but people's scores on memory tests improve, on cognition tests improve.
Speaker B:Especially older people who are likely to be starting to lose their sense of smell, but haven't realized yet because that's very common, is their mood will get better.
Speaker B:Because we don't really appreciate most of the time how much smell implicates our just general day to day well being.
Speaker B:And so olfactory training has this capacity to quite literally change your brain.
Speaker B:Where they've done these studies and taken MRI scans, the parts of your brain used for smelling, which are all the important ones I just mentioned, will change in size over time.
Speaker B:It grows your brain and I don't know of anything else that does that.
Speaker A:Okay, now I have to ask.
Speaker A:I mean, this is incredibly interesting and I have to say you are definitely educating me on multiple friends here because this is stuff I have never heard.
Speaker B:There's a lot of information, I realize.
Speaker A:No, it's okay, it's wonderful, it's wonderful information.
Speaker A:But this idea that this improves cognitive function, can improve mood, so forth and so on.
Speaker A:You have studies to back these claims?
Speaker B:These are absolutely studied claims, yeah.
Speaker B:So a few sort of caveats about maybe a few of these.
Speaker B:One is that our sense of smell is the least understood out of all of the senses from neuroscientists down.
Speaker B:That being said, it's also the most primary.
Speaker B:It's actually the first one to develop in the womb and olfaction is the first sense to actually have existed.
Speaker B:If you were to go back millions or billions of years, a lot of our cells, we don't often think of this, but cells in our skin use a form of olfaction.
Speaker B:What is there?
Speaker B:There's also like the blood and cells in our heart and lungs also use a form of olfaction.
Speaker B:It's a very primary thing, but so it is understudied and the least understood.
Speaker B: lfactory training was done in: Speaker B:But all of the studies I'm basing my information on are peer reviewed academic, medical and scientific journals.
Speaker B:And where they're making these claims, it's what's called a statistically significant change.
Speaker B:It means the change from before and after is robust enough that they can say it is from doing olfactory training.
Speaker B:And so it's one of these areas where I think if someone in a medical field were to be asked, you know, what about all this olfaction stuff?
Speaker B:They, they might defer.
Speaker B:I've heard a person defer to, well, there's more studying studies that need to be done.
Speaker B:But given how simple, how safe and how accessible olfactory training is, and we can talk about what that actually looks like, how accessible it is, someone who's in their 60s, their 70s, their 80s, their 90s, there's no reason to wait.
Speaker B:Because it could be, you know, you look at the research, you know, getting funding for research these days more than ever, it's not worth waiting 20 years for someone to say this super safe and what looks like an incredibly effective treatment.
Speaker B:You should wait for someone to say it's okay.
Speaker B:People should be doing this right right away, in my opinion.
Speaker A:Okay.
Speaker A:And then, I hate to press you on this, but, you know, we live in a world where people make all kinds of crazy claims that aren't backed by any kind of science or study or anything like that.
Speaker A:And certainly.
Speaker A:But what you're saying is there studies have been done and it drills it down to causation, like if you do this training, you will get these results.
Speaker B:Well, I do like to caution.
Speaker A:Hold on one moment, Jonathan.
Speaker A:Brett, Google this for me.
Speaker A:I want to know if Google knows, does olfactory training improve cognition?
Speaker A:Let's just see what Google says.
Speaker B:Go ahead, Jonathan, give it the Google test.
Speaker B:I love it.
Speaker A:Does olfactory training improve cognition?
Speaker A:My projection manager's.
Speaker A:He's fact checking you, Jonathan.
Speaker A:I hope you don't mind, but it goes, no problem.
Speaker B:I've got about 30 of these studies that I can send your way as well, if you'd like.
Speaker A:Yeah, yeah.
Speaker A:And it just goes to credibility.
Speaker A:So carry on.
Speaker A:Sir, what were you saying before I interrupted you?
Speaker B:Well, I, you know, Because I've been doing this presentation, and I've now met, you know, people with all sorts of different, you know, scenarios.
Speaker B:And I like to caution that one, you know, there will be.
Speaker B:Of these studies, one of them was with or, you know, one particular one with dementia patients, for instance, had.
Speaker B:In a study, there's what's called a control.
