Its great that they are discovering more ways to detect dementia which we will all benefit from. Remember to take your coconut oil and other nutrients if you think your sense of smell is fading.
Sniff out dementia with this simple 12-second scent test by Jack Harrison, Daily Dose, 12/5/15
You’d like to keep all your senses. But if you had to lose one, chances are you’d go with smell. Heck, with the odor of election year BS floating all around, you might not even miss it at first.
But it turns out the nose knows a whole lot more than you might think — because new research reveals when you start to lose your sense of smell, you could be losing something far more important with it: Your mind!
Yes, my friend, when your nose goes… so goes your brain, as the latest research links a fading sense of smell to fading memory and even dementia risk.
Seniors in this new study were given a sniff test involving six foods (banana, chocolate, cinnamon, lemon, onion and pineapple) and six non-foods (gasoline, paint thinner, rose, soap, smoke and turpentine) and then tracked for an average of 3.5 years.
Those who had no signs of memory loss but stunk on the sniff test were 2.2 times more likely to develop memory problems over the following years. And those who were already starting to lose it upstairs were more likely to develop Alzheimer’s when they flunked the smell test, according to the study of 1,400 seniors.
The medical industry has wasted billions trying to cook up a test to spot dementia before it sinks in, and they’ve come up emptier than a campaign promise.
Yet this simple test that anyone could do — one you could set up easily enough with stuff you have around at home — just might be the key to figuring out who’s at risk.
That test could be even simpler, too: Other studies show that if you start to lose the ability to smell peanut butter, you could be at risk for dementia.
If your own sense of smell is fading, it doesn’t mean dementia is right around the corner. But it DOES mean you should sniff out some brain-saving nutrients so you can help make sure it never happens.
Start with essential B vitamins, which can help stop the shrink of gray matter that’s known to speed cognitive decline. They’re so effective that studies have found seniors given a B complex did 70 percent better on memory tests than seniors given a placebo.
