IF you thought the art of smelling declines with age,smell again. After six years of volunteers smelling lemons and some 40 other scents including natural gas and bubble gum, a University of Florida study reveals that ageing has little effect on smell, taste or touch. "There is a belief that as you age, everything deteriorates.
The truth is that there is only a modest change in sensory functioning," says Heft, director of the Claude Pepper Centre for Research on Oral Health in Ageing at University of Florida's College of Dentistry. "There are a number of older folks that can smell and taste just as well as many of the young." Ruling out various factors, including disease and whether the participants were smokers, the researchers found less than 10 per cent of the differences in sensory perceptions are age-related. "What's emerging is a more upbeat vision of ageing,"says Heft. Researchers noted that women have a better sense of smell than men. But don't know why.