Speaker B:And the experimental group, the control is to sort of test a baseline, and the experiment is, in these cases, using olfactory training.
Speaker B:And so there was one study with dementia patients where one group did Sudoku, and their condition worsened at the predicted rate.
Speaker B:So there's, like, no change as a result of doing Sudoku.
Speaker B:And the olfactory training group had their progress slowed by comparison.
Speaker B:So that's one example of a study where the significant results showing that.
Speaker B:But there's other ones where.
Speaker A:And for the record, listeners, Brett is nodding his head at me.
Speaker A:He's telling me, yep, yep.
Speaker A:He's like, it does this, it does that, it does this.
Speaker A:So this is not makeup stuff, folks.
Speaker A:You can trust it.
Speaker A:And, you know, we try to vet all of our guests.
Speaker A:And I don't mean to put you on the spot, Jonathan, but I'm sure you understand I'm up for it.
Speaker B:No, this is one of the reasons I started promoting this so much, as opposed to just doing, you know, a presentation here or there is because of.
Speaker B:I couldn't find.
Speaker B:Now I live in Canada again, but it's not being promoted anywhere.
Speaker B: ig policy initiative thing in: Speaker B:And here we are now seven years later with, you know, nothing is done about it.
Speaker B:No.
Speaker B:So I totally understand.
Speaker B:It's great to be skeptical.
Speaker B:And really, when you get.
Speaker B:When I talk about this, it seems too simple, that you smell things and it makes your brain healthy.
Speaker B:Yeah, right.
Speaker B:Like, that just seems like no way.
Speaker A:Yeah.
Speaker B:But there's a couple caveats.
Speaker B:So maybe if.
Speaker B:If you'd like, I can just describe what olfactory training is.
Speaker A:Yeah, that's absolutely my next question.
Speaker A:What is it?
Speaker A:How does.
Speaker A:How do you do it?
Speaker B:Yeah.
Speaker B:So like I said, anyone could do something like a sommelier training, which is teaching your nose to differentiate smells.
Speaker B:Olfactory training is actually engaging with singular odors.
Speaker B:And so one of the sort of requirements is it be a, what would be called a single molecule odor.
Speaker B:But that just means it's just one thing, it's not a mix of odors.
Speaker B:And in the studies they're using four different essential oil based odors.
Speaker B:And why four?
Speaker B:Well, the first person who did the study chose four, but it also represents four different areas that we can smell from, if you will.
Speaker B:Just like we can see light waves and hear sound frequencies, we can smell different kinds of odors.
Speaker B:And so using a lemon oil, a eucalyptus oil, a rose oil and a clove oil, those represent kind of four facets of our sense of smell.
Speaker B:You would use them in a higher concentration.
Speaker B:So while it's a great idea for everyone to engage with olfaction more sort of intentionally throughout their day, like smell your coffee, smell a lemon, smell this, smell that, when we're doing olfactory training, it's at a higher concentration.
Speaker B:And so I make these into like inhaler tubes, like you would get a Vicks at the pharmacy.
Speaker B:And essentially you hold it under your nose and you smell it for about 20 to 30 seconds, one of these, and you're just intentionally engaging with the odor.
Speaker B:And you do that for all four.
Speaker B:And in all of the studies they're doing this twice a day.
Speaker B:Some of the studies they're only asking them to do it for about five seconds, but I recommend a bit longer.
Speaker B:And it's about intentional engagement with a higher concentrated odor.
Speaker B:And like this, you're sort, it's like training a muscle where you know, if you were to, I liken it to if you did a couple bicep curls every day, but you did that for five months, that bicep is going to be different than the other one.
Speaker B:Over that period of time.
Speaker B:It'll make it more capable of things beyond just that one kind of motion of doing a bicep curl.
Speaker B:When you do olfactory training every day, this is brain training in practice.
Speaker B:And so the key to doing olfactory training successfully is consistency.
Speaker B:It's doing it twice a day, every day.
Speaker B:And so after there's different sort of timelines from study results, within about a month or so, a person's sense of smell will just be heightened.
Speaker B:And I know this from my own experience.
Speaker B:I had a fully functioning sense of smell, unless there's something I didn't know.
Speaker B:And since using my own kits, lemon, for instance, smells more lemony, like there's almost more there, it sort of widens or broadens smelling.
Speaker B:And our sense of smell accounts for 75 to 90% of the impact that flavor has.
Speaker B:And so this also, you know, accentuates food and tasting things.
Speaker B:But yeah, olfactory training is using these concentrated odors and intentionally using them twice a day for a consistent period of time.
Speaker A:Okay, that's too easy, Jonathan.
Speaker A:What else is, is too easy.
Speaker A:That's it.
Speaker B:Well, that's all it is.
Speaker B:And now.
Speaker B:So for anyone who's going to sort of try this on their own, I do like to make a few cautionary notes that if you just go out and buy essential oils and start, you know, hitting them off the bottle, some of them will, they're too strong, straight out like that, you can damage your esophagus.
Speaker B:And I don't want anyone to do that by accident.
Speaker B:So when you use one of these inhalers, there's a cotton wick and that sort of like helps to dilute it ever so slightly and get some air molecules in between, I guess you could say.
Speaker B:But no, there's.
Speaker B: nd he published an article in: Speaker B:But instead of using like, let's say the same nighttime odor every night, they used seven different ones.
Speaker B:So much like in these, doing olfactory training, your sort stimulating different parts or different capacities to smell.
Speaker B:And so they just had these running overnight.
Speaker B:This wasn't even intentional smelling.
Speaker B:And they found people's scores on all of these things go up as well.
Speaker B:Their memory scores, their cognition scores, people feeling less foggy headed, their mood being better.
Speaker B:So it really is that simple.
Speaker B:And that's why I'm kind of on a promotional campaign to share this information because you can quite, you can quite literally take your brain and memory health into your own hands.
Speaker A:Yeah, and not only the brain and memory, obviously that is a thing for anyone getting older.
Speaker A:But also we know sense of smell and sense of taste tend to be lost, compromised as we age.
Speaker A:But what you're teaching us is for the smell part and the two are connected so one improves the other.
Speaker A:We can do something about it.
Speaker A:We don't just need to accept it as the way it is.
Speaker A:That's just a part of aging.
Speaker A:Doesn't have to be.
Speaker B:No, and this is, there's something about smell, because I'll rattle off a few like things here.
Speaker B:Like when they did, they'll do surveys where they ask people, you know, if you had to get rid of one of your senses, which, which would it be?
Speaker B:And people go, oh, the sense, like far and away people go, the sense of smell, I don't really use that one.
Speaker B:And there was one survey of college students where they said they would rather get rid of their sense of smell than their cell phones, which is remarkable.
Speaker B:And, you know, and this is a cultural thing, and researchers and scientists are people too.
Speaker B:So I have mentioned, like, it is just like an understudied and kind of underutilized area.
Speaker B:But if you think about it, of course, if our eyes start to worsen, we don't just bumble around in a blurry world.
Speaker B:We go to an optometrist, we get corrective lenses.
Speaker A:Yeah.
Speaker B:And it's now well recognized scientifically that if you're losing your hearing and you don't get a hearing aid, and this one is in all of the Alzheimer's literature, and if you don't get a hearing aid, you put yourself at a much higher risk for cognitive impairment.
Speaker B:Or if you're already predisposed, it will speed up the progress of your dementia.
Speaker B:And we can liken it to like, we've been receiving environmental stimulation our whole life.
Speaker B:We have brain connections related to that.
Speaker B:If that stimulation weakens lessons and starts to go away, those connections in our brain, our brain functions in a use it or lose it kind of capacity, well, it puts us at a higher risk because we're just not as tuned in as we were.
Speaker B:And for some reason, we've never considered our sense of smell in this way.
Speaker B:We kind of aren't really talking about it yet.
Speaker B:But the fact is, everyone will start to lose their sense of smell as a result of age.
Speaker B:It kind of varies.
Speaker B:Like, it's not the same for everyone.
Speaker B:For some people it's their 50s, for some people it's their 90s.
Speaker B:But with COVID now, maybe I could speak to this a little bit.
Speaker A:Yeah.
Speaker B:A lot of people lost their sense of smell and through long Covid and what I didn't learn about until I was reading it in a study out of the UK is that olfactory training is the number one recommended treatment for
Speaker A:this
Speaker B:or for any other post infectious or sinus infection with smell loss is to do olfactory training to regain our lost sense of smell.
Speaker B:And how many people do you know who didn't have a sense of smell for months and never knew there was anything they could or should be doing about it?
Speaker A:Everybody that I know that didn't Have a sense of smell for months.
Speaker A:I mean, I am totally with you that this is under talked about, under explored.
Speaker A:And frankly, it's the reason I invited you on.
Speaker A:I mean, we get lots of.
Speaker A:Of pitches every week, and, you know, some of them we've done, and there's no reason to do that again.
Speaker A:And some of them are just so dang boring.
Speaker A:But this really intrigued me.
Speaker A:I am someone who, like my family.
Speaker A:I drive my family crazy because I smell everything.
Speaker A:And I'm like, you know how you were talking about wine?
Speaker A:Well, the same is true for food, like, if you're a cook.
Speaker B:Yeah.
Speaker A:I can smell if the food is cooking too long or if I didn't put enough oregano.
Speaker A:I can smell these things.
Speaker A:And, you know, they're like, oh, my God, you drive us crazy.
Speaker A:You smell everything.
Speaker A:And I'm like, you better be happy.
Speaker A:I do.
Speaker A:How many times I've saved you from food poisoning or whatever?
Speaker A:So it was intriguing to me.
Speaker A:Now I have a question for you.
Speaker A:And I guess it's just something that occurs to me.
Speaker A:You know, how music can help people with dementia, even people who are in late stages in terms of making connections and, you know, having moments of clarity.
Speaker A:I wonder about smell.
Speaker A:I just wonder if that might be something.
Speaker A:Is anybody researching that?
Speaker B:I think it absolutely has a few different applications, because one, when, like, you know, having known people going through dementia, what happens is you sort of start to lose as far as, like, memory and things go, things from the middle.
Speaker B:For some reason, we end up with some of our earlier memories still sort of retained at that stage.
Speaker B:And, you know, aromatherapy is a word that might strike some as being a little bit, you know, flaky or something.
Speaker B:But there are lots of studies, you know, prior to any of the stuff I'm talking about, about the effects of.
Speaker B:Of smell on mood, on study.
Speaker B:You know, bad odors cause people to do worse on tests.
Speaker B:Good ones cause them to have more clarity and do better, all sorts of things like that.
Speaker B:And so it also has the capacity to be calming.
Speaker B:And.
Speaker B:Yeah, in sharing this with a lot of people, it's.
Speaker B:It's made me wish I had the sort of resources to provide a service where people could share some of their earliest, like, smell memories.
Speaker A:Yeah.
Speaker B:And have a custom odor created just for them.
Speaker B:I feel like that would just bring so much comfort.
Speaker B:Absolutely.
Speaker B:I think.
Speaker B:I think because of the way and what I've especially learned about how smell wires into these deep parts of our brain, I think it's only a matter of time.
Speaker B:And I hope it's not too long before places like dementia and long care wards are using smell to the benefit of all the people in their care.
Speaker B:It's kind of a no brainer.
Speaker B:It's right for the picking.
Speaker B:And if anyone has had someone in sort of a long, certain long term care facilities, those places, the smell of them is quite something.
Speaker B:I, I went back to say thank you to the staff after my dad passed away and I almost couldn't go in there anymore.
Speaker B:Like that smell will be with me for the rest of my life.
Speaker B:You know, it's its own memory.
Speaker B:Yeah, but people are working there every day, the people who are in their care.
Speaker B:And you know, it's kind of a funny thing because of course so much in society is now going scent free, you know, and there's very good reasons for that.
Speaker B:A lot of things have chemicals, a lot of people are very sensitized and just can't be around scent.
Speaker B:But where there is capacity for this, it's something that people are starting to pick up on.
Speaker B:Like even like retail businesses are starting to pipe in smells.
Speaker B:Like hotel chains will have their own customized smells.
Speaker B:There's smell does connect in a very sort of personal and emotional way to people and it has a lot of capacity to be helpful.
Speaker A:For sure, for sure.
Speaker A:And I can think of silly examples from my own life.
Speaker A:Like I don't know if you guys have big red soda where you are.
Speaker A:We don't actually have it here in Ohio, but where I grew up in the south, we did.
Speaker A:And when I visit the South, I open the bottle.
Speaker A:It's that smell, that burst of smell right when you open it.
Speaker A:I swear to God it takes me back to 8 years old.
Speaker A:So for sure, we know that this is connected and we've all experienced it.
Speaker A:Like you smell something and all of a sudden you remember things about somebody or someplace or sometime that you thought you had forgotten.
Speaker B:The first love that broke your heart.
Speaker B:If you ever smell that purple perfume again, look out.
Speaker A:Could be, could be.
Speaker A:You're not even joking about that one.
Speaker A:Okay, so how expensive are these kits?
Speaker B:So I'm trying to make them actually quite affordable.
Speaker B:And given all these wild promises that I've also been talking about, it is kind of the best bang for your buck.
Speaker B:For Canadian consumers, they're $49 and they're meant to last upwards of eight plus months.
Speaker B:And some of the timelines, it's incredibly affordable.
Speaker B:And I do like to say the practice is easy.
Speaker B:It takes minutes a day.
Speaker B:Anyone can really do it.
Speaker B:The hardest thing is you have to remember to do something new every day.
Speaker B:And so for anyone who's interested in doing this, I do like to sort of try to be helpful.
Speaker B:And like, for me, I leave mine on my nightstand because I wake up and I see it, I can do it really quickly, even if I have a full day.
Speaker B:And same thing when I'm going to bed, I see it, I go, brain health.
Speaker B:I want that.
Speaker B:And I can smell for two minutes before I go to bed.
Speaker B:But it is about, like, finding a way to incorporate this into your life.
Speaker B:But, yeah, kits are $49, and all of the studies, like the best findings that they're purporting came within six months of doing it.
Speaker B:That's like a gold standard.
Speaker B:But people notice changes before then, certainly especially if you've lost your sense of smell.
Speaker B:We had actually the first person who tried this, my co founder, read the study and then went, well, I'm going to do this.
Speaker B:This sounds like a good idea.
Speaker B:And made a kit for herself.
Speaker B:And a woman came into her store who was in her mid-40s, and as she was like, looking to select different scents and make a candle, couldn't smell this, couldn't smell that.
Speaker B:And shared.
Speaker B:When she was a teenager, she had gone to her mom's work, had been hit in the face with, like, steam, and it had damaged her sense of smell.
Speaker B:And so they got to talking and she asked, well, have you ever tried olfactory trainings?
Speaker B:No.
Speaker B:What's that?
Speaker B:You take this, you smell it twice a day, blah, blah, blah.
Speaker B:Do you want to take it home and try it?
Speaker B:And she was like, yeah, I absolutely want to.
Speaker B:And this person who was living her whole life this way came back three and a half weeks later because she was starting to regain her smell for lemon, which is absolutely astounding.
Speaker A:Yeah.
Speaker B:And so.
Speaker B:And so, yeah, doing this for six months, it's not like if you stop, all of the air goes out of the balloon and you're back to square one.
Speaker B:You've changed parts of your brain, at least for.
Speaker B:In one study, 40 weeks is when they saw the changes.
Speaker B:Sort of stick around until.
Speaker B:But again, being an understudied area, we don't know what happens.
Speaker B:If person is doing this for many years or doing it on and off.
Speaker B:I think it's just for me, something I'm now just doing as a lifestyle health habit from here on out.
Speaker A:Yeah.
Speaker A:So the four smells that you named, do you smell all four of them each day or just one a day?
Speaker B:Yeah, you do all four and you do them as a series so you do that twice a day?
Speaker A:Twice a day.
Speaker A:Okay.
Speaker A:And they're not unpleasant smells, folks.
Speaker A:Like, we're not asking.
Speaker A:No smell of skunk.
Speaker B:No, this is the.
Speaker B:Yeah, this is a nice benefit is that people report back that they really enjoy doing this now.
Speaker B:It's like a nice way to start a day.
Speaker B:It's actually really a lovely thing to engage with scent.
Speaker A:It's so easy and so affordable.
Speaker A:And health benefits that we know about and maybe health benefits that we don't know about because it's still so new on the horizon.
Speaker A:So, Jonathan, how would somebody go about getting their hands on one of these kits from your company?
Speaker A:What's your company called?
Speaker A:And how would they find you on the Internet?
Speaker B:Sure.
Speaker B:Yeah.
Speaker B:So my company is called Memorees, but spelled M E M O R E a s e memorese.
Speaker B:And my website is www.memorese.care.
Speaker B:and I have an email linked through there as well.
Speaker B:So if anyone sort of has heard this but wants to know a little bit more or wants to chat, I'm happy to help out with that.
Speaker B:There's sort of special instructions if a person has lost their sense of smell.
Speaker B:So I think that's on the website, though.
Speaker B:But, yeah, I love answering questions about this, but I would encourage anyone.
Speaker B:We all know people who would benefit from this.
Speaker B:In fact, I haven't even gotten into the studies with Parkinson's patients and diabetes patients.
Speaker B:There's reasons for just about anyone who wants to just take care of better care of their brain to be considering olfactory training.
Speaker A:Well, let's not leave without you touching on that.
Speaker A:Talk to me about Parkinson's.
Speaker B:So Parkinson's.
Speaker B:And I like to caution it's not like a cure for Parkinson's, but 90 to 95% of people with Parkinson's will get olfactory dysfunction.
Speaker B:They'll lose their sense of smell.
Speaker B:And when a person loses their sense of smell, there are things that are known to happen.
Speaker B:One, we don't taste food the same way, and we feel less inclined to eat.
Speaker B:We don't really enjoy it anymore.
Speaker B:And we're often, maybe not cognizant of it, but in social situations, we're picking up on subtle cues from other people through our sense of smell.
Speaker B:And so as it depreciates, as it starts to go away, we're less inclined to be social and to be like.
Speaker B:We don't feel like there's anything for us there.
Speaker B:It sort of graze things out a little bit.
Speaker B:And what they're finding is.
Speaker B:So actually olfactory dysfunction Coincides with about like over 70 neurological and psychiatric disorders, which is absolutely remarkable.
Speaker B:Some you wouldn't even think about, like heart disease.
Speaker B:If a person has heart disease, they'll also experience loss in their olfactory system.
Speaker B:So there's something very sort of intimate going on in our bodies.
Speaker B:But for Parkinson's patients, it's quite common for a person to lose their sense of smell, but that doesn't have to be part of the journey.
Speaker B:In other words, if they do olfactory training, there's multiple studies now showing that people regain it.
Speaker B:And so along with that, you know, it's kind of like you don't have to carry along these other side effects as part of your Parkinson's journey.
Speaker A:Yeah, yeah.
Speaker A:And diabetes.
Speaker B:Oh, I don't remember the study.
Speaker B:It's very new and I don't have the full version yet.
Speaker B:But they're showing a similar thing where it's like there's certain things that happen, as you know, to coincide with diabetes, but it doesn't have to be the case.
Speaker B:You can have some control over this part simply by doing cell training.
Speaker A:Well, I'm going to order three kids, for sure.
Speaker A:I know that you have made me a believer and I'm going to try it out and I don't know, maybe we'll have you back on in six months.
Speaker A:What do you think about that?
Speaker B:Well, and I love hearing back from people because I'd love to hear how things are going because I started all this having just read a big pile of studies, which is fine and good, but since starting doing presentations just this past fall, I'm now hearing back from people, you know, in their 80s who are doing this and are noticing changes.
Speaker B:And I love hearing back from people.
Speaker B:I find it really inspiring and motivating to keep sort of pressing to get this, the word out.
Speaker A:Well, I will say your passion for this, definitely, it shows, it shines through and you are delightful and this is affordable, easy stuff that can improve our lives.
Speaker B:Yeah, that's right.
Speaker B:You think about any medication or treatment, there's always a side effect and the only side effects here are potential benefits.
Speaker B:I love encouraging people to do it.
Speaker A:Now there's a disclaimer you won't see on tv.
Speaker A:Jonathan, thank you so much for joining us.
Speaker A:Great information.
Speaker A:I'm sure our listeners will thoroughly enjoy it and learn something and hopefully they will find your website again.
Speaker A:Much appreciated, listeners.
Speaker A:Till next time.
Speaker A:May the road rise to meet you.
Speaker A:May the wind be forever at your back.